Bryan Fischer
How to stop sex-reassignment surgery cold
By Bryan Fischer
The entire gender conversion movement has done an immense amount of damage to teens and their families. Although they want us to believe that the hormone treatments which block puberty are "reversible," they are not. And sex-reassigment surgery, of course, is forever. Sex organs don't grow back.
All treatments for gender dysphoria are experimental, since there is insufficient research to support either hormonal or surgical treatments as an effective cure for what ails sexually confused young men and women.
Endocrinologist Dr. William Malone says bluntly that puberty suppression is "frequently called reversible but it's not."
Said Dr. Malone, "Normal bone density development and pelvic development is interfered with and probably brain development too. Almost all children placed on puberty blockers go on to cross-sex hormones – meaning puberty blockers solidify and sometimes intensify dysphoria," which of course makes the problem markedly worse.
One of the commonly prescribed drugs is Lupron, which the Food and Drug Administration has linked to thousands of deaths, even when it is used under FDA approved conditions. Lupron effectively castrates children of both sexes, chemically turning boys into eunuchs and sending girls into a early-onset menopause. Between 2013 and June 2019, the FDA recorded 41,213 adverse events, including 6,379 deaths and 25,645 "serious" reactions in patients who took Lupron.
Using Lupron for treating gender dysphoria is an off-label use which means such a use has no FDA approval. Many girls who use Lupron for FDA approved treatments develop osteoporosis in their twenties because of its impact on development of bone density.
The harm caused is not incidental. Dr. Cretella says,
There is only one way to shut this insanity down. Scientific research won't do it, since LGBT activists don't care what the science says. Anecdotal stories of harm done won't do it, since there are plenty of those in circulation and it hasn't slowed them down. The only way to bring this inhuman and cruel experimentation on our teenagers to a dead stop is through crippling, bankrupting lawsuits. Money talks when nothing else will.
That's why it will be worth following a lawsuit against the Tavistock gender clinic in London. Twenty-three-year-old Keira Bell claims she was severely harmed by experimental gender transition treatments she received there when she was a teenager, and she is suing the clinic in response.
Her case involves not only the dangerous drugs and hormones that are used, but the legally important question of whether she was legally old enough to give informed consent.
In July, former GIDS (Gender Identity Development Service) staff psychologist Kirsty Enwistle penned an open letter arguing that a "culture of evasive deception" existed at the GIDS clinic and that medical treatments lacked a solid evidentiary base.
Research by Sky News suggests that at least 35 psychologists have resigned from the service over a three-year period, fearing "young people are being over-diagnosed and then over-medicalised." These professionals fear that all they have had are "front row seats to a medical scandal." But they admit they didn't say anything publicly for fear of being branded "transphobic."
One of the most senior judges on the U.K.'s highest court said it was "plainly arguable" that England's first pediatric child gender clinic was not acting lawfully when it prescribed a regimen of hormonal puberty blockers to the plaintiff. The trial is slated to begin this summer.
Keira Bell said she went to the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service when she was 16, where she was prescribed puberty blockers after just three appointments. The risks of the drugs were never adequately explained to her, and she was put on a fast-track to a complete chemical and surgical transition.
She took puberty blockers for a year, and continued with testosterone which caused her voice to deepen and facial hair to grow. Then three years ago she had her breasts amputated.
Initially she was happy, but it wasn't long before she started to "feel less and less enthusiastic or even happy about things." Last year she quit taking the cross-sex hormones altogether.
Studies indicate that 85% of teens grow out of their gender dysphoria by the time they reach adulthood. Bell is in that 85%. She now accepts herself as female and is angry about how she was treated at the gender clinic.
"I feel I could say anything to my 16-year-old self and I might not necessarily listen at that time. And that's the point of this case, when you are that young you don't really want to listen," she said.
After several years, she realized it wasn't working."I felt drained and tired and had nothing but negative effects from it really, I didn't have a good experience with it at all.
"I think the depression kicked in a bit more because I was without any hormones in my body, especially at such a young age when it's supposed to be at such a peak.
"It's very detrimental to someone and the psychological and the brain effects I think are completely understudied as well," she said.
"So I think it's up to these institutions, like the Tavistock, to step in and make children reconsider what they are saying, because it is a life-altering path."
Gender dysphoria has risen at an alarming rate in the U.K. in the last ten years. A significant number of transitioning youth are on the autism spectrum, and as many as 60-75% of such teens are undergoing psychiatric treatment for one form of mental disorder or another, including dealing with significant trauma.
According to research at Boston University, 78 per cent of students who identify as trans, non-binary, or "genderqueer" meet the criteria for at least one mental disorder, with a third saying they had seriously considered suicide as an option.
The head of the Tavistock clinic admits that, "the young people we work with – they come to us in often really great distress around their sense of themselves." They don't need drugs or surgical mutilation, they need directed counseling to learn how to align their view of themselves with their God-given biological infrastructure.
The National Health Service announced a month ago that it is going to revisit its rules around allowing children to take experimental drugs without the approval of their parents. Since they are just now revisiting these rules, this means bypassing moms and dads altogether is still the customary practice. They're also forming a task force of doctors to formally review the use of puberty blockers. Better late than never.
In the meantime, I'm hoping that Ms. Bell gets a settlement that's so massive it will put this child-abusing clinic out of business altogether. That can't happen too soon.
The author may be contacted at bfischer@afa.net
Follow me on Facebook at "Focal Point" and on Twitter @bryanjfischer
Host of "Focal Point" on American Family Radio, 1:05 pm CT, M-F www.afr.net
© Bryan Fischer
March 4, 2020
The entire gender conversion movement has done an immense amount of damage to teens and their families. Although they want us to believe that the hormone treatments which block puberty are "reversible," they are not. And sex-reassigment surgery, of course, is forever. Sex organs don't grow back.
All treatments for gender dysphoria are experimental, since there is insufficient research to support either hormonal or surgical treatments as an effective cure for what ails sexually confused young men and women.
Endocrinologist Dr. William Malone says bluntly that puberty suppression is "frequently called reversible but it's not."
Said Dr. Malone, "Normal bone density development and pelvic development is interfered with and probably brain development too. Almost all children placed on puberty blockers go on to cross-sex hormones – meaning puberty blockers solidify and sometimes intensify dysphoria," which of course makes the problem markedly worse.
One of the commonly prescribed drugs is Lupron, which the Food and Drug Administration has linked to thousands of deaths, even when it is used under FDA approved conditions. Lupron effectively castrates children of both sexes, chemically turning boys into eunuchs and sending girls into a early-onset menopause. Between 2013 and June 2019, the FDA recorded 41,213 adverse events, including 6,379 deaths and 25,645 "serious" reactions in patients who took Lupron.
Using Lupron for treating gender dysphoria is an off-label use which means such a use has no FDA approval. Many girls who use Lupron for FDA approved treatments develop osteoporosis in their twenties because of its impact on development of bone density.
The harm caused is not incidental. Dr. Cretella says,
-
"They are absolutely harming kids with blockers because they rob them of the very developmental period during which the vast majority come to embrace their biologic sex. Even if a child comes off blockers, we can never give back the period of normal physical/psychosocial development that was stolen from them."
There is only one way to shut this insanity down. Scientific research won't do it, since LGBT activists don't care what the science says. Anecdotal stories of harm done won't do it, since there are plenty of those in circulation and it hasn't slowed them down. The only way to bring this inhuman and cruel experimentation on our teenagers to a dead stop is through crippling, bankrupting lawsuits. Money talks when nothing else will.
That's why it will be worth following a lawsuit against the Tavistock gender clinic in London. Twenty-three-year-old Keira Bell claims she was severely harmed by experimental gender transition treatments she received there when she was a teenager, and she is suing the clinic in response.
Her case involves not only the dangerous drugs and hormones that are used, but the legally important question of whether she was legally old enough to give informed consent.
In July, former GIDS (Gender Identity Development Service) staff psychologist Kirsty Enwistle penned an open letter arguing that a "culture of evasive deception" existed at the GIDS clinic and that medical treatments lacked a solid evidentiary base.
Research by Sky News suggests that at least 35 psychologists have resigned from the service over a three-year period, fearing "young people are being over-diagnosed and then over-medicalised." These professionals fear that all they have had are "front row seats to a medical scandal." But they admit they didn't say anything publicly for fear of being branded "transphobic."
One of the most senior judges on the U.K.'s highest court said it was "plainly arguable" that England's first pediatric child gender clinic was not acting lawfully when it prescribed a regimen of hormonal puberty blockers to the plaintiff. The trial is slated to begin this summer.
Keira Bell said she went to the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service when she was 16, where she was prescribed puberty blockers after just three appointments. The risks of the drugs were never adequately explained to her, and she was put on a fast-track to a complete chemical and surgical transition.
She took puberty blockers for a year, and continued with testosterone which caused her voice to deepen and facial hair to grow. Then three years ago she had her breasts amputated.
Initially she was happy, but it wasn't long before she started to "feel less and less enthusiastic or even happy about things." Last year she quit taking the cross-sex hormones altogether.
Studies indicate that 85% of teens grow out of their gender dysphoria by the time they reach adulthood. Bell is in that 85%. She now accepts herself as female and is angry about how she was treated at the gender clinic.
"I feel I could say anything to my 16-year-old self and I might not necessarily listen at that time. And that's the point of this case, when you are that young you don't really want to listen," she said.
After several years, she realized it wasn't working."I felt drained and tired and had nothing but negative effects from it really, I didn't have a good experience with it at all.
"I think the depression kicked in a bit more because I was without any hormones in my body, especially at such a young age when it's supposed to be at such a peak.
"It's very detrimental to someone and the psychological and the brain effects I think are completely understudied as well," she said.
"So I think it's up to these institutions, like the Tavistock, to step in and make children reconsider what they are saying, because it is a life-altering path."
Gender dysphoria has risen at an alarming rate in the U.K. in the last ten years. A significant number of transitioning youth are on the autism spectrum, and as many as 60-75% of such teens are undergoing psychiatric treatment for one form of mental disorder or another, including dealing with significant trauma.
According to research at Boston University, 78 per cent of students who identify as trans, non-binary, or "genderqueer" meet the criteria for at least one mental disorder, with a third saying they had seriously considered suicide as an option.
The head of the Tavistock clinic admits that, "the young people we work with – they come to us in often really great distress around their sense of themselves." They don't need drugs or surgical mutilation, they need directed counseling to learn how to align their view of themselves with their God-given biological infrastructure.
The National Health Service announced a month ago that it is going to revisit its rules around allowing children to take experimental drugs without the approval of their parents. Since they are just now revisiting these rules, this means bypassing moms and dads altogether is still the customary practice. They're also forming a task force of doctors to formally review the use of puberty blockers. Better late than never.
In the meantime, I'm hoping that Ms. Bell gets a settlement that's so massive it will put this child-abusing clinic out of business altogether. That can't happen too soon.
The author may be contacted at bfischer@afa.net
Follow me on Facebook at "Focal Point" and on Twitter @bryanjfischer
Host of "Focal Point" on American Family Radio, 1:05 pm CT, M-F www.afr.net
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
