Des Houghton: Puberty blockers issue continues and we need answers

Jarrod Bleijie and Tim Nicholls have some explaining to do over puberty blockers – and so do Health chiefs, writes Des Houghton.

Queensland's puberty blockers debate continues.

Transgender activists have legally sidestepped Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie’s ban on puberty blockers in an embarrassing setback for the Crisafulli government.

And it appears to me that Queensland Health is assisting children to get puberty blockers despite the ministerial directive.

Bleijie and Health Minister Tim Nicholls have some explaining to do.

So do Health chiefs who allow this dangerous practice to continue.

It beggars belief that Queensland Health continues to operate the gender clinic at the Queensland Children’s Hospital even though similar clinics around the world have been closed or absorbed back into traditional psychiatric services.

The gender-bending clinics have been discredited by medical experts in Britain, the US and many European countries.

However our health service continues to refer vulnerable children and adolescents to private suppliers of puberty blockers that lead “almost inevitably” to children being given sex-change hormones like estrogen and testosterone.

So why the clinic still operates amazes me.

Surely Nicholls has seen the evidence. There are copious studies showing that the transgender affirmation model used in our taxpayer-funded gender clinic is causing harm to children.

Nicholls must know that puberty blockers lead to infertility, loss of sexual function and long-term physical health problems.

On its website the Australian Professional Association of Trans Health, AusPATH, openly attacks the Crisafulli government and boasts it has legally avoided the ban by raising funds to pay for the puberty blockers while guiding patients on “multi-disciplinary pathways” of care, whatever that means.

A doctor with intimate knowledge of the children’s hospital told me the clinic was still “affirming” children and that nothing much had changed.

I urge Bleijie and Nicholls to read the evidence given in the British High Court by Professor Christopher Gillberg, an expert in child and adolescent psychiatry.

Minister for Health Tim Nicholls.

Jarrod Bleijie.

Gillberg said puberty blockers not only caused infertility but harmed a patient’s brain and bone development.

“In all my years as a physician I cannot remember an issue of greater significance for the practice of medicine,” he told the court.

Gillberg’s testimony is reproduced in part in documents before the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission where Queensland psychiatrist Jillian Spencer is challenging Queensland Health’s rejection of her public interest disclosures.

Just like Gillberg, whistleblower Spencer believes puberty blockers and the transgender affirmation model embraced by Queensland Health is dangerous. Spencer was persecuted and stood down for saying so. Gillberg said internet sites persuade autistic children they are transgender when they simply have “identity issues”.

The puberty blockers debate continues to rage across Queensland, argues Des Houghton.

Spencer, likewise, worries about the pernicious influence of social media. With the latest international research clearly supporting Dr Spencer’s argument, why oh why is Queensland Health still fighting her in the commission? It’s time for you to put an end to this nonsense, minister.

In letters tendered to the QIRC, various Queensland Health chiefs (some not doctors) rejected Spencer’s serious health concerns saying her claims were “not substantial or significant enough” to qualify as a public interest disclosure.

Really?

More taxpayers funds will now be unnecessarily swallowed up by two useless reviews of the clinic, one by the federal government and one by the Queensland government.

In the UK, after years of research headed by Dr Hillary Cass brought the puberty blocker free-for-all to a halt. In announcing their permanent ban, the Labor Health Minister, Wes Streeting, an openly gay left winger said: “It is a scandal that medicine was given to vulnerable children without the proof it was safe or effective.”

Wes Streeting calls it a scandal, but Crisafulli ministers and the ALP Opposition members have their heads in the sand.

Irritant of the week

The tiresome Olympic knockers who oppose Victoria Park as the site for the new stadium. They falsely accuse the state of lacking greenspace. That’s preposterous. Brisbane has two botanical gardens and is surrounded by 40,000ha of the D’Aguilar National Park just 12km to 35km north-west of Brisbane’s city centre.

Originally published as Des Houghton: Puberty blockers issue continues and we need answers