Carys Moseley comments on the news that several NHS trusts have approved a guide on using puberty blockers on children to start ‘transgender treatment’.
The Sunday Times has revealed that three NHS trusts in the west of England have approved a guide on puberty blockers for children called ‘Supporting Trans People’. Its main author is a transgender activist, a male-to-female who runs an organisation called the Diversity Trust. These are Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (BNSSG CCG), North Bristol NHS Trust and Devon Partnership NHS Trust.
This has come just at a time when a former psychiatric nurse at the Tavistock Clinic and a woman who is de-transitioning from living as a ‘man’ are taking the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust to the High Court over the administration of puberty blockers to minors.
Manipulative language about sex
‘Supporting Trans People’ is off to a bad start as it uses typically manipulative language about sex. The Sunday Times reported that it includes slippery statements such as:
“anatomy is not always a good guide to what gender a child will be or even what sex they are”. [p. 3, Supporting Trans People]
This is the classic trans activist tactic of assimilating transgenderism to ‘intersex’ aka Disorders of Sexual Development. In fact, Disorders of Sexual Development are a distinct group of congenital anomalies that have been recorded for years.
In the same vein, it claims that sex is ‘assigned’ at birth on the basis of physical characteristics including ‘hormones, chromosomes, genitalia, internal sex organs and secondary sex characteristics (breasts, facial hair, etc., mostly acquired at puberty’ [p. 3, Supporting Trans People]. This is misleading language as it does not make the necessary distinctions. In fact, midwives observe a baby’s sex at birth based on external physical characteristics only. Only in instances where there are malformed sexual characteristics will a child need a chromosomal test to ascertain its true chromosomal sex.
Note also the misleading claim that secondary sex characteristics are ‘acquired at puberty’, when in fact they develop naturally. The obvious reason this term is used is to facilitate the transgender deceit that it is possible to ‘acquire’ the desired secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex via gender reassignment surgery (breasts) and cross-sex hormones (testosterone to enable growth of facial hair).
Ignoring medical concerns
The second problem with ‘Supporting Trans People’ is that it ignores the grave concerns expressed by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and NHS England about puberty blockers. Both professional bodies are so concerned that they have ordered reviews into the sudden increase in administration of puberty blockers to minors. This is long overdue.
If professional paediatricians, who specialise in medical care of children, are raising objections, who on earth are local NHS trust managers to object and plough on regardless?
Manipulating anti-racism
The third problem with ‘Supporting Trans People’ is that it was written by a group called ‘Stand Against Racism and Inequality’, a charity based in Bristol. This speaks volumes about the philosophy used to manipulate NHS managers into accepting the document. Effectively, it is implying that opposing gender reassignment is akin to racism. This kind of reasoning tends to posit (wrongly and, arguably, often dishonestly) that transgenderism is a fixed, innate identity (that people are ‘born that way’), like race.
Given that racism is considered the worst and unforgiveable social sin in many quarters, such false equivalence is intended to intimidate public sector managers into accepting transgender rights claims at face value. After all, nobody wants to be considered to be as bad as a racist.
Safeguarding concerns raised
The Sunday Times discovered that this guidance had not been put out to consultation among patients or the general public prior to publication. Because numerous women complained about it, an equality impact assessment has now been requested by the Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group governing body. The reason is to work out if this guidance fits with its safeguarding policies!
Gender reassignment is contrary to medicine
Giving children puberty-blocking drugs is not true medicine, neither is physical gender reassignment. These things constitute social engineering aimed at normalising sexual perversions.
How can it be said that gender reassignment generally and giving puberty-blocking drugs specifically do not count as medicine? To answer that question, we need to look at the body, health and medicine objectively. The arguments that I am making below are taken from those made by Carlos Flores in his chapter ‘Children, sex reassignment surgery, and the aims of medicine’ in The New Normal.
It is obvious that the parts of the human body have certain purposes. The eyes are obviously intended – created by God – to enable us to see. It is easy to infer that removal of someone’s eyes would make that person go blind. Likewise, the sexual parts of men and women have the obvious purpose of being united for procreation. If they are removed or surgically mutilated, that man or woman can no longer have sexual relations with the opposite sex and no longer procreate naturally. Health is understood in relation to the in-built purposes of the parts of the body. For ‘health’ is when the human body works together properly.
The job of medicine is to maintain the health of the human body. Medics can do this in two ways: first, to heal body parts that are ill, to restore them to their normal pattern of work. Second, to prevent illness, often by issuing advice to patients or prescribing certain treatments. If medics do not maintain the health of the human body, they are not doing their job properly.
Flores argues correctly that gender reassignment is not only not medicine but is contrary to medicine. It is not medicine because it does not aim to restore ‘bodily faculties’ to their correct function, nor does it aim to prevent them from not working properly. Likewise, he argues that it does not aim either to restore mental faculties or prevent them from not working properly. Most importantly gender reassignment goes against medicine because it aims to remove or mutilate healthy body parts, thus causing ill-health in the long-term.
Giving puberty blockers is contrary to medicine
Flores doesn’t discuss puberty blockers specifically. The reasoning already laid down makes it clear however that giving children drugs to block the development of puberty is not true medicine, because puberty is not a disease of the body or the mind. Rather puberty is a normal and essential part of human development, the transition between childhood and adulthood.
Advocates of puberty blockers claim that their effects are reversible, but this is disputed by critics. In addition, there have been major disputes about the transparency of the process of reviewing their use. One major complication is that a majority of teenagers who are given puberty blockers go on to receive cross-sex hormones, which constitutes physical treatment for gender reassignment. Thus, it is very difficult to justify the claim that the effect of puberty blockers is reversible, as in social terms most who have used them do not go back to develop a delayed puberty as members of their sexes. In addition to this, gender identity clinics for children and adolescents are yet to publish evidence of what former patients who have de-transitioned are reporting about the effects of puberty blockers on them. In light of all these problems, it is simply untrue to call administration of puberty blockers medical treatment. It is experimental at best, but ultimately it is facilitating gender reassignment, which is contrary to medicine.
When we consider that all of this is done in order to perpetuate the illusion that a person can change from being male to female or vice versa, all this amounts to is quack medicine. Quackery is defined as ‘dishonest practices and claims to have special knowledge and skill in some field, typically medicine.’
Taxes are misspent on quack medicine
There is another factor here which is that the NHS is paid for by the government – in other words, by citizens’ taxes. Insofar as these taxes are being used for quack medicine such as gender reassignment and puberty blockers, they are being misspent on a grand scale.
The problem here is not that money is being spent. The problem is that it is being spent on the wrong kind of treatment. As NHS England has so arrogantly signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the UK, it cannot spend any money on therapy or counselling as more appropriate treatment for gender dysphoria. For this would go against the Memorandum’s prohibition on believing that one ‘gender identity’ is better than any other.
NHS trusts must withdraw ‘Supporting Trans People’
This amounts to manipulation of the cradle-to-grave public healthcare system of the NHS so that it pays for cradle-to-grave administration of drugs to enable transgender identification. First, we pay for puberty blocking drugs, then we pay for cross-sex hormones to be administered continuously. Then we also pay for gender reassignment surgery. All of this is contrary to medicine and is doing real harm. The three NHS trusts named above must exercise responsible medical judgement and withdraw ‘Supporting Trans People’ from circulation.
