IN MY VIEW... NHS advice must not ‘erase’ women

ACCURACY is everything in medicine. Medical students undergo particularly strict training in the use of language and the need to describe symptoms precisely.

It’s only by taking care with words that medical errors can be averted.

Now we learn the NHS has decided to abandon accuracy in pursuit of ‘woke’ philosophy.

References to women have been dropped from its website guidance on ovarian and womb cancer. These conditions only affect women with female chromosomes who have female anatomy.

Using de-sexed language is an inexcusable inaccuracy which may present hazards to the 99.3 per cent of the population who are not transgender.

Those who are transgender need specific advice about their own particular health threats.

In the 1970s I was the medical adviser to the Self- Help Association for Transsexuals, and my great concern was that transgender women with male physiology were at risk of life-threatening blood clots due to the large doses of oestrogens they took. The NHS ‘de-sexing’ of language is a step in the wrong direction.