It’s an old adage in politics that you should never hold an inquiry unless you know the outcome. The corollary of this is that if you don’t know the outcome, don’t have the inquiry – and can it, quick-smart, if it’s already begun. Especially if the answer is looking like one that you don’t want.
The promise of a new, national approach to treatment of minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria appears to be in doubt after an official review was quietly wound up without collecting any patient data.
It’s almost like they’re trying to hide something.
“There has been a huge increase in children being treated by gender clinics but, either through incompetence or by design, the states’ top health bureaucrats have no data to explain this trend,” said Tasmanian Liberal Senator Claire Chandler.
Data collection by specialised gender clinics in public children’s hospitals — the country’s three large “gender affirming” clinics are in Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia — was found to be inadequate after an audit and review last year, The Australian understands.
There is fierce international debate about how to respond to an exponential surge in distressed teenagers, mostly girls, seeking puberty blockers to halt unwanted sexual development followed by lifelong hormone drugs to mimic the desired body of the opposite sex.
Teenagers who are considered too young to be able to vote, drive, drink, or have sex, are being rushed into making life-changing decisions that will almost certainly irrevocably harm their normal development. Yet the enablers of this dangerous, radical medical experiment on a generation are either not keeping basic data or are for some reason refusing to make it public.
In December last year Senator Chandler wrote to the Health Chief Executives’ Forum, which brings together federal, state and territory department heads, and asked for the public release of data on the treatment of children and adolescents with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones so that gender clinic trends could be openly debated.
“There is a significant public interest in understanding the extent to which children and adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria are being prescribed irreversible medical treatments,” she wrote.
In her letter, Senator Chandler said Australia should not repeat the mistake of the UK Tavistock gender clinic, which was rebuked by the English High Court for a “surprising” lack of basic data and investigation into what was happening with patients, including a suspected disproportionate number with autism.
The zealots of transgender ideology claim that their chemical and surgical mutilation of developing teenagers is “life-saving”. This is an extraordinary claim which must be backed up by correspondingly extraordinary evidence. Yet, instead of evidence, anyone who challenges their extremist ideology is met with abuse and threats.
Meanwhile, health bureaucrats aren’t doing anything to allay misgivings by deliberately hiding data – or refusing to collect it in the first place.
In February HCEF chair Elizabeth Koff, who is secretary of NSW Health, wrote back to Senator Chandler, telling her the forum had decided not to “progress” the review of gender clinic treatment referred to it by federal Health Minister Greg Hunt in May last year.
Ms Koff said the forum had asked those states with specialist gender clinics what data they collected and whether there was any long-term follow-up of patients. Data collection was found to be patchy with gaps and inconsistencies[…]
In new FOI data, the Queensland Children’s Hospital gender clinic had a total of 644 patients in September last year, 30 per cent more than in 2018. But a reported decline in new patients starting puberty blockers appears misleading because the clinic had no data for patients who filled their prescriptions outside the hospital pharmacy.
In 2019, the hospital told a worried member of the public it kept no data on how many female-born patients given puberty blockers were autistic. The clinic is understood to have begun a new data reporting system last year which it claims more accurately tracks the progress of patients.
The health bureaucrats’ forum seems to have collected no data itself, and cited confidentiality in refusing to say what information it had received in response to its 2020 audit questions on data collection, how referrals worked, what clinic services were offered and what treatment guidelines were used.
The secrecy of health bureaucrats is only exceeded by the mendacity and hypocrisy of politicians.
In February Victoria became the third jurisdiction to criminalise therapy deemed to attempt to “convert” someone’s self-declared “gender identity”. The legislation gives a green light to the medicalised gender change model of children’s hospital gender clinics.
The Australian
What is “gender change” but the most extreme form of “conversion therapy” imaginable? States like Victoria are rapidly aligning with hardline Islamic nations like Iran, which forces homosexuals to undergo “gender transition”.
In the meantime, a generation of young people is being secretively experimented on in a manner akin to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.
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