Clinicians say ‘serious flaws’ in NSW Health-commissioned youth gender dysphoria report

Dozens of mental health practitioners have signed an open letter stating they have ‘serious professional concerns’ about a report which will inform the development of clinical guidance for NSW Health’s statewide youth trans and gender diverse service.

The open letter claims assertions about the benefits of gender affirming care for minors ‘must be supported by proper evidence’.

Dozens of doctors, specialists and child mental health practitioners have signed an open letter stating they have “serious professional concerns” about a report which will inform the development of clinical guidance for NSW Health’s statewide youth trans and gender diverse service.

Those 46 signatories went so far as to say the NSW Health-commissioned Evidence Check, brokered by the Sax Institute, which appraises new evidence about interventions for young people with gender dysphoria, should be “publicly ­retracted as false and/or misleading”.

The open letter claims assertions about the benefits of gender affirming care for minors “must be supported by proper evidence” which the Evidence Check “has failed to provide”.

The signatories, which include top endocrinologist David Torpy and former head of the anaesthetics at Canberra Hospital and Calvary Public Hospital Paul Burt, argued the Evidence Check “did not include the highly relevant systematic reviews and findings of the Cass Review” which “dramatically lessens the value and relevance of the report”. The letter, also signed by psychiatrist Jillian Spencer, who has been openly critical of gender-affirming policies, said the Evidence Check includes “very low-quality studies … treated as high quality upon which they based their ­erroneous conclusions”.

The Sax Institute identified 17 studies on puberty suppression treatment and concluded that “newly identified evidence reinforced the previous findings ­regarding benefits and effectiveness. That is, PS agents (generally referred to as GnRHa) were reported to be safe, effective and reversible.” Risks, it said, included reduction in bone density.

The open letter argued the assertions that puberty blockers are reversible were “scientifically unsupported” and the “references provided do not support their ­assertion”.

There were a number of other claims that the letter-writers raised as “serious flaws” including alleging the report made “false claims” about the findings of British reviews “regarding the alleged benefits of puberty blockers”.