The thoughtful considerations and reliance on evidence in this piece couldn't stand in greater contrast to the letter sent this week by Qld's Minister for Health Shannon Fentiman to the almost 8,000 petitioners seeking an independent review of the Qld gender affirmation model of treatment. The petition we signed was presented to the Qld Parliament by MP Shane Knuth last month.
Minister Fentiman's 1 pager is full of disingenuous assertions and outright untruths. The Minister claimed, yet again, that Qld's model of gender affirming treatment is "life saving" but she was unable to provide evidence - because there is none.
Ms Fentiman also claims Qld's model of gender treatment "undergoes regular and rigorous clinical review". Again, there is no evidence of this. The Minister is attempting to create a narrative of 'move on, nothing to see here.'
The Minister then claims the Qld Gender Service is undergoing an "external service evaluation". This is untrue, the current evaluation of the gender service which is located in Qld Health is being undertaken from within Qld Health.
Throughout her 1 pager Minister Fentiman attempts to distance herself from both the service evaluation and the workings of the gender service, using terminology like "I am advised ..." and "I understand ...". In reality, Minister Fentiman has full control, and responsibility, for this evaluation, which is closed to public input and takes advice from a committee made up almost entirely of pro gender treatment people.
Good on you for petitioning the minster, Anna. Is there a copy of her reply online somewhere? If I were a Queenslander, I would now petition her to provide the evidence.
Hi KP. The petition actually originated with the Australian Christian Lobby so if you call Rob Norman at their Qld office you may be able to get the PDF response all petitioners received. Or you could perhaps email Qld MP Shane Knuth who presented it.
"On what basis, exactly, does dosing a female patient with 20 times her body’s natural testosterone levels represent cautious risk management?” Precisely.
The side-effects in child/girls treated long-term treatment with testosterone include: blood clots, weight gain, acne, dyslipidaemia, hepatic damage and alopecia. Perhaps small price to pay?
If that were the only cost inherent in the magical shift from girl to ‘boyhood’ then it might be worth the risk. However, the full package of gender transition delivers a package of downsides.
There are few well researched long-term studies of the outcome of gender transition. One, from the prestigious Swedish Karolinska Institute, studied the outcome of 324 sex-reassigned persons over the period 1973-2003, thirty years, the long haul.
The results:
The mortality for sex-reassigned persons was higher during follow-up than for controls of the same birth sex, particularly death from suicide. Sex-reassigned persons also had an increased risk for suicide attempts and psychiatric inpatient care. Comparisons with controls matched on reassigned sex yielded similar results. Female-to-males, but not male-to-females, had a higher risk for criminal convictions than their respective birth sex controls.
Perhaps Vincent, such evidence obtained, from thirty years of tracking outcomes may have gone some way to explaining the absence ( from conscious or otherwise of outright reluctance for the activists to have carefully documented outcomes ?) of long term outcomes, from fear of finding the same results in , say in the U.K. and here in Australia?
Agree Andrew, they are very keen to provide positive outcomes during the honeymoon period following transition, but it's the long-haul that is the real test of the legitimacy of the 'affirmative' model and in the event that the Karolinska/Swedish long-term (30 year) outcome is duplicated it will be too late for those poor souls who are currently 'being affirmed'.
Listening through all the presentations in the excellent webinar which contained much powerful argument to challenge the support for gender affirming care in minors, it took Dianna Kennedy’s contribution to set out the practical steps which need to be taken to extricate future vulnerable children’s feet off the ideological sticky paper. Acknowledging the infiltration, lamentably ,of social activism within the relevant colleges explains the tin ear of folk like the Qld Health minister, and the downstream impotence of our statutory regulatory body of AHPRA who are agents of government’s position, rather than provide the body to which to take the challenge of GAC for minors, were they to represent an independent investigatory body. The impasse of obtaining such a challenge will remain for as long as obligatory affirmation remains ALP policy or there is a change of federal and state governments
The thoughtful considerations and reliance on evidence in this piece couldn't stand in greater contrast to the letter sent this week by Qld's Minister for Health Shannon Fentiman to the almost 8,000 petitioners seeking an independent review of the Qld gender affirmation model of treatment. The petition we signed was presented to the Qld Parliament by MP Shane Knuth last month.
Minister Fentiman's 1 pager is full of disingenuous assertions and outright untruths. The Minister claimed, yet again, that Qld's model of gender affirming treatment is "life saving" but she was unable to provide evidence - because there is none.
Ms Fentiman also claims Qld's model of gender treatment "undergoes regular and rigorous clinical review". Again, there is no evidence of this. The Minister is attempting to create a narrative of 'move on, nothing to see here.'
The Minister then claims the Qld Gender Service is undergoing an "external service evaluation". This is untrue, the current evaluation of the gender service which is located in Qld Health is being undertaken from within Qld Health.
Throughout her 1 pager Minister Fentiman attempts to distance herself from both the service evaluation and the workings of the gender service, using terminology like "I am advised ..." and "I understand ...". In reality, Minister Fentiman has full control, and responsibility, for this evaluation, which is closed to public input and takes advice from a committee made up almost entirely of pro gender treatment people.
Good on you for petitioning the minster, Anna. Is there a copy of her reply online somewhere? If I were a Queenslander, I would now petition her to provide the evidence.
Hi KP. The petition actually originated with the Australian Christian Lobby so if you call Rob Norman at their Qld office you may be able to get the PDF response all petitioners received. Or you could perhaps email Qld MP Shane Knuth who presented it.
"Testosterone is a more effective hormone than oestrogen" - wow so the results of this medical intervention differ by sex, who could have predicted
"On what basis, exactly, does dosing a female patient with 20 times her body’s natural testosterone levels represent cautious risk management?” Precisely.
The side-effects in child/girls treated long-term treatment with testosterone include: blood clots, weight gain, acne, dyslipidaemia, hepatic damage and alopecia. Perhaps small price to pay?
If that were the only cost inherent in the magical shift from girl to ‘boyhood’ then it might be worth the risk. However, the full package of gender transition delivers a package of downsides.
There are few well researched long-term studies of the outcome of gender transition. One, from the prestigious Swedish Karolinska Institute, studied the outcome of 324 sex-reassigned persons over the period 1973-2003, thirty years, the long haul.
The results:
The mortality for sex-reassigned persons was higher during follow-up than for controls of the same birth sex, particularly death from suicide. Sex-reassigned persons also had an increased risk for suicide attempts and psychiatric inpatient care. Comparisons with controls matched on reassigned sex yielded similar results. Female-to-males, but not male-to-females, had a higher risk for criminal convictions than their respective birth sex controls.
Perhaps Vincent, such evidence obtained, from thirty years of tracking outcomes may have gone some way to explaining the absence ( from conscious or otherwise of outright reluctance for the activists to have carefully documented outcomes ?) of long term outcomes, from fear of finding the same results in , say in the U.K. and here in Australia?
Agree Andrew, they are very keen to provide positive outcomes during the honeymoon period following transition, but it's the long-haul that is the real test of the legitimacy of the 'affirmative' model and in the event that the Karolinska/Swedish long-term (30 year) outcome is duplicated it will be too late for those poor souls who are currently 'being affirmed'.
Listening through all the presentations in the excellent webinar which contained much powerful argument to challenge the support for gender affirming care in minors, it took Dianna Kennedy’s contribution to set out the practical steps which need to be taken to extricate future vulnerable children’s feet off the ideological sticky paper. Acknowledging the infiltration, lamentably ,of social activism within the relevant colleges explains the tin ear of folk like the Qld Health minister, and the downstream impotence of our statutory regulatory body of AHPRA who are agents of government’s position, rather than provide the body to which to take the challenge of GAC for minors, were they to represent an independent investigatory body. The impasse of obtaining such a challenge will remain for as long as obligatory affirmation remains ALP policy or there is a change of federal and state governments