Silencing critics will not save transgender lives
A JCU senior lecturer says the lives of transgender people will be saved by open and honest debate, instead of attempting to silence certain people’s voices.
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It is difficult to express a public opinion on the medical treatment of trans and gender diverse kids without being accused of bad faith or poor practice.
I am glad for the opportunity to explain to Newscorp readers why I believe trans lives will be saved by open and honest debate, not by attempting to silence voices like mine.
While my critics accuse me of harming trans people by expressing an opinion, there is general agreement with me on many facts.
There is no doubt the number of Australian kids reporting a gender identity different from sex has exploded over the last ten years for reasons which are not well understood.
There is also no doubt that trans kids suffer from much higher rates of mental illness than other kids, including increased rates of suicide.
However, the best evidence we have suggests that the suicide risk is driven by mental illness, not by being trans alone.
It is also generally accepted that there is no high-quality evidence that the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, or its treatment with medications like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, is likely to improve the health or mental health of children and adolescents, or to reduce suicide risk.
This fact was acknowledged by the World Health Organization who decided not to go ahead with planned guidelines for gender diverse kids because the evidence was too “limited and variable”.
The blueprint describing gender medicine for kids in Australia, by the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, also acknowledges the limited evidence for their practices.
They admit that because of the lack of evidence “the recommendations made in this document are based primarily on clinician consensus”.
However, it is simply a lie that there is a clinical consensus for the practices at Australia’s pediatric gender clinics.
The most comprehensive study of gender medicine for kids currently available was published in the UK earlier this year, the Cass Review.
In response English health services effectively banned puberty blockers for gender dysphoria outside research, and significantly restricted hormone treatments.
Multiple European countries and US states are rolling back treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapy for gender diverse kids and adolescents because of unacceptable risks of harm.
However, Australia’s gender clinics and medical authorities have refused to respond to this evidence that they are engaging in harmful practices.
Even more concerning, they have refused to support an Australian version of the Cass Review to find out whether our services are helping or harming Australian kids.
In fact, they have ignored the risks of harm to suggest significantly expanding pediatric gender services.
One of the most damaging findings of the Cass Review was that the same model of care that is practised in Australian pediatric clinics led to “diagnostic overshadowing”. Gender clinics were so focused on gender that they failed to diagnose significant mental illnesses like depression.
As we know that suicide in trans kids is associated with mental illness, and not by being trans alone, diagnostic overshadowing is the biggest risk of suicide facing trans youth being treated at Australia’s gender clinics.
If advocates of the current practices in Australia’s pediatric gender clinics truly believe they are improving the health and mental health of trans kids, they will support an Australian version of the Cass Review. If they continue to oppose one, we will know that they are afraid that such a review would reveal all the same problems that put English kids at risk.
Dr Andrew Amos is Chair of the Queensland Section of Rural Psychiatry, Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and a senior lecturer at James Cook University
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Originally published as Silencing critics will not save transgender lives
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