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BBC news bulletin on the rolling out of the vaccine - explaining why they have confidence in it. Phrases like “methodologically sound, scientifically rigorous” “working to strict guidelines on safety effectiveness and quality” Where was that methodological rigour at GIDS?
We’ve been down the rabbit hole opened up by @Docstockk - looking at the “research” papers published by some of the key GIDS people. We recommend others do the same. Read, critically evaluate, what do YOU think were the ideological drivers in play?
In our view the ONLY ideological drivers that should be in place in a clinical setting are ‘working for the patient’s best interests in a way which is “methodologically sound, scientifically rigorous” ‘. Our children have been failed in a spectacular way.
But that’s our view. Read the Bell judgment, read the papers by key GIDS figures, read this interview with the head of child psychology there. Read it and weep. People were raising concerns in 2002. https://archive.is/cm320
We’ve archived the page - just in case the page is “updated”. We believe accurate data matters, as of today it was still up on the GIDS website.
Here is the link to Kathleen’s thread on the research papers. https://twitter.com/docstockk/status/1333742224740413441
and a final comment (for the moment). The drugs that have been used as puberty blockers have not gone through those rigorous processes - they were NOT developed for THIS use, they are NOT licensed for THIS purpose, GIDS has NOT kept accurate data on their impact 
#anectdata
#anectdata
oh good lord it gets worse. It seems they were supposed to be doing a study on the impact of PBs, the judges asked for the results, they said they weren’t peer reviewed yet, the judges said, well tell us what the conclusions were anyway. …
The Tavi lawyers came back the next day and declined to report on the study. THIS is a piece in the BMJ, by Susan Evans (who was one of the other people in the case with Keira). The words piss up and brewery spring to mind. https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5647/rapid-responses
following other links on the BMJ site and it’s clear that many other medical professionals have been expressing concern about the “informed consent” issue. https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6442.full
(if you go too far down the bmj rabbit hole you hit the paywall, so read/save the interesting stuff before you click away). It’s clear from this cursory search that there were always conflicting narratives about the root of, and treatment for, GD children...
… the affirmation only approach took a while to get embedded here as our clinicians are generally conservative when it comes to medical interventions. Because we do not have a large (yet ) “for profit” sector, there are not the same drivers encouraging it as in other countries
) “for profit” sector, there are not the same drivers encouraging it as in other countries
it seems it needed the ‘perfect storm’ of postmodernism’s intellectual capture of academia to allow this approach to take hold. Psychology, as a discipline, perhaps providing a bridge allowing PM thinking to encroach into medical science. Arts > Science?
As to who these key players were. Bernadette Wren has already been mentioned, but she states “In 1995 Domenico de Ceglie set out the therapeutic aims and values for GIDS by which the service still abides. These include the ‘unconditional acceptance (NB!) and respect’ for …
…young people’s expression of their gender identity. “Those therapeutic aims still represent the core values of the service – they’re Domenico’s lasting legacy,” says Bernadette. “He grasped that if you want to have a genuine engagement with young people you have to …
… take very seriously what they feel and what they say.” And she adds: “if you want to know how GIDS still operates, read Domenico’s aims.” So who is this guy? We absolutely do NOT want to demonise individual clinicians - but we do need to get to grips with what went so wrong.
This is a paper by him on Autonomy. One of his big themes. IT reads like a perfectly sensible paper, cites cases of children desisting, of the service resisting parental pressure for PBs https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331746003_Autonomy_and_Decision_Making_in_Children_and_Adolescents_with_Gender_Dysphoria
There are other papers, lots of them. They had the data they needed to write their research papers, but they were not keeping their data in any way that would be meaningful in understanding the growing phenomenon of children seeking to transition. The emphasis on autonomy …
.. the acceptance of the “born in the wrong body” analogy (NOT a metaphor <pedantic>) meant they set themselves on a track to believe that medical, and finally surgical, intervention, was needed to alleviate the GD. They were not bad people seeking to do harm, but they were wrong
They were making a fundamental error in not looking at the bigger picture. They were trapped in group think, clinicians who questioned the narrative ended up leaving. Perhaps part of this was down to the strains on the service due to austerity cuts, no time to reflect? tragic.
