The U.K.’s largest pediatric gender clinic now stands accused by a recently published book of medicalizing teens with comorbidities, which includes more than a third of patients who were showing signs and symptoms of “moderate to severe” autism.
The book in question, “Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children” authored by BBC Newsnight journalist Hannah Barnes, directly alleges that the Tavistock Clinic, which is a facility that is part of the NHS in the U.K. that is officially called the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), pointedly ignored obvious evidence that close to 97.5% of children seeking chemical and surgical sex reassignment services were showing signs of autism, depression, or a large number of other issues that could have been a more direct explanation for their unhappiness.
“Some staff feared they could be unnecessarily medicating autistic children,” stated Barnes.
After carrying out well over 100 hours of intense interviews with patients and clinicians as part of the research and due diligence for the book, Barnes discovered that the staff at this facility attempted to heavily push many pro-transgender policies and as stated by one major whistleblower, treated the kids who might not have actually been transgender as just “collateral damage.”
As expressed in the new book, the former staff stated that a number of children, including those who showed signs of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and ADHD, were quickly and entirely unnecessarily prescribed drugs or even submitted to surgery. The book reported that less than 2% of the kids in the U.K. actually have an autism spectrum disorder, but close to 35% of all GIDS referrals “present with moderate to severe autistic traits.”
Barnes reported that a number of the staff at GIDS felt that kids who would have reconciled themselves with the bodies they were born with were just being pointedly denied the chance by the forced use of drugs. As a senior clinical psychologist at GIDS, Dr. Anna Hutchinson claimed that the service quickly started to just “accept everyone.”
Despite the fact that puberty blockers were intended to allow kids “time to think” about whether or not they actually wanted to transition fully, Dr. Hutchinson quickly found out that almost all of them chose to start taking cross-sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone, which have long-term irreversible effects. When she first spotted this, it was a “holy f***” moment for her.
“Because what are the chances of 100% of people, offered time to think, thinking the same thing?” stated Dr. Hutchinson. “If the service was getting this wrong, it was getting it wrong with some of the most vulnerable children and young people.” She now thinks that “some of those kids would not have identified as trans had they not been put on the medical pathway.”
“Of course, that doesn’t mean to say that identifying as trans is a bad outcome,” she went on. “But what is a bad outcome is creating a cohort of people who are medically dependent who’d never needed to be. And not only medically dependent, but perhaps — we don’t yet know — medically damaged.”
She now labels GIDS as “scandalous in its negligence and scale.”