Closure of UK gender clinic likely to impact Australian approach
By Catherine Sheehan
The recent closure of the Tavistock gender clinic in London, and intended legal action against it for medical negligence, has raised the possibility of an inquiry into gender clinics in Australia, as well as law suits related to medical transitioning procedures.
England’s National Health Service (NHS) announced in July that Tavistock, which treats children and young people suffering gender dysphoria or gender incongruence, would be closed down. Since then it has been reported that up to 1000 families intend to lodge a major law suit against the clinic for medical negligence.
The independent review found staff at the clinic had felt pressured to adopt “an unquestioning affirmative approach” to patients wanting to transition and complex health needs of patients were overlooked in order to focus solely on “gender-related distress”.
The clinic’s treatment of patients involved prescribing puberty blockers, an approach that has been replicated in gender clinics in Australia.
Law professor from the University of Queensland, Patrick Parkinson, was reported in The Australian as saying it was “very likely” that legal action similar to that being taken against Tavistock would happen in Australia.
“I think the Australian gender clinics apart from Sydney are probably less conservative and less cautious than the Tavistock was,” Professor Parkinson told The Australian.
“The decision of the British government raises serious questions about the continuation of the model in Australia and really justifies a major inquiry being set up.”
The Tavistock clinic was considered a leader in treatment of young people suffering gender dysphoria.
In 2020 NHS England commissioned an independent review of gender identity services for children and young people, led by Dr Hilary Cass, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. The review was established in response to a sudden upsurge in referrals, from 250 referrals in 2011/12, to over 5000 referrals by 2021/22.
There was also a marked shift in the types of patients presenting for treatment, from predominantly male patients, to an overwhelming majority being teenage girls.
There were also concerns regarding “a lack of clinical consensus and polarised opinion” on “the best model of care for children and young people experiencing gender incongruence and dysphoria”.
Dr Cass’ initial findings were published in February this year.
She found that staff at the clinic felt “under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach” that was “at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they had been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters”.
Dr Cass wrote that in terms of treating gender dysphoria and incongruence, “the clinical approach has not been subjected to some of the usual control measures that are typically applied when new or innovative treatments are introduced” and that there were “significant gaps in the research and evidence base”.