A crime against our children that beggars belief
A new report exposes how doctors, blinded by trans ideology, gave vulnerable teens life-changing surgery and drugs linked to cancer — and anyone who protested was branded a bigot . . .
WHEN the case of Keira Bell, a teenage girl who had been prescribed puberty blockers by the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), first hit the headlines a few years ago, I remember thinking: this could be the tip of a very nasty iceberg.
Bell had begun her chemical transition from female to male at the age of 16 and underwent a double mastectomy at 20.
As part of a wider case at the High Court on the question of whether children under the age of 16 should be prescribed puberty blockers, Bell, by then 23, expressed her regret at having transitioned. She argued that her dysphoria was a result of mental health problems that stemmed from her struggles with puberty and her own sexuality.
Left with no breasts, a deep voice, body hair and a beard, as well as compromised sexual function and possibly infertile, Bell faces a lifetime of regret, not to mention permanent health issues.
This week, the extent of cases such as Bell’s was laid bare in leaked messages from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).
They reveal how medics advocating the use of puberty-blocking drugs were well aware of their potential long-term harms, including infertility and cancer, and that they also knew that in some cases patients were too young or too mentally ill to fully appreciate the consequences of their treatment.
The importance of this cannot be underestimated.
WPATH is widely considered to be the authority on the treatment and care of transgender and gender diverse people.
And yet here we have clear evidence of its own experts openly acknowledging how patients developed tumours or died from cancer linked to hormone treatment.
One 16-year- old girl suffered from liver tumours, having been prescribed testosterone after taking puberty blockers for several years. Other patients on testosterone experienced vaginal and pelvic pain, bowel problems or bleeding and pain during sex.
Many of the cases in the U.S. involved children or young teenagers. And yet on the question of ‘informed consent’ for minors, one specialist is recorded telling colleagues: ‘It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year-old, but I know I’m talking to a blank wall. Most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of a brain space to talk about it in a serious way.’
Put bluntly, they knew the potential risks of these drugs and surgeries, and the negative effects they could have on very young, vulnerable patients.
In one case, unbelievably, they even had to seek consent from all the different identities of a patient with a multiple personality disorder, which gives you a sense of the mental health issues that some of these patients faced. Yet they went ahead anyway.
Why? There can be only one explanation: blind ideology. What these files — revealed by the American journalist Michael Shellenberger — show is that far from being an example of ‘ best practice’, these so- called professionals allowed their personal beliefs to cloud their clinical judgment.
Quite simply, they turned a blind eye to the inconvenient truths about the treatments and drugs they were advocating because it did not suit them to acknowledge them.
Giving children drugs that you know full well might harm them, and subjecting them to life- changing operations that could leave them infertile or needing permanent care? If that isn’t medical malpractice at its worst, I don’t know what is.
Few would suggest that hormone therapies and gender reassignment surgery should not be made available to those who are experiencing genuine gender dysphoria. But that is not what we are seeing.
Here, we have a situation where permanent and irreversible gender reassignment is being pushed as a solution to a variety of other psychological issues to the ultimate detriment of the patient.
Meanwhile, the long- term repercussions of such treatments are being fudged for the sake of an ideological agenda.
It seems so far- fetched, so utterly outrageous and unbelievable, that it could almost be the plot of a Netflix thriller.
Indeed, what has been described as the ‘pseudoscientific surgical destruction of healthy genitals in vulnerable people’ has already been compared with the use of lobotomies in the 20th century.
As for the surgeries, they’re also big business. Physicians at one U.S. clinic recently described how gender-reassignment operations have become ‘huge money-makers’ and that, in some cases, an ‘entire clinic is supported just by the phalloplasty [plastic surgery performed to construct a penis]’.
And if you think this stuff is confined to the U.S., think again. Last year the number of underage children being prescribed puberty blockers in the UK doubled — despite the independent Cass Review of gender identity services for children and young people casting doubt on their use. Where America leads, we follow.
What is even more galling is the fact that, for several years now, any attempt to raise even a bat-squeak of concern about the use of these drugs in underage children has been met with an absolute barrage of hate from trans-advocates.
But is it really transphobic to suggest that a 14- year- old suffering from anxiety and unsure of their sexuality might need to take a bit of extra time to understand the consequences of undergoing irreversible treatment that could lead to a lifetime on medication?
Is it really transphobic to ask whether someone who is not old enough to vote, drive a car or get a tattoo should undergo an operation such as a vaginoplasty, which involves repositioning tissue from the male genitals to create a pseudo-vagina, which then requires daily dilation, for
If that isn’t medical malpractice, I don’t know what is
So outrageous, it could be a Netf lix thriller
ever? Thankfully in the UK you have to be at least 18 to undergo such a procedure, but that is not the case in some U.S. states.
Either way, I would argue that exercising caution in the face of such life- changing decisions is not only wise but, given what we now know about those advocating these treatments, might also save lives.
And yet, quite soon, if (when) Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister, any attempt on the part of a parent, teacher or doctor to question a child’s desire to transition could see them ending up in court, accused of abuse.
Starmer has said he will outlaw all forms of conversion therapy, emphasising that such a ban would be ‘trans-inclusive’.
That would mean parents facing a stark choice: acquiesce to their child undergoing irreversible treatment that even the experts know to be potentially harmful. Or face jail. I know which one I would choose.