COLE THE SOCIOLOGIST - CHANNEL

Chest reconstruction

No Australian children’s hospital has taken the momentous step to provide “gender-affirming” surgery on-site for minors who say they are distressed by a feeling of conflict between their birth sex and an inner sense of a trans or non-binary “gender identity”.

The former RCH gender clinic director, Dr Michelle Telfer, a pioneer of the contentious gender-affirming treatment model in Australia, is on the record as saying that “chest reconstruction surgery [double mastectomy] is an integral part of the transition process for trans males [i.e., females]” and is likely to improve mental health.

Mrs Deeming said Victoria’s governing Labor Party could act to stop the harm now, because its leadership could cite England’s cautious Cass review of youth gender care and explain to voters that “the science has been updated.”

“The longer they wait, the worse, the more culpable everyone will know them to be,” she said.

“ASPS [the American Society of Plastic Surgeons] currently understands that there is considerable uncertainty as to the long-term efficacy for the use of chest and genital surgical interventions for the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria, and the existing evidence base is viewed as low quality/low certainty.”—statement to commentator Leor Sapir, 23 July 2024

Fierce pride

In March, in the shadow of England’s National Health Service announcing an end to the routine use of experimental puberty blockers with gender-distressed children, a spokesperson for the department of Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan sprang to the defence of the RCH Melbourne clinic, saying, “We’re fiercely proud of the important work they do.”²

Mrs Deeming queried why Victoria’s government had been so evasive for so long when questioned about trans mastectomies for minors.

“If it’s life-saving care, why aren’t we providing it at our best public children’s hospital?” she asked.

She said the truth of the matter was that, like the vast majority of Australians, most rank-and-file members of the government’s own Labor Party “instinctively recoil from the idea that you’re helping a girl by removing her healthy breasts.”

Last year, Mrs Deeming’s questions to Health Minister Thomas about the RCH gender clinic produced no less than eight written answers stating that, “The Royal Children’s Hospital DOES NOT provide or refer children to surgical treatment.”

The use of the term “children” to exclude adolescents was not made clear.³

This led Mrs Deeming to ask whether the RCH gender clinic had changed its practices, given anecdotal reports that minors had indeed been referred to private surgeons for double mastectomies.

Last month, the Minister’s reply to this follow-up question distinguished between children and adolescents.

The Minister now stated that RCH “does not provide gender-affirming surgery to trans and gender-diverse children or adolescents” but may refer “adolescents” to private specialists for possible surgery.

“The RCH has been consistent in this approach over time,” the Minister said.

Mrs Deeming said she believed the Minister’s assurances last year were misleading.

For the first time, it has been officially admitted that an Australian children’s hospital is referring patients to the private sector for transgender surgery such as removal of a girl’s healthy breasts.

The public gender clinic of the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) Melbourne, which takes gender-distressed patients up to age 16, “may refer adolescents to a private specialist clinician to consider the appropriateness and need for surgery,” Mary-Anne Thomas, Minister for Health in the state of Victoria, said.¹

Ms Thomas, who declares herself a proud feminist with “a passion for public policy”, was answering the latest in a string of formal questions on notice about the RCH gender clinic from Independent Liberal Party parliamentarian Moira Deeming.

Mrs Deeming told GCN that news of vulnerable girls having their healthy breasts surgically removed would cause “outrage” among mainstream Australians, “especially when they have it explained to them that there is absolutely no evidentiary benefit for this.”

Melbourne psychiatrist and researcher Dr Alison Clayton, who has written on the experimental nature of mastectomy for gender-distressed girls, said it was “a poorly evidenced, invasive and irreversible intervention for a poorly understood condition—that is, gender dysphoria—in adolescent biological females.”

She said mastectomy would “have life-long impact on sexual functioning and precludes the later possibility of breastfeeding.”

“I told my then psychiatrist I wanted to break my nose with a hammer and that I wanted to cut off my breasts. One of these comments carried more weight. My body dysmorphic disorder never faded but my trans identity did.”—Melbourne detransitioner Mel Jefferies, who regrets her decision as a young woman to undergo a trans mastectomy, Twitter, 19 August 2024

INFECTED BLOOD INQUIRY.
REPORT.

Presented to the House of Commons pursuant to section 26 of
the Inquiries Act 2005.
May 20th, 2024.

https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/reports/inquiry-report

https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/sites/default/files/Volume-1.pdf

*Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.*


1.1 Summary
Patients have received blood or blood products from the NHS since it began in 1948. Many of those treated with them, particularly between 1970 and 1998, died or suffered miserably, and many continue to suffer. This was not as a direct result of the underlying condition or illness that took them to the NHS in the first place, but as a result of the treatment itself. This would be catastrophic enough if they were the only victims. But the treatment has caused others to suffer too – partners, family, children, friends – some by being themselves infected, some by having to watch loved ones die, some by having to give their lives to caring; and almost every one of them, infected and affected, suffering in almost every aspect of their lives.

I have to report a catalogue of failures which caused this to happen. Each on its own is serious. Taken together they are a calamity. Lord Winston famously called these events “the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS”. I have to report that it could largely, though not entirely, have been avoided. And I have to report that it should have been.

(p.12) The timeframe examined by this Report is extensive, covering over five decades of decision-making [4].
That has brought with it additional challenges, as has the fact that an inquiry did not take place at a much earlier stage [5].

Documents that existed years ago no longer exist (SEE: 7.1 Document Destruction, p.166).

There are individuals, from government, from the medical profession, from pharmaceutical
companies and elsewhere, who played an important part in events, from whom the Inquiry
has been unable to hear, either because they are dead or because of impairments of health
or age.

Chronology for the Overview (p. 194).

Cole the Sociologist.
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