Time to Think — what went wrong at the Tavistock gender clinic

The Tavvy has always been a haunt for Leftist know-it-alls

The rise and fall of the Tavistock clinic’s gender identity development service for children (GIDS) is the story of how a well-meaning institution can go awry. Established in 1989 as the UK’s pioneering clinic in its field, it is now set to close this spring after having prescribed puberty blockers to more than one thousand children, many under 16, who were questioning their gender identity.

In the intervening decades the London clinic was the subject of increasing attention and notoriety, in particular after a court case brought in 2020 by Keira Bell, who accused it of having treated her “like an experiment” and rushing her into making irreversible changes to her body.

A book about the Tavistock could easily have been a howl of outrage. But Hannah Barnes has written a meticulously researched, sensitive and cautionary chronicle. Barnes, a BBC journalist whose dogged reporting for Newsnight prompted an investigation into the Tavistock by the NHS regulator, has trawled through scientific studies and Freedom of Information requests, interviewed almost 60 clinicians and many others, to piece the story together.

Under its original leadership, the clinic took a nuanced approach to distressed teenagers, using therapy to work out how best to help them. But it gradually became something more like a conveyor belt to puberty blockers, which were in turn the gateway to cross-sex hormones, and drastic surgery. This shift seems to have been driven by multiple factors, including money, a new chief executive and rapidly increasing demand. In 2007, the clinic was seeing about 50 children a year. By the time its closure was announced, in 2022, it was getting thousands of referrals every year.

Time to Think exposes how shockingly little evidence there was for what worked — the studies cited were based on tiny samples — and how little interest there was in collecting more data. It is not even known how many people detransition. This lack of interest seems to betray a wilful failure to safeguard the wellbeing of the children involved.

The leadership pressed on, even when its own survey showed that not all children thrived on blockers: many saw their mental health deteriorate. Barnes explains that a large number of those who sought help were suffering from multiple problems, including autism. As time went on, the number of prepubescent boys was overtaken by the number of girls, many of them self-harming or suffering from eating disorders. Yet the diagnosis didn’t change. By attending the unit, girls were on a pathway to drastic, irreversible operations such as “top surgery” — the casual phrase for the cutting off of female breasts.

The central voices in Time to Think are those of the many clinicians who became concerned, at different times and in different ways, about the direction the Tavistock was taking. It is striking how nervous they were about speaking up. The leadership seems to have been very keen to please Mermaids, a charity which keeps cropping up in this narrative, making demands.

It is astonishing how long it took for anyone to act. In 2005, concerns led the medical director David Taylor, medical director of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, to write a report — but this was not shown to staff or the public until 2020. In 2018, 10 worried clinicians took their worries to David Bell, a respected senior psychoanalyst, whose subsequent 54-page report branded the clinic “not fit for purpose”. But still nothing happened. The clinic and its overseers at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust closed ranks. It was not until 2022 that NHS England took the decision to close the clinic, after yet another report, this time by Hilary Cass. Paul Jenkins and Paul Burstow, the CEO and chair of the Trust, have both stepped down.

The book offers deeply sympathetic insights into the struggles of the ever-increasing numbers of young people who came through the doors, and of the clinicians trying to help them, amid a crumbling mental health system that was relieved to have somewhere to refer kids on to if they mentioned the word “gender”. Barnes keeps things readable by weaving in the stories of seven young people who were treated by the service: Ellie, Phoebe, Jack, Hannah, Alex, Jacob and Harriet. Some are now living happily in their new gender, others are struggling, and one has detransitioned: a range of outcomes that reflects the challenges the therapists were facing.

It is hard not to conclude that too many children were subjected to treatment that has permanently changed their bodies, without proper evidence. For me, the book also conjured up memories of other NHS cover-ups. When Barnes explained that the gender identity clinic became a money-spinner for the Tavistock Trust, I remembered the 2007 scandal at Stafford Hospital, where managers cut costs to achieve the much-coveted “foundation status”, and hundreds of patients died.

https://www.ft.com/content/a45a9a0b-5d2f-4c4a-b2ef-6a8796ea5d10?shareType=nongift

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Real bigotry in Scotland

Let me get this right. In Scotland’s political class it is de rigueur to believe that someone with a penis can literally be a woman but it is the height of bigotry to think marriage should be for heterosexuals only? It is good and ‘progressive’ to say that men, even rapists, should be put in women’s prisons if they claim to be women, but it is a cancel-worthy speechcrime to say marriage should be between men and women only? Scotland, you are so lost.

We need to talk about the persecution of Kate Forbes. It is revealing so much about our febrile and unforgiving political climate. For me the big takeaway is just how disorientated so-called progressive politics has become. We’ve now reached a situation where if you discard biological science, observable reality and a truth humankind has known since the very beginning – namely, that there are men and women and they are different – you’ll be praised to the hilt. But if you express a view that was completely mainstream for millennia, which in fact was the organising principle of human society – namely, that marriage is something entered into by a man and a woman – you’ll be shamed, damned and all but hounded out of respectable society. This is not normal.

The social-media mauling of Ms Forbes has been horrendous. Simply for expressing her deeply held religious beliefs – such as that marriage is for men and women and that it’s wrong to have children out of wedlock – she has been denounced as a gross, immoral homophobe who has no place in political life. What is essentially being said here is that traditionally minded Christians should be barred from high office. The intolerance of it all is chilling.

There’s a twisted irony in the Forbesphobia. She’s branded a bigot but it’s her hectoring denouncers who are the true bigots. It’s time to remind people what the word bigotry means. Bigotry is ‘intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself’, says the Oxford Dictionary of English. Who does that better describe? Forbes, who has merely given polite and honest expression to her Christian convictions? Or the foaming Twittermobs who’ve responded to her religious utterances by calling her every name under the sun and insisting she mustn’t be allowed to lead the SNP? Bigots, heal thyselves.

The social-media mauling of Ms Forbes has been horrendous

The fire and brimstone is coming, not from Forbes, but from her haters. Forbes has been a paragon of reason and decency in comparison with her seething condemners in right-on circles. It’s they who are behaving like old-world religious hotheads, desperate to damn into obscurity anyone who dares to transgress their eccentric moral code. Surely it’s this neo-religious creed, this fundamentalist opposition to alternative ways of thinking, that has no place in political life?

The Forbes affair has got me thinking about one of the most pernicious claims in public life today – that it’s homophobic to oppose same-sex marriage. It is time to take down this myth. The branding of discomfort with same-sex marriage as a ‘phobia’, a prejudiced malady, instantly makes bigots of millions of our religiously minded citizens. Not just Christians but Muslims, Hindus and Orthodox Jews too. If support for same-sex marriage becomes a condition of engaging in polite society, of entering the political realm, then millions of people will be locked out. That backing same-sex marriage has become a new kind of religious test, a means of measuring someone’s fitness for public life, is nothing short of surreal.

What’s more, there are many non-religious people out there who think same-sex marriage is wrong, or just unnecessary. Including gay people. You can believe that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being gay, and that the dismantling of the vile laws that discriminated against gay people was one of the great progressive gains of the modern era, and still think same-sex marriage is a strange institution that weakens the meaning of marriage and might, in the long run, have problematic social consequences. That’s my view: gay liberation, brilliant; gay marriage, a bit silly.

The ‘progressive’ elites have no idea how ridiculous they look to millions of ordinary people. They have created a world in which kids can’t read the original Roald Dahl books in case they feel offended by the word ‘fat’ but they can be read stories by drag queens with names like Flow Job. A world in which you’re more likely to do well if you believe the violent male tormentor of women is himself a woman than if you believe what the Bible says about marriage. Listen, it isn’t Kate Forbes who’s crazy.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/kate-forbes-isnt-homophobic-for-opposing-same-sex-marriage

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Penguin to publish 'classic' Roald Dahl books alongside new editions after 'censorship' backlash

Publisher Penguin Random House has announced it will publish "classic" unaltered versions of Roald Dahl's children's novels after it received criticism for cuts and rewrites that were intended to make the books suitable for modern readers.

Penguin Random House said the decision was made in response to the debate over the changes

Along with the new editions, the company said 17 of Dahl's books would be published in their original form later this year as The Roald Dahl Classic Collection so "readers will be free to choose which version of Dahl's stories they prefer".

The move comes after criticism of scores of changes made to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and other much-loved Dahl books for recent editions published under the company's Puffin children's label, in which passages relating to weight, mental health, gender and race were altered.

Augustus Gloop, Charlie's gluttonous antagonist in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — originally published in 1964 — became "enormous" rather than "enormously fat." In Witches, an "old hag" became an "old crow," and a supernatural female posing as an ordinary woman may be a "top scientist or running a business" instead of a "cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman".

In Fantastic Mr Fox, the word "black" was removed from a description of the "murderous, brutal-looking" tractors.

The Roald Dahl Story Company, which controls the rights to the books, said it had worked with Puffin to review and revise the texts because it wanted to ensure that "Dahl's wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today".

Revisions to Dahl's books stokes anger about censorship
Roald Dahl's UK publisher releases a statement on revisions to his books, prompting some bestselling authors to share their thoughts about changing works to suit modern sensitivities.

While tweaking old books for modern sensibilities is not a new phenomenon in publishing, the scale of the edits drew strong criticism from free-speech groups such as writers' organisation PEN America, and from authors including Salman Rushdie.

Rushdie, who lived under threat of death from Iran's Islamic regime for years because of the alleged blasphemy of his novel The Satanic Verses, called the revisions "absurd censorship".

Rushdie, who was attacked and seriously injured last year at an event in New York state, tweeted news of Penguin's change of heart on Friday with the words "Penguin Books back down after Roald Dahl backlash!"

PEN America chief executive Suzanne Nossel wrote on Twitter: "I applaud Penguin for hearing out critics, taking the time to rethink this, and coming to the right place."

Camilla, the Queen Consort appeared to offer her view at a literary reception on Thursday.

Camilla urged writers to "remain true to your calling, unimpeded by those who may wish to curb the freedom of your expression or impose limits on your imagination".

Dahl's books, with their mischievous children, strange beasts and often beastly adults, have sold more than 300 million copies and continue to be read by children around the world.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-25/penguin-publishes-classic-roald-dahl-books-alongside-new-edition/102023194

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Transgender Hormone Therapy Increases the Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, New Study Shows

In recent months, several doctors, lawmakers and the like have sounded the alarm about the dangers of irreversible transgender “gender-affirming” care for minors. These treatments include puberty blockers, hormone therapy treatment, and sex reassignment surgery. Last fall, England’s National Health Service issued guidance stating that most children experiencing gender dysphoria are likely going through a “transient phase” and will outgrow it.

This week, a new study that will be presented at an American College of Cardiology conference in March found that patients who take cross-sex hormones as part of their gender-affirmation therapy face a “substantially increased risk of serious cardiac events, including stroke, heart attack and pulmonary embolism.”

The study pointed out that hormone therapy use is escalating rapidly, as more than a million people in the United States identify as transgender, which Townhall covered. But, this demographic is “historically understudied,” it explained:

Researchers retrospectively examined rates of cardiovascular events in over 21,000 people with gender dysphoria from a national database of hospital records, of whom 1,675 had used hormone replacement therapy. Typically, people assigned male at birth receive estrogen and people assigned female at birth receive testosterone. Overall results found hormone replacements were associated with higher rates of cardiac events, mostly related to dangerous blood clots, but were not associated with higher rates of death.

[...]

In the study, people with gender dysphoria who had ever used hormone replacements saw nearly seven times the risk of ischemic stroke (a blockage in a vessel supplying blood to the brain), nearly six times the risk of ST elevation myocardial infarction (the most serious type of heart attack) and nearly five times the risk of pulmonary embolism (a blockage in an artery in the lung), compared with people with gender dysphoria who had never used hormone replacements. Hormone replacement therapy was not associated with any increase in deaths from any cause or with increased rates of atrial fibrillation, diabetes, hypertension, hemorrhagic stroke or heart failure.

Both estrogen and testosterone are known to increase the clotting activity of blood, which could explain the increase in clotting-related cardiovascular events, researchers said. Those taking hormone replacement therapy also had higher rates of substance use disorder and hypothyroidism.

“Starting transitioning is a big part of a person's life and helping them feel more themselves, but hormone replacement therapy also has a lot of side effects—it's not a risk-free endeavor," Ibrahim Ahmed, MD, who is a third-year resident at Mercy Catholic Medical Center and the study's lead author, said. Ahmed will present the study at the conference next month.

"Looking at a person's medical and family history should definitely be part of the screening protocol before they even start hormone replacement therapy," Ahmed added. "It is also important that people considering this therapy are made aware of all the risks."

This month, Jamie Reed, a former case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, published a tell-all piece with The Free Press about the “morally and medically appalling” way children who walked through the clinic’s doors were treated for gender dysphoria.

"By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm.’ Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care,” Reed wrote, adding that “anyone who raised doubts [about the care] ran the risk of being called a transphobe."

Reed explained that children were given gender-affirming care after only a couple visits, and that their mental health conditions were often overlooked.

"The mental health of these kids was deeply concerning -- there were diagnoses like schizophrenia, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and more. Often they were already on a fistful of pharmaceuticals"

https://townhall.com//tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/02/23/transgender-study-n2619907

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Australia: I’d have got a medal’: Zachary Rolfe has last word as he flies out

He was a victim of political correctess. Blacks are sacrosanct. If the thug he shot had been white, nothing would have been said

Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe – who fatally shot Indigenous teenager Kumanjayi Walker at Yuendumu – has left the country after claiming that in any other jurisdiction he would have “got a medal” for protecting his partner’s life instead of being painted as a “violent thug”.

Constable Rolfe flew out of Canberra on Thursday after sharing a 2500-word open letter accusing the NT police, coroner and her counsel assisting of trying to publicly vilify him during the “biased” coronial inquest into Walker’s death, which is due to resume next week.

The 31-year-old also accused Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker of refusing to meet with him and called for his resignation.

In the letter, obtained by The Australian, Constable Rolfe says Walker was a violent abuser who tried to kill him and his police partner, Adam Eberl, when their specialist unit was deployed to Yuendumu to arrest him for attacking their colleagues with an axe.

“Walker was a young man with a violent past who abused many in his community, including young girls and boys,” he said. “When he tried to kill my partner and I … I did not think about his race, upbringing or his past trauma, I thought about defending my partner’s life, and that’s what I did.

“In a different state, I would have got a medal for it, and none of you would ever have known my name.”

Constable Rolfe apologised for sending offensive text messages that have been ventilated at the inquest but claims the communications were cherrypicked from thousands extracted from his phone and honed in on at the inquest in a deliberate attempt to paint him as “a racist, violent cop”.

“They had access to every single one of my messages and knew that I did not treat a single race differently from others. In private, I talked shit about nearly every group at times,” he said.

“Yet they released just a tiny snippet to make me out to be a racist. The parties knew that the messages had nothing to do with the death of Kumanjayi Walker.

“They knew the damage they would do once in public – they would hurt the community, the police force and the relationship between them – but they didn’t care. If the coronial’s goal was to ‘heal’, it has failed.”

Constable Rolfe, who grew up in Canberra, said the investi­gations into his actions at Yuendumu on November 9, 2019 had been “blatantly biased”.

“If all you know of me is through the media then you see me as a violent thug, an ex-soldier with a past,” he said.

The former infantry soldier – who deployed to Afghanistan – defended his policing record, ­saying he spent three years ­“protecting people” in Alice Springs before being charged with Walker’s murder. “I was a good cop; I loved the job,” he said. “I did it because I wanted to help people who needed help, to protect those who needed protection; I was good at it.”

He said his three years policing in Alice Springs were spent helping hungry children he found wandering the streets at 3am, stopping teens from committing suicide and protecting the community from violent offenders.

“You don’t see all the countless people I’ve done my best to help,” he said. “I was in the job to protect people, but if you were a violent offender, causing others harm, or you tried to prevent me doing my job to protect and defend, I make no apologies for doing my job.”

Constable Rolfe said police investigating his murder charge ignored advice from the DPP regarding their use of expert witnesses. The Australian has seen a police coronial report, the subject of a coronial non-­publication order, that substantiates this claim.

“After arresting me for murder and attempting to put me behind bars for 25 years, the NT police finalised their investigation into the shooting and decided that the only outcome is remedial advice, which I have received via email,” he said.

“Millions of dollars, thousands of wasted hours, exacerbated trauma for families and community, only for the result to be an email to me providing me with remedial advice – which doesn’t even count as a formal disciplinary breach.

“Despite this, the coronial focus is still on me rather than on areas that could improve the circumstances of the NT.”

Constable Rolfe said two weeks ago the executive tried to “medically retire” him on mental health grounds – despite a police psychologist recently clearing him to return to work – and have since served him with a new disciplinary notice for speaking to Channel 7’s Spotlight program in March last year after he was acquitted of all charges related to Walker’s death.

“As for me, I will continue to help people who need help and protect those who need to be protected; if it’s not in the police, it’ll be somewhere else,” he said. “I’ll live my life knowing I have the loyalty of those I worked with and those who know me … I was a good cop, my integrity is intact, and I am proud of that.”

Coroner Elisabeth Armitage this month extended the inquest to include two more sitting weeks from July 31 and August 21 in an attempt to get Constable Rolfe on the stand should he lose his appeal, being heard on April 11, against a decision compelling him to answer certain categories of questions.

On Thursday night, Richard Rolfe told The Australian he knew where his son was but not when or if he was coming home. “He’s gone overseas to try to deal with the trauma he’s suffered and the continuing attacks by the coroner and commissioner,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/im-no-violent-thug-runaway-rolfe-skips-coronial-inquest/news-story/12272cff2fe03d1a7f6d8aeedb6ef00b

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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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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