Puberty blockers have ‘seriously damaged generations of children’ | Tavistock whistleblower

Puberty

blockers

were an experimental treatment for which there was no evidence and Cass has confirmed this time and time again, the lack of evidence and given that our first duty to patients and perhaps particularly to

children

is First do no harm, It is quite extraordinary how the Clinical Services were permeated by an ideology that seemed to allow them to either give in or participate in the complete abandonment of the ordinary canons of clinical care. After three and a half years, the final report on the care of young people with gender dysphoria has been published. Published this morning, the interim report led to the closure of the specialist gender identity development service known as gids at Tavestock NHS Trust in London and now we can hear from Dr David Bell who was governor of Tavo and worked there for 30 years as psychiatrist and denounced the unit in 2018 called for an investigation uh in his own report detailing the serious dangers to

children

and adolescents from gids he told me that the cast review was a crucial step it is important to say that the cast review is the most comprehensive, comprehensive and extensive review of treatment for gender distress in children ever conducted anywhere in the world, its findings confirm concerns we had that it is inappropriate to intervene medically in children who express distress in relation to gender. , is inappropriate for There are many reasons we can explain, but the kind of headline is that

puberty

blockers

were an experimental treatment for which there was no evidence and Cass has confirmed this time and time again, the lack of evidence and since Our first duty to patients and perhaps particularly to children is first to do no harm.

It is quite extraordinary how clinical services became permeated by an ideology that seemed to allow them to either give in or participate in the complete abandonment of the ordinary canons of non-clinical care. provide treatments for which there is no evidence for which there were already considerable concerns about the long-term consequences let's do a thought experiment let's take a population of 100 children who express gender distress the first thing Cass says in his review we've been trying to say that It is not a unitary condition, it is a very complex condition with multiple causes that I will mention in a moment, but if we just take those 100 children, there is very good evidence that if those children are managed in a better way.

That is, they are not put on a path with medical intervention, but rather they are helped to explore why they feel the way they do, what the story is, the narrative of their lives and that requires sensitivity care. and for quite a long time, many of those children, the grown ones. most will give up, they will change their mind, but there is no way to know which child would change their mind and which would not, no way, so if we say that of those 100, let's say five would transition when they are 25 or whatever. I mean, that wouldn't be a reason to harm the other 95 kids, but still, those who make the transition later in life will benefit from not doing it suddenly, from not doing it during a time of adolescence. or you know the turmoil and confusion having done it thoughtfully and in a position to understand the nature of what they are doing, its long-term consequences and therefore they will do it on a much better basis.

I worked at the Tav for 25 years in the adult department and I am very, very proud of my work there and to

have

worked for an organization that I still

have

very considerable respect for, but something went wrong, the management at the time did not They were doctors and appeared to be captured. Because of the trans ideology, the gender service was run by Poly Carich, as you probably know, and Poly Comich had no psychotherapeutic training and was quite mocking about psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, which were part of the mission statement of what the tavista. that is a deep understanding of the complex nature of psychological problems and situating them within an individual's narrative and their sociocultural location, etc., this service put people on pu children on

puberty

blockers after only sometimes only one or two meetings, eh, without anything. getting into the complexities of their lives and hearing from the doctors who work there, those who came to talk to me when they talked about more complex issues of ISS in these children, issues that they may not be as fully aware of.

You know, things that are not entirely conscious, they were mocked and laughed at, so how could it be that such a service managed to occupy such an important place in Tavis's actions? It's a great question. I know the CEO at the time used to consider jids. as the crow the star on our round was something that many of us at the Portman clinic and in Adult Services and quite a few quiet people in children and family services did not agree with but people did not feel able to say it were bullied, of course, there's nothing wrong with being a

whistleblower

, the NHS is supposed to protect

whistleblower

s, but um, uh, I found out that the hour of protection offered was non-existent, um, and I was threatened many times by management .

I received some pretty threatening letters, um. and um demanding that I not talk to anyone about jids. I received a threatening letter because I wrote a letter to the doctors. uh trying to bring your attention to the concerns that we had. um they tried to take disciplinary procedures but they did. In the end it didn't officially happen for complicated reasons because time ran out, but I guess there were other reasons why they decided not to go ahead with it, but I think I was in a better position than a lot of people you know. a very experienced doctor had a lot of external authority and was more in a position to be able to take this on, there were younger doctors who were worried about their future, worried about their jobs, worried about their pensions etc., who I don't feel able to take the position that I took, so I was lucky enough to be in the position where I could do that and of course, now you know, looking back in 2018, when someone knocked on my door and said, I have something to talk about. with you. and that person became two it became eight it became 10 it became a third of the service in other words, I am very glad that I opened my door and those brave doctors were proven right in what they had observed, they Terrible thing you say and it's the sort of thing Cass can't comment on because it's not within her remit, but the implication of her report is that

generations

of children and young people have been

seriously

harmed by, one, the treatment wrong that has harmed them and two, the multiple problems they had, such as autism, depression, stories of trauma, abuse, deep family problems, etc., all those problems and some children who were simply lost in the world, all those problems do not They were approached because they were seen through the prism of gender with the crazy idea that once you change, once we put you on a medical path, all of those problems will go away.

We know that is not true. C knows it's not true. Cass calls it a diagnosis, overshadowing a very good term, so these children suffered from receiving the wrong treatment. The treatment and issues they had were not addressed and Cass has certainly addressed it in her report and Johnus is now the trans activist. Katy John went. Thank you very much for joining us. A pleasure. What is her reaction to the report? I actually agree. The report is necessary. I think there's been a lot of kind of research and understanding that it's been kind of a healthy path for a lot of transgender adults and D Cass herself acknowledged that it's a well-established practice and that there's kind of always pros and cons to transitioning and the hormones; the pros have outweighed the health benefits of those concerned, but when it was applied to adolescents it is not proven and I think that has been the case and it has been something that has been driven by some type of pressure, um social pressure, pressure mental health, yes, peer pressure too, but ultimately it's not proven among teenagers that puberty blockers themselves become sort of de facto, this will automatically make you trans and transition. now it's not the kind of pause that was asserted late because no one seems to stop it, everyone just keeps going, so those aspects were critical.

I think I think the report is really humane. I think the report is something like um yes I would have talked about this before, six or eight years ago, if both doctors had been willing to allow the study and include academics, there were also PhDs in transition d who were not allowed go ahead on ethical grounds which apparently might upset people, but there has been a lack of research into this and even there is still a lack of research to the point where the 9,000 overdosed teenagers who passed through Tavistock and entered identity clinics adult genre or, um, six out of seven of them apparently refused to be part of any kind of follow-up research, um, and that creates a problem of this kind of knowledge existing.

Gap and evidence. Gap as to whether this is what's best for people and I think one of the issues for me is that an adult solution has been given to young teens or even older teens, but without that kind of consistent, loving wrapping. of an interdisciplinary medical and social approach to caring for people. A clear lack of attention around the cameras there has been a massive lack of support for mental health and adolescent mental health throughout these processes and I think the kind of underlying pressure of so many people coming forward to want these services has put pressure on the services to sort of, I don't know, maybe remove some of the safeguards, so you would think that the basic finding that there should basically be no supply of hormones to those under 18, Except in very, very exceptional circumstances, you think it's right.

I have moved. my position on this I have to say in hindsight it's not fun, as someone who has transitioned and is now much older in life, yeah I probably would have loved, in retrospect, puberty blockers for me so I didn't develop some kind of a deep email guys and everything else um but hindsight is not good medicine um foresight if you're going to predict the future and then hand out the drugs then that's dangerous in that sense what we know about puberty The blockers it's the fact that they put puberty on hold, but they don't, you're not making a direct transition to an alternative puberty that would continue normal adult development even if it were in a different cross-sex framework, um kind of uh. but if you actually pause PT completely and then don't restart it until someone is 17 or 18, you're putting on hold that child's entire development, the development of their entire body, everything from bone density type to height, health and as someone who I didn't even have a male PTY until I was 18.

You know, I was bullied at school for being the kid who had no evidence of puberty, so you double the burden of bullying people if they're not. we're going to develop a normal kind of height and strength and other things, but also brain development because the hormones that we get during puberty are part of our social and psychological brain development, part of brain maturation and we don't get maturation either. completeness of the brain in that sense, whether it's the prefrontal cortex type or the prefrontal cortex until we are in our 20s or 20s, you could say that it is the part of our brain that helps us not be driven by hormones and, without However, at 13 or 14 years old. we're driven by hormones and if there's that anxiety about the hormones that come from natural puberty, which natural puberty is distressing for a lot of people, so I think there's some misdiagnosis going on.

I think there's some sort of um, social aspect. from the neurodiverse aspect, the many other issues ranging from type of body dysmorphia rather than gender dysphoria, the pressure from social media around how you look, how you behave, how you fit in. I think there has been a fear of looking at comorbid problems, what else? could be happening either in addition to or instead of that. I remember meeting an 18 year old girl who said that when she was 14 she thought he was a trans guy and in the end, at 18, she had one breast. The reduction is not a breast removal and that solved the body dysphoria, not the gender dysphoria, and to get to the right solutions it is necessary to take a much slower and more holistic approach that the cast supports in a very human way, do you think what on your own? experience and subsequently that there will be resources to offer this holistic approach which is based more on general psychiatric diagnosis and treatments spoken within the NHS, which is struggling, uh no, and that will create the alternative problem if somehow you get to hold up the kind of transgender crisis that exists, uh adolescent, um, and say that instead of puberty bloggers, instead of full gender identity clinics forgender questioning youth, now we're going to say that actually this is part of pediatrics and and and Youth Psychiatry, so you have to transfer the funds to those and they are not adequate to fulfill the task of any aspect of, you know, the cameras mental health services for children and adolescents are ridiculously underfunded, it takes years to get there. we help therapy as teenagers and we know how quickly those things can escalate to dangerous self-harm situations and I'm not just talking about trans people, I'm talking about all kinds of varieties of transgender mental anguish, I mean, sorry, mental anguish teenager and if you're not going to fund cameras several times more than it already is and actually recognize the things that NHS Mental Health Services for adults or children were promised many years ago that we would deliver Equity from the physical type um um NHS type of guarantee of no more than 18 weeks to be seen by someone for any condition, so to speak, so we need to implement that for the mental health side and yes, and Cass's recommendations must be backed by money backed by services supported by the species. of teamwork where there is psychiatry and pediatrics, you know, and a wide range of health services, including social work, including therapy, and that must enter into the question of how and if we prohibit this type of conversion therapy and and how and if we support and actually provide and fund a type of exploratory therapy, the type of therapy that helps someone explore who they are and that might mean still allowing puberty blockers sometimes, but I think maybe puberty blockers puberty should be given their original form.

The purpose, which is to take a break, put someone on puberty blockers for six months and then during that process, have weekly therapy, then take them off PU blockers and then for another six months off puberty blockers. , continue to support them with therapy as they explore the restart of puberty and that is. Doing all that within a year, a year after being seen weekly and a year of six weeks, six months off and six months back on, is radically different than putting someone on puberty blockers for four or five years and then 99% of them go. Looking forward to cross sexual hormones Katy John West, thank you very much for joining us and