Pseudoscience begins to unravel: Westmead doctors raise major doubts on Trans procedures for kids
“There are none so blind as those who will not see,” goes the proverb.
Is there any more apt description than this for those who continue to push experimental gender affirmative practices onto children?
Earlier this month, several senior doctors from Westmead Children’s Hospital’s gender clinic published a follow up study of 79 children and young people referred to the clinic in a five-year period between 2013 and 2018.
The findings would only be shocking to those who have not been watching how the gender transition industry (and yes, it is an industry) has been operating in other countries in recent years.
Despite being told that gender transition will address the psychological distress of children presenting with gender dysphoria, a whopping 88 per cent of the children in this study reported ongoing mental health concerns four to nine years after transition.
“The average age for kids being given cross-sex hormones was 16, which is the youngest age at which this is legally allowed.”
The findings are similar to a Swedish study that showed there were no mental health benefits to a patient who underwent surgical or hormonal treatment and that in fact, those who underwent surgical treatment had a higher risk of mood or anxiety disorders.
The Westmead study found that kids as young as nine years old had been put on puberty blockers, some of them experiencing decreased bone density, weight gain and other issues as a result.
It found that 51 of the 79 kids had also been put on cross-sex hormones, an action that causes irreversible infertility. The average age for kids being given cross-sex hormones was 16, which is the youngest age at which this is legally allowed. Alarmingly, 20 of the 51 had managed to obtain the drugs from unregulated providers, many of them were younger than the age of 16.
Five of the young women had their breasts removed (one also opted for a hysterectomy), and one young man had breast implants and his penis inverted to create a vagina.
The doctors who undertook the Westmead study do not take “sides” on the issue. For starters, they work at the gender clinic themselves so are obviously not opposed to medical transition for kids.
They also say that if the choice of gender transition is right for a young person, it “may well support ongoing adaptation and wellbeing.” Even so, they warn that if the choice of transition was not the right one, “it may seriously distort both the young person’s life choices and ongoing sense of wellbeing.”
The doctors note that the current NSW LGBTIQ+ Health Strategy for 2022-2027 promotes access to gender-affirming medical treatments, even if a child does not meet the diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria.
Given that 22 per cent of those referred to the clinic for gender distress ended up leaving the gender transition pathway, the doctors warn that if this health strategy is followed, “one could project that more than a fifth of the sample (17/77, or 22.1 per cent, in our study) could have been exposed to inappropriate medical treatment, future regret, and potential harm” and urge more research be done.
The raising of this alarm occurred just days before the Independent Member for Sydney, Alex Greenwich MP, sought pre-election commitments from major parties to make gender-affirmative treatment the only legal option for the care of children experiencing gender dysphoria.
Under the Greenwich plan, doctors like those who authored this study would be labelled as undertaking “conversion therapy” if they tried to assist a child in being comfortable in their own body rather than starting them on puberty blockers, and risk penalties including professional misconduct, fines and even imprisonment.
“In the coming months, Mr Greenwich … will do their best to divert your attention away from the vulnerable children who are being subjected to treatments for which there is sparse medical evidence.”
In an example of political pressure overriding common sense, both the Premier and Opposition Leader have indicated their support for Greenwich’s push. It is worth noting, however, that Premier Dominic Perrottet’s support was much more qualified and cautious than the more reckless enthusiasm offered by Labor.
In the coming months, Mr Greenwich and others will market their ban on “conversion therapy” as prohibiting long-abandoned and horrific practices like the use of electroshock therapy to try to change a person’s homosexual orientation to heterosexual.
They will do their best to divert your attention away from the vulnerable children who are being subjected to treatments for which there is sparse medical evidence and no long-term studies.
They will shout from the rooftops that even if doctors aren’t performing ‘conversion therapy,’ the practices are still in existence in ‘unregulated’ spaces like churches and prayer groups, while remaining deafeningly silent on the unregulated market found by this study to be illegally providing cross-sex hormones to kids not old enough to smoke, drink, vape or vote.
They will label physicians, politicians, parents and pastors who want to protect kids from the irreversible effects of the gender transition industry as homophobic and transphobic.
Don’t let them get away with it for one second.