5 Comments

Agree that this will be a Clayton’s Inquiry if the terms of reference are as stated.

It is completely ridiculous to use the RCH Guidelines as the gold standard to be compared to. These standards were regarded as too poorly done to be included in the NHMRC list of approved Guidelines because of their weak evidence base.

I would go further than you Bernard. I would not say they are “ contentious “. I would say they are clearly incorrect.

There is No evidence that the Affirmative Model is Life saving and I believe it is unethical for any clinician to tell patients or parents that it is.

Unless the terms of reference of this Inquiry are changed it will achieve nothing.

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It's a real problem for state health departments & their lawyers, because they have for some years now invoked the RCH guidelines as justifying the treatments they're giving to kids.

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They can’t be serious:

evaluating a procedure that involves treatment with off- label hormone therapy, irreversible genital mutilation and sterilisation in otherwise healthy children against protocols that have not satisfied acceptale criteria that confirms safety and efficacy.

No doubt they will pass the evaluation with flying colours.

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In 2018, the same year the RCH guideline was published, one of its authors (Ken Pang, head of research at the RCH gender clinic) was co-author on a paper acknowledging that---

"Low-quality evidence suggests that hormonal treatments for transgender adolescents can achieve their intended physical effects, but evidence regarding their psychosocial and cognitive impact are generally lacking. Future research to address these knowledge gaps and improve understanding of the long-term effects of these treatments is required."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29514975/

That systematic review is not cited by the RCH guideline (which has had a number of updates since 2018).

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Surly the “ review” will only provide more for the lawyers who will eventually be facilitating a class action? The relevant colleges and AHPRA will only deserve to become held responsible for their role as well as the State Health department and individual lead clinicians who have been so comprehensively captured by the social science activists. Misplaced genuine compassion can be the only plausible explanation. It would be of interest to know whether the UK ‘s equivalent statuary body to our AHPRA has attracted the attention of the class action lawyers post Tavistock. If so, why would we not expect British legal precedent to apply, as had been Australia’s legal practice to date?

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