The ‘Trans’ Child as Experimental Guinea Pig | National Review

In the U.K., the National Health Service has a “gatekeeping” approach to transgender youth in which psychological evaluations are conducted and irreversible treatment is not recommended for under-16s. However, according to the Sunday Times of London, doctors at Britain’s national youth-gender clinic have complained that even this degree of protection for young people is proving “woefully inadequate.” Reportedly, doctors suggested that patients could be subjected to “long-term damage” because of the clinic’s “inability to stand up to the pressure” from “highly politicized” transgender-activist groups. The governor of this clinic recently resigned in protest at its “blinkered” neglect of doctors’ concerns.An Oxford University sociology professor, Michael Biggs, has accused the clinic of suppressing its own negative findings. Biggs conducted his own research, which found that after a year of treatment at the clinic, there was a “significant increase” in the number of girls who reported self-harming and attempting suicide to the clinic’s staff.In any case, “gatekeeping” aside, some basic principles are worth considering. First, minors, unlike adults, are unable to give informed consent to experimental treatments to their healthy and fully functioning bodies. Second, minors with acute gender dysphoria ought to be given every opportunity to work through their distress through non-invasive, researched therapies — a method that is proven to help the majority of young patients without permanently altering their bodies. Third, clinicians ought to base all treatment on evidence, not ideology.

Source: The ‘Trans’ Child as Experimental Guinea Pig | National Review