England’s National Health Service (NHS) is shutting down the infamous Tavistock clinic, the country’s key hub for child gender swapping treatment, but there is yet no indication of what will happen to the staff at the centre who permitted the scandals to take place.
The Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) had become hugely controversial in recent years, with the number of girls, in particular, being diagnosed as having gender dysphoria increasing by 5,000 per cent in less than ten years, according to The Times.
Whistleblowers alleged that girls were deemed to be trans on such flimsy pretexts as not liking “pink ribbons and dollies”, with a former governor of the trust, Dr David Bell, warning that there was “virtually no psychological scrutiny at all” before children were shunted onto a pathway towards life-altering medication and surgery by some physicians.
The number of children seeking gender reassignment reportedly surged by another 20 per cent during the Wuhan virus lockdowns, and issues including a so-called “detransitioner” suing the Tavistock after she was “rushed” into gender reassignment after “roughly three” short sessions and “no real investigation” of any mental issues possibly underlying her teenage belief that she was born in the wrong body have plagued the clinic.
Consequently, the paediatrician leading a review of the GIDS has brought forward some of her recommendations early — possibly seeking to get ahead of a looming scandal, previously predicted by the likes of JK Rowling.
Chief among the recommendations from Dr Hilary Cass is that treatment at the Tavistock is “not a safe or viable long-term option” for patients and that its focus on gender identity has “overshadowed” considerations of other mental health issues.
Cass has recommended that the trust be replaced by regional centres staffed by medics with “a broad clinical perspective in order to embed the care of children and young people with gender uncertainty within a broader child and adolescent health context” — and NHS England, which commissioned her investigation back in 2020, has been quick to accept this, with the Tavistock to be shut down by Spring 2023.
NHS England has also committed to enrolling youngsters put on puberty blockers into long-term research in collaboration with the National Institute for Health and Care Research to better establish their long-term effects — sometimes downplayed by Tavistock medics, who on occasion described them to parents and children as similar to simply hitting a “pause button”, despite the risk of serious irreversible effects for patients who have second thoughts, such as being rendered infertile.
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust has been deeply committed to far-left race ideology as well as gender ideology, holding struggle session-like seminars on the “problem” of “whiteness”, although officials have not seemed interested in interrogating it on this.
While its closure will be welcomed by some critics of gender treatment for children, it remains to be seen whether some or all of the Tavistock’s staff will make their way into the new treatment centres NHS England plans to attach to local children’s hospitals and two dedicated clinics at Great Ormond Street in London and north-western England.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.