Young people were treated like lab rats by gender clinic
THE Gender Identity and Development Service has finally shut its doors, four years after it was rated as “inadequate” by inspectors. The only specialist gender clinic for children and young people in England and Wales came under intense scrutiny following a sharp rise in referrals from NHS patients questioning their gender.
For the many parents, campaigners, former patients of the NHS’s transgender services and, particularly, children who blew the whistle over the clinic’s substandard care, this is little consolation. But it’s a start.
And now – after years of bullying, intimidation and being labelled “transphobic” by online radical gender ideologues intent on imposing their own junk science on the rest of society – brave whistleblowers have finally been vindicated with the publication of the Cass report this week.
Its findings confirmed what many of us already knew. But they are still damning, nonetheless.
The review found that the use of puberty blockers, a common treatment for gender-questioning children, “spread at pace” around the world, based on a single Dutch study that began in 1998. The report also said there is no good evidence puberty blockers help and they might damage bone health and height.
IT CONCLUDED that the rationale for giving children puberty blockers “remains unclear” – and that many clinicians were unable to determine “with any certainty” which young patients would go on to live life permanently in transgender identity.
In effect, an entire field of medicine aimed at enabling children to change their gender had been “built on shaky foundations” with “remarkably weak evidence”.
Surprise, surprise. In other breaking news, water is wet. The biggest scandal is not that a study commissioned four years ago told us what we already knew. It is the fact that we took so long to act.
How many thousands of children could have been saved if we had acted sooner?
Our society must feel a deep sense of shame, not least because there were so many warning signs. In just a little over a decade, the number of referrals to the NHS’s youth gender identity service increased hundredfold.
And if the established treatment paths were so effective, why did the problem only seem to be getting worse, not better? The poor data collection from the Gids clinic only further added to suspicions of foul play.
Dr Hilary Cass, the chairwoman of the NHS review, also found that many young people were not well-served by the established treatment because it failed to tackle the autism and mental health issues many of them presented with.
Again, no surprise there. To say that many young people’s mental health has been sacrificed at the altar of radical gender ideology is an understatement.We have treated them like lab rats. And any talk of underinvestment in mental health resources is also just scratching the surface.
Many parents have undoubtedly felt pressured to medicalise the growing pains of their children. But imagine that your daughter prefers the company of boys, playing rugby and video games. Back in the day, she was known as a tomboy. Today, she stands a very real risk of being diagnosed with puberty blockers and having her breasts chopped off.
Even if she was suffering some form of gender dysphoria, how on earth is such treatment an improvement? If nothing
else, these interventions condemn young people to a life of profound mental and physical health issues.
It is also worth asking where, in this drive to pathologise every oddity of young people, is freedom of self-expression. What happened to personality and going through a phase?
T‘What happened to personality and going through a phase?’
HIS latest study has uncovered the scale of negligence and medical malpractice with children questioning their “gender identity”.
But it has also shown what happens when we allow fear to result in such a gross dereliction of duty. There is no worse kind of cowardice.
We have failed young people on so many levels. The solution is to foster a healthy environment for them to grow up in.
Boundaries, social support and strong family values are key in producing the type of self-confidence every adult needs to truly thrive – not tying ourselves in knots over “preferred pronouns”. This study must be a wake-up call.
I have no doubt that we are going to look back in horror at this period.
We must never let it happen again.