On Thursday 28 July, the UK's National Health Service (NHS) announced an important decision:
They are going to close the GIDS department that serves underage transgender people,
Other facilities will be reopened next year to accept juvenile patients in the sector.
In recent years, there has been a growing controversy over GIDS in the UK.
Some experts investigated it and concluded that the department's services were "not safe enough," leading to its closure.
An institution that has been in operation for nearly 33 years,
In the midst of a wave of doubts, it is about to withdraw from the stage of history...
In 2020, the NHS commissioned Dr Hilary Cass, former dean of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, to lead a survey of Davidstock.
(Dr. Hilary Cass)
Tavistock, full name Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, is a medical centre in London that specializes in mental health services.
The Tavistock Centre has a unit called the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), which is the only agency in the NHS that provides gender dysphoria and gender identity related services to children and young people in the UK.
Since opening in 1989, the clinic has treated at least 9,000 children with gender dysphoria.
GIDS has indeed helped some patients, but it has also been controversial.
For example, former patients have complained that when underage patients are preparing to take puberty-blocking drugs, GIDS professional doctors do not question this "enough."
Especially in recent years, several problems with GIDS seem strange.
First, the number of underage patients applying for GIDS treatment has increased dramatically over the years.
In 2010-2011, the number of people referred to GIDS was about 250, and the number increased to more than 5,000 in 2020-2021.
Secondly, most patients change from "male" to "female" by birth, and fewer "female to male" are.
Another point is that children who receive treatment in large numbers develop neurodiversity, other mental health needs, and "risky behaviors."
Some people feel that these children should be deeply understood before making decisions before putting these children on the road to transgenderism.
In 2020, there was also a sensational lawsuit in the UK.
There were two plaintiffs in the initial lawsuit,
One is a woman named Mrs. A, whose daughter of 15 has autism and is waiting on the GIDS queue list;
The other is Susan Evans, 62, a former psychiatric nurse at the Tavistock Center.
（Susan Evans）
The two plaintiffs argued that it was unreasonable for GIDS to provide adolescent-blocking drugs and transgender hormones to patients under the age of 16, or even to children aged 9 or 10 years.
Because these children may not really understand the meaning of transsexuality.
They want to file a lawsuit in the High Court, hoping to raise the age of consent for these drugs to 18.
Soon, a 23-year-old woman, Keira Bell, joined the lawsuit, who was herself a patient who had been treated for gender reassignment at GIDS.
Keira was born as a daughter.
But she has loved to wear boys' clothes since she was a child and likes to exercise.
During puberty, Keira felt very disgusted by the development of her breasts and buttocks, and became suspicious of her gender.
At the age of 14, she suffered from severe depression, could no longer go to school, and found herself attracted to girls.
Gradually, she felt that she should be a man.
At the age of 15, Keira began seeing a psychologist through the NHS and was later referred to GIDS.
There, she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and said she wanted to undergo transgender treatment.
At the age of 16, she began taking puberty blocking drugs;
A year later, she received testosterone injections;
At the age of 20, she had a bilateral mastectomy.
After completing these treatments, Keira took on a masculine figure and a masculine voice, as well as a new male name, Quincy.
She looked like she had become a man.
But within two years of the transgender, Keira regretted it, feeling that she was still a woman at heart.
Moreover, she also understands more clearly the permanent consequences of "transgenderism" -
May be infertile, loss of breasts, inability to breastfeed, genital atrophy, permanent change of voice, growth of beard.
Five years after starting gender reassignment treatment, Keira started "de-transition" treatment again.
But a lot of things have changed, and it has become impossible to "reset".
Now, Keira still looks more like a man.
Keira decided to join the lawsuit because of her own experience.
She said at a hearing: "I became a plaintiff in this case because I don't think children and adolescents should agree to use potent and experimental hormonal drugs like me." ”
"I don't think the affirmative action that the Tavistock Center is currently implementing is enough."
"Hormonal denaturing drugs and surgery are not for everyone, and certainly should not be offered to minors under the age of 18 who are emotionally and mentally vulnerable."
Ultimately, the court upheld the plaintiffs, ruling that minors under the age of 16 were unlikely to be mature enough to give consent to adolescent-blocking drugs prescribed by doctors.
Later, for transgender people under the age of 18, doctors may need to obtain the consent of the court to give medical intervention.
However, the appeal decision was rejected by the Court of Appeal, and the dispute over GIDS remains unresolved.
Back in 2019, a British transgender person named Charlie Evans founded a charitable organization dedicated to helping transgender people who are transgender and regretful.
Charlie was born a woman, and then for 10 years she thought of herself as a man, but never had sex reassignment surgery, and then she regretted it and slowly became a woman again.
She said many transgender people between the ages of 19 and 20 have had sex reassignment surgery.
However, the symptoms of gender dysphoria did not alleviate, and now they regret it and do not know what to do.
Charlie says hundreds of defiant transgender people have sought her help, and the number of people is staggering.
Some of these regretful people are treated for GIDS.
Minors who go to GIDS to seek transgender treatment, the youngest is even only three or four years old,
Coupled with the surge in the number of patients in recent years, more people may regret it in the future and choose "de-transition" treatment.
It is because of these controversies that the NHS is concerned about commissioning a paediatric specialist, Dr Cass, to investigate.
Recently, Dr. Cass's findings came out.
She said in the investigative report that when children are referred to GIDS, other mental health problems are "masked" by gender identity issues.
And warned that GIDS "is not a safe and viable long-term option."
The report says that what is the best model of care for minors experiencing gender inconsistencies and gender dysphoria, and that gidds lacks clinical consensus on this issue and opinions are often polarized;
They are undersubtaining their families when choosing interventions that can have lifelong consequences.
"This has resulted in current services not being able to meet the growing demand."
Dr. Cass also found that the benefits of puberty-blocking drugs are "insufficiently evidenced,"
She is concerned about the drug's impact on the brain development of young people and calls for intensified research.
"A surge in sex hormones during adolescence can open a critical period in which neural circuits responsible for executive function are rewired empirically, a part that is associated with planning, decision-making, and judgment, affecting the maturation of parts of the brain," she wrote in the report. ”
"If puberty-blocking drugs temporarily or permanently disrupt the maturation of the brain, it can have an impact on the patient's ability to make complex high-risk decisions as well as neuropsychological aspects."
"So far, research on the short-, medium- and long-term effects of puberty-blocking drugs on neurocognitive development has been very limited."
So Dr. Cass recommends developing a research plan for these drugs as soon as possible and including adolescents who are being treated in the research plan until they reach adulthood to fully study the efficacy of the drug.
Based on dr Cass' findings, the NHS finally decided,
The GIDS division of the Tavistock Center will be closed by next spring.
At the same time, they plan to establish a medical center in London and the north-west of the United Kingdom, respectively, operated by a specialist children's hospital.
Tavistock will take over all of Tavistock's underage transgender patients and waiting patients early next year.
Once the two centres are completed, HNS is preparing to open 6 to 7 similar centres in other parts of the UK.
For this decision of the NHS, many British netizens have expressed support.
Thankfully, common sense prevailed.
Which idiot was the first to approve these treatments?
The law stipulates that children do not have the legal capacity to consent to sexual relations.
By analogy, gender adjustment is clearly a life-changing decision, and children and adolescents are incapable of agreeing to such treatment.
Let them grow up first.
Thank God!! Let the children grow up first, and then figure out who they are, and all the children live in confusion!
GIDS, a controversial department, is about to retire from the stage of history.
However, there are also some private gender clinics in the UK that allow people to serve minors.
Young people who "regret after transgendering" may have more in the future.......