August 19, 2019: The Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH) … has DISMISSED concerns expressed by a group of Australian clinicians and researchers about the ethics and evidence for medical treatment that can leave young people suffering side effects including infertility. Health Minister Greg Hunt referred the concerns … to an expert body, The Royal Australasian College of Physicians, for a national inquiry.
AusPATH did not mention RISING OVERSEAS CONCERN about the safety of giving young people puberty-blocker drugs and irreversible cross-sex hormones. Sources of concern are the UK Royal College of GPs, The Times, a breakaway US paediatricians’ body, ex-staff from the UK Tavistock gender clinic, free-speech academics and feminists, The Observer, US groups for sceptical parents and young people who regret going trans, and the BBC’s Newsnight.
In defence of its clinicians, AusPATH pointed to its endorsement of treatment standards issued last year by the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. Badged ‘Australian standards’, this document … has been hailed as ‘the world’s most progressive’ by Victoria’s Andrews government.
Source: The Australian
RCH: Gender Service
Children and Adolescents 8-16 years
Treatment provided by the Gender Service involves …
Once puberty starts, options for medical treatment are divided into two stages:
Stage 1
Puberty blockers – [which] suppress the development of secondary sex characteristics whilst providing time for cognitive and emotional development. As they are reversible in their effects, should an adolescent wish to stop taking them at any time, puberty will resume in the biological sex.Stage 2
Gender affirming hormones (oestrogen or testosterone) – [which] initiate puberty in the ‘affirmed gender’ and may be commenced around the age of 15 to 16 years. A transgender female would be commenced on oestrogen and a transgender male would start testosterone. These are only partially reversible in their effects.Guidelines
The RCH Gender Service provides care that is consistent with the Australian Standards of Care and Treatment Guidelines for Trans and Gender Diverse Children and Adolescents (2017).
Source: Adolescent Medicine : Gender Service
The ‘Australian Standards’ were written by the RCH Authors!
Hospital’s trans guidelines ‘not at all cautious’
The 2018 ‘Australian standards’ issued by Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital gender clinic have been hailed by the Andrews government as ‘the most stringent safety standards’ for children and adolescents, as well as ‘the world’s most progressive’.
Yet the RCH standards, published as a peer-reviewed paper in the Medical Journal of Australia and praised by The Lancet, make no mention of a 2015 Dutch study showing a worrying level of medical uncertainty and polar disagreement among 36 gender clinicians in in 10 countries.
The Dutch study stresses a lack of consensus on the safety, ethics and benefit of the global trend to give puberty-blocker drugs to ever younger patients on the grounds that putting puberty on hold buys time for them to sort out identity and reduces suicide risk.
The Dutch study calls for systematic long-term multi-clinic research, without which there will be ‘no consensus on treatment’.
Source: The Australian
Dysphoria
Dysphoria (from Greek: δύσφορος (dysphoros), δυσ-, difficult, and φέρειν, to bear) is a profound state of unease or dissatisfaction.
Source: Wikipedia
