Given the right case & a clear-eyed judge, the guideline will be eviscerated.
I think it’s significant that the promised major revision to the guideline was to be led by RCH but following Telfer ceasing to be director of the gender clinic we were told that AusPATH would take charge of the revision, if there ever is one.
How the Australian Standards of Care were ever accepted as a reliable guideline is beyond me. The NHMRC refused to endorse them because none of the studies that they were based on were robust enough. And yet they were published and all Australian gender clinics follow them and refuse to change course despite multiple international jurisdictions either banning or severely restricting treatment advocated by the guidelines.
When, if ever, is Australia going to realise that this is a massive scandal which will only get worse the longer the clinics and or the government sit on their hands and do nothing to stop it.
It is interesting to reflect on an online article in ‘Gender GP’ dated May 24, 2021, titled ‘The lifesaving work of Michelle Telfer.
Contained therein:
To help support this uptick in young people looking to access gender-affirming care Dr Telfer was part of the team that developed the Australian Standards of Care – the first ever clinical guidelines for the treatment of transgender adolescents. These guidelines not only set a model for gender-affirming care both in Australia and around the world, but also help counter the narrative that transgender care for young people is harmful or experimental.
In the near three years since that publication and the comment that the the Australian Standards of Care ‘not only set a model for gender-affirming care both in Australia and around the world’
Things have changed:
Much of the world gender facilities have dramatically distanced themselves from the Australian Standards of Care model:
In Europe the following countries have ceased the use of puberty blockers and sex hormones as well as invasive surgery: France, German, Sweden, UK, Finland, Lithuania, Denmark, and the Netherlands, presumably with others to follow.
In the United States 20 states have banned gender affirming care.
Intuitively there will be an ultimate comeuppance for the “ gender medicine Industry “which will likely be in the form of individual and perhaps class actions, specifically in relation to minors.Those held to account will include not only the clinicians providing “ gender affirming “ medical hormonal intervention, but also include the State Health department bureaucrats who oversee the hosting of the gender clinics. We can only conjecture the fate of the relevant colleges ,in being deemed by future litigants to be deemed to hold some responsibility , as training bodies, to not have firmly repudiate legally obligatory gender affirmative care within the public clinics. The role of the statuary body , AHPRA,
Is claimed to be simply that to be following current legislation, so that body might escape, though has clearly abrogated it’s charter to protect the public ( in this case minors) from harmful or dangerous treatments. So we can ponder, what are the professional qualifications of the AHPRA board, or is there an ethics committee with appropriate medical expertise when we see their failure to act to , at least obtain the intuitive majority view of child and adolescent psychiatrists , with which to inform legislators to in turn act to protect future vulnerable children
I'm feeling gloomy about the prospects of redress. The medical community is adept at protecting its own and prefers to look busy attending to low hanging fruit, like psychiatrists who speak out about antidepressant harms…
Catherine, the status quo will remain a stain on our profession until “ redress”takes the form of key medical institutions repudiating the social science lead ideology of gender identity continuing to dominate therapeutic policy in regards, specifically, to minors. Adults, of course, should always be free to plot their own life course with as much medical and psychological support as requested or deemed required.
All excellent points! And apologies for my harsh tone about the medical profession. There are many wonderful doctors in the world and I recognise that most are doing their best.
Within our privileged profession two subsets stand out , the first is the relatively tiny number of those who have actively participated clinically in providing the medical intervention to minors, on the say so of dominant social science activists. Such collaboration looks to be no more than misplaced compassion, with empathy triumphing over truth and reason. The second subset is numerically the larger and even more inexplicable. This subset is the majority of those senior individuals in key specialties who hold ostensibly leadership roles , including roles in medical training who have remained… silent. This second group remain well placed to be able to inform legislators to act to protect vulnerable children but have been bluffed into fearing career retribution by those who have been prepared to just fight harder. For the rest of us like you and me Catherine, we can only scratch our heads. I am a recently retired GP , for whom this issue feels like some sort of “ unfinished business “ to me
I am someone who likely would have been transitioned as a teen in the 70s (until I grew out of it, like most people do), so this feels personal to me… and so wrong to deprive young people of something they've never experienced…
Given the right case & a clear-eyed judge, the guideline will be eviscerated.
I think it’s significant that the promised major revision to the guideline was to be led by RCH but following Telfer ceasing to be director of the gender clinic we were told that AusPATH would take charge of the revision, if there ever is one.
How the Australian Standards of Care were ever accepted as a reliable guideline is beyond me. The NHMRC refused to endorse them because none of the studies that they were based on were robust enough. And yet they were published and all Australian gender clinics follow them and refuse to change course despite multiple international jurisdictions either banning or severely restricting treatment advocated by the guidelines.
When, if ever, is Australia going to realise that this is a massive scandal which will only get worse the longer the clinics and or the government sit on their hands and do nothing to stop it.
It is interesting to reflect on an online article in ‘Gender GP’ dated May 24, 2021, titled ‘The lifesaving work of Michelle Telfer.
Contained therein:
To help support this uptick in young people looking to access gender-affirming care Dr Telfer was part of the team that developed the Australian Standards of Care – the first ever clinical guidelines for the treatment of transgender adolescents. These guidelines not only set a model for gender-affirming care both in Australia and around the world, but also help counter the narrative that transgender care for young people is harmful or experimental.
In the near three years since that publication and the comment that the the Australian Standards of Care ‘not only set a model for gender-affirming care both in Australia and around the world’
Things have changed:
Much of the world gender facilities have dramatically distanced themselves from the Australian Standards of Care model:
In Europe the following countries have ceased the use of puberty blockers and sex hormones as well as invasive surgery: France, German, Sweden, UK, Finland, Lithuania, Denmark, and the Netherlands, presumably with others to follow.
In the United States 20 states have banned gender affirming care.
Perhaps it's time for a rethink in Australia?
Intuitively there will be an ultimate comeuppance for the “ gender medicine Industry “which will likely be in the form of individual and perhaps class actions, specifically in relation to minors.Those held to account will include not only the clinicians providing “ gender affirming “ medical hormonal intervention, but also include the State Health department bureaucrats who oversee the hosting of the gender clinics. We can only conjecture the fate of the relevant colleges ,in being deemed by future litigants to be deemed to hold some responsibility , as training bodies, to not have firmly repudiate legally obligatory gender affirmative care within the public clinics. The role of the statuary body , AHPRA,
Is claimed to be simply that to be following current legislation, so that body might escape, though has clearly abrogated it’s charter to protect the public ( in this case minors) from harmful or dangerous treatments. So we can ponder, what are the professional qualifications of the AHPRA board, or is there an ethics committee with appropriate medical expertise when we see their failure to act to , at least obtain the intuitive majority view of child and adolescent psychiatrists , with which to inform legislators to in turn act to protect future vulnerable children
I'm feeling gloomy about the prospects of redress. The medical community is adept at protecting its own and prefers to look busy attending to low hanging fruit, like psychiatrists who speak out about antidepressant harms…
Catherine, the status quo will remain a stain on our profession until “ redress”takes the form of key medical institutions repudiating the social science lead ideology of gender identity continuing to dominate therapeutic policy in regards, specifically, to minors. Adults, of course, should always be free to plot their own life course with as much medical and psychological support as requested or deemed required.
All excellent points! And apologies for my harsh tone about the medical profession. There are many wonderful doctors in the world and I recognise that most are doing their best.
Within our privileged profession two subsets stand out , the first is the relatively tiny number of those who have actively participated clinically in providing the medical intervention to minors, on the say so of dominant social science activists. Such collaboration looks to be no more than misplaced compassion, with empathy triumphing over truth and reason. The second subset is numerically the larger and even more inexplicable. This subset is the majority of those senior individuals in key specialties who hold ostensibly leadership roles , including roles in medical training who have remained… silent. This second group remain well placed to be able to inform legislators to act to protect vulnerable children but have been bluffed into fearing career retribution by those who have been prepared to just fight harder. For the rest of us like you and me Catherine, we can only scratch our heads. I am a recently retired GP , for whom this issue feels like some sort of “ unfinished business “ to me
I am someone who likely would have been transitioned as a teen in the 70s (until I grew out of it, like most people do), so this feels personal to me… and so wrong to deprive young people of something they've never experienced…