Tuesday, August 02, 2022



Investigation Reveals Sick Truth About Child Sex Change Facility - Closing Its Doors

All the cool kids are trans.

OK, nobody is actually saying that. But young people — children — sometimes have questions of sex identity, especially at puberty and apparently as a result of not-so-subtle cultural messages.

That’s probably why a U.K. clinic involved in “sex changes” for children reports increasing numbers of referrals: 5,000 in 2021 compared to 250 about 10 years ago, according to The Times of London.

To make sex changes on individuals too young to vote, drive, work full-time or enter into contracts is crazy.

And since the opposite condition, or at least good reasoning on the part of the staff of the clinic — the Tavistock and Portman National Health Service Foundation Trust — seems to be lacking, the British National Health Service is stepping in.

And, as of next spring, shutting it down.

Which means the clinic will no longer be rushing children into radically changing or perhaps destroying their lives by taking puberty blockers.

While not addressing the judgment of Tavistock and Portman clinicians, the NHS is concerned about the mental state of gender-confused children.

So the NHS says children will be treated in a decentralized fashion at children’s hospitals in methods described as more holistic and involving the services of mental health professionals.

The change is the result of an interim report by The Cass Review led by Dr. Hilary Cass, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Following the interim report, released in February, are a final report and recommendations to come out next year.

In a letter in the report addressed to children and young people, Cass said some are concerned that she will recommend that hormone treatments be stopped.

Cass replied, “We know quite a bit about hormone treatments, but there is still a lot we don’t know about the long-term effects.

“Whenever doctors prescribe a treatment, they want to be as certain as possible that the benefits will outweigh any adverse effects so that when you are older you don’t end up saying ‘Why did no one tell me that that might happen?’ This includes understanding both the risks and benefits of having treatment and not having treatment.”

Among the problems with Tavistock and Portman’s sex change efforts are, according to The Cass Review, that they “developed organically” and were not “subjected to some of the usual control measures that are typically applied when new or innovative treatments are introduced.”

The treatments were developed despite “significant gaps in the research and evidence base.”

And The Cass Review indicated that unlike other children in distress, kids in states of gender confusion are, under current practices, being denied “psychological and social support.”

Which brings up another problem — that of “diagnostic overshadowing.”

“Many of the children and young people presenting have complex needs, but once they are identified as having gender-related distress, other important healthcare issues that would normally be managed by local services can sometimes be overlooked,” the review said.

The Cass Review recommends that “any child or young person being considered for hormone treatment should have a formal diagnosis and formulation, which addresses the full range of factors affecting their physical, mental, developmental and psychosocial wellbeing.

“This formulation should then inform what options for support and intervention might be helpful for that child or young person.”

While following The Cass Review, the NHS will presumably still be involved in child sex changes, not acknowledging the reality of XY and XX chromosomes.

But at least the NHS is recognizing some of the psychological issues surrounding what it refers to as confused “birth-registered males” and “birth-registered females.”

And there are the haunting possibilities Cass raised in her letter to young people who may later regret allowing sex change procedures to be enacted upon them: “Why did no one tell me that that might happen?”

Sad that the overall outlook of the NHS prohibits it from examining the spiritual aspects of some truly hurting children and young people.

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Calls to review Australian transgender treatment for kids after British Tavistock Clinic is closed

Australian gender clinics are under fresh scrutiny and face calls for an independent review of their prescription of puberty blockers to teenagers after a leading British clinic was closed down over safety concerns.

The ordered close of the Tavistock Clinic – the model for treating trans people around the world – on Thursday followed concerns raised by doctors that young ­patients were being referred on to a gender transitioning path too quickly and that there was insufficient evidence as to the long-term cognitive and physical impacts of puberty blockers.

With several major Australian gender clinics based at children’s hospitals having been strongly influenced by the Tavistock Clinic, some doctors say the findings of the British review by Dr Hilary Cass are likely to apply equally in Australia amid a dominance of a “gender affirming” approach to treating gender dysphoria.

Some of the nation’s leading trans clinics, including the centre at the Royal Melbourne’s Children Hospital, defended their methods on Friday and said they followed best Australian practice.

Queensland paediatrician Dylan Wilson said the closing of Tavistock should lead to Australian authorities reconsidering the treatment of children experiencing gender dysphoria.

“The concerns that have been raised with the UK Tavistock Clinic translate directly to the same concerns that can be applied to gender clinics here in Australia,” Dr Wilson said.

“The fact that Dr Cass noted that there is insufficient evidence to recommend puberty blockers but they have been used by gender clinics in Australia is of huge concern.

“They are now only going to be used in the UK as part of research trials with significant ethical oversight which is the same pathway that Sweden has followed, but the gender clinics in Australia continue unabated to prescribe them on a regular basis without any oversight or scrutiny whatsoever.

“The concern is that children are, as the Cass report found, instantly socially and medically ­affirmed without any exploration of any other diagnoses or contributing factors to their gender identity being considered, which means as soon as they are ­affirmed as children that are transgender, they are placed along a pathway which leads them to medical treatment, and medical treatment pathway leads them to lifelong medicalisation.”

The National Association of Practising Psychiatrists – which has adopted a cautious, psychotherapy-first approach to treating gender dysphoria – is also calling for a review of gender clinics in Australia.

“The longer-term studies of what happens to children and ­adolescents when they’re treated with puberty blockers is not known. The evidence base is lacking,” said association president Philip Morris.

Public gender clinics in Australia all say puberty blockers and hormone therapy is prescribed only after comprehensive clinical assessment.

The Royal Melbourne Hospital’s gender clinic led by Michelle Telfer, head of the hospital’s ­Department of Adolescent Medicine and director of the RCH Gender Service, developed the Australian standards of care for the treatment of gender dysphoria.

The hospital says the clinic’s service “is underpinned by research methodology to monitor outcomes that will continuously inform best practice”. Critics say published research on the long-term outcomes of hormone treatment of children is non-existent.

“We will continue to closely monitor how services nationally and internationally develop and evolve, and welcome all actions that ensure that trans children and young people continue to ­receive the highest possible quality of care, regardless of where they live,” a hospital spokesman said.

The Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, which has a trans and gender diverse service, said all patients referred to the clinic underwent a specialised and comprehensive assessment involving consultation with specialists in psychological medicine, adolescent medicine and endocrinology.

“Children are only ever considered for stage 1 treatment (puberty blockers) once this assessment has taken place and in close consultation with the patient, parents and treating medical teams. This treatment is reversible,” a hospital spokesperson said.

Transcend Australia, an organisation that supports trans, gender diverse and non-binary children, rejected the calls for a review and said Australian standards of care had been developed by best practice.

Transcend Australia chief executive Jeremy Wiggins said treatment often gave young ­people a chance to consider their identify for longer and said the ­effects of puberty blockers were reversible.

“The treatment is highly considered and given to people who demonstrate that they meet the criteria for gender dysphoria. It is considered for them to be lifesaving treatment so they can continue and get on with their lives,” he said.

“I’d be concerned for any government in any country to remove access to treatment for a highly vulnerable population.”

The close of the Tavistock Clinic comes as Dr Cass recommends a shift to a more “holistic” mode of care amid concerns that other clinical presentations including mental health issues were “overshadowed” when gender was raised by children referred to the clinic.

Puberty blockers will now only be able to be prescribed in the UK as part of a clinical trial that follows children until adulthood.

“Puberty blockers, rather than acting as a “pause button” allowing children time to explore their identity, seem to lock them into a medicalised treatment pathway,” Dr Cass’s interim report said.

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How progressive groups like the ACLU make New York City more dangerous

On a recent July afternoon in The Bronx, 19-year-old Franklin Mesa went up to Nathaniel Rivers, 35, who had just parked his car, and allegedly stabbed him to death in front of his wife.

Mesa’s family members described him as schizophrenic. Police said he was arrested last year for punching somebody, twice, in the face. And a neighbor told The Post that he was often the source of “hostile, aggressive” situations, including preventing a woman from getting on the bus.

And yet it appears that nobody did anything to see if Mesa was taking his psychiatric medicine, which his sister said he had been on since he was 15.

Rivers’ horrifying death rekindles a debate over the violent mentally ill in New York. Between 2015 and 2018, 911 calls reporting emotionally disturbed people have jumped by nearly 25% in New York City, while the number of homeless people with serious mental illness rose by the same percent.

At bottom, the blame for this trend rests with progressive groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society, which have sought to de-fund psychiatry, de-police New York, and de-stigmatize untreated mental illness. They are expert at persuading courts to release mentally ill people in the name of freedom. They convince their clients to push for maximal freedom rather than for the care that’s best for them.

Consider the case of Martial Simon, a 61 year-old mentally ill homeless man, who early this year confessed to pushing 40 year-old Michelle Go onto the subway tracks, killing her instantly. Simon, who the ACLU defended in court, is now at a psychiatric facility where he will remain until he’s found mentally fit.

The fact is, he should never have been released.

Simon had already been under the supervision of New York’s correctional authority until last August for two cases of armed robbery in 2017. His sister wanted him permanently hospitalized.

“I remember begging one of the hospitals, ‘Let him stay,’” she told The Post, “because once he’s out, he didn’t want to take medication, and it was the medication that kept him going.”

A homeless advocate who saw Simon’s medical records reports that Simon even told a psychiatrist in 2017 that it was only a matter of time before he pushed a woman onto the subway tracks.

“People with mental illness who harm other people usually do it because of paranoid delusions in which they fear for their own lives,” Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke told me. “They become convinced, based on psychotic delusions, that they need to kill to protect. What looks on the outside like pure aggression is often a deeply disturbed attempt to protect.”

The seriously mentally ill, who also often suffer from drug addiction and homelessness, are some of the most difficult sick people to treat, which is why even many very caring medical professionals and social workers avoid them.

This is partly because the ACLU and other progressive groups have sought to weaken Kendra’s Law, claiming it is authoritarian and racist, while also seeking to prevent police officers from even responding to 911 calls relating to the mentally ill.

Kendra’s Law, passed by New York legislators in 1999, is named after a writer who was killed after being pushed onto the subway tracks by a mentally ill man who had stopped taking his medications. The law allows courts to order medical treatment of the mentally ill without hospitalization, which is known as “assisted outpatient treatment,” and at a lower standard than the “imminent dangerousness” criteria for in-patient commitment in New York.

Assisted outpatient treatment is aided by injectable antipsychotic medicines, which last a full month. They are tailor-made for delusional schizophrenics who convince themselves that they are not sick and stop taking their daily medicines. Most conservatives and liberals agree Kendra’s Law worked to prevent violence by the mentally ill. It allows for action to be taken before a mentally ill person, like Mesa or Simon, hurts somebody.

And yet there was an 8% decline in the number of individuals treated under Kendra’s Law between 2017 and 2021.

In my reporting for my book, “San Fransicko,” an attorney for the ACLU told me that her organization believes the mentally ill are too impaired to be held accountable for breaking the law, but not impaired enough to justify the same kind of treatment we provide to other people suffering mental disabilities, such as dementia.

In short, the ACLU effectively believes that it’s better to accept the deaths of people like Nathaniel Rivers and Michelle Go than to deprive the civil liberties of potentially violent mentally ill people like Franklin Mesa and Martial Simon by mandating they take once-a-month injections. In 2018, just 3,158 patients were under active Kendra’s Law court orders in New York state, even though around 8,000 could have qualified, according to advocacy group Mental Illness Policy Org.

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Another statue down? ‘Caucasian male’ statues face cull in Tasmanian premier row

Hobart is poised to tear down the statue of a former premier, while flagging a broader purge, after a report found the city had too many monuments to “Caucasian males”.

The city council has been considering the removal of the large Franklin Square sculpture of William Crowther, a naturalist, surgeon and premier who, in 1869, was accused of severing and stealing the skull from an Aboriginal corpse.

A new council report, to be voted on this week, recommends spending $20,000 to remove the statute to storage, pending finding it another home, and $50,000 on “interpretive elements onsite”.

The report complains there are too many white men memorialised across the city and recommends a new policy be adopted to guide further statue “additions and removals”.

Aboriginal groups welcomed the moves, but some historians expressed concern the council was “opening the floodgates” to revision or erasure of colonial history.

Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman Michael Mansell said removing the Crowther statue was long overdue, but that countenancing later placing it elsewhere was illogical.

“If the reason you’re taking a statue down is because what the person did was so offensive, you couldn’t put it up in any other context because people will remember what that guy stood for,” Mr Mansell said.

He was unaware of any other Hobart statues the Aboriginal community would want removed, but believed further decisions should be based on “balance” and “scale”.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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