In the wake of the findings of the Cass report which has led to the Tavistock clinic having its closure scheduled for next year, former patients and their families are expected to sue the British National Health Service over the clinic’s unsafe practices.
The Times reports, “The Tavistock gender clinic is facing mass legal action from youngsters who claim they were rushed into taking life-altering puberty blockers”.
It continues, “They are accusing the gender identity development service [GIDS] at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust of multiple failures in its duty of care.”
The prosecution is reported to allege that staff at the clinic ‘recklessly prescribed’ puberty blockers and followed an “unquestioning, affirmative approach” to issues surrounding gender confusion in its patients.
Shockingly a significant number of the 234 Irish children referred to Tavistock, 32 were 10 years old or younger, and of these two were just 5 years of age.
Of the total number of Irish children referred to the clinic, many are believed to be girls experiencing issues related to autism.
In her interim report Dr. Hilary Cass said, “there is still a lot we don’t know” about the long term use of hormones.
She says in the UK “the single specialist service has developed organically, and 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.”
Cass continues, “Many of the challenges and knowledge gaps that we face in the UK are echoed internationally, adding that there are “significant gaps in the research and evidence base.”
In 2020, a UK court ruled that it was ‘unlikely that a child aged 13 or less would be competent to give consent to the administration of puberty blockers’. The so-called Bell case, which was subsequently overturned on appeal, also found it ‘doubtful that 14 or 15 year olds could understand the long-term risks and consequences of this form of treatment’.
Cass states there is a lack of “agreement” at the ‘primary, secondary, and specialist’ level if “gender incongruence in childhood and adolescence can be an inherent and immutable phenomenon for which transition is the best option for the individual”.
As we know, despite clear evidence that there is no long term research on the effects of putting children on puberty blockers, the indication that this problem is an international one, and the tragic results of the patient at the centre of the Bell case in the UK, the HSE has said it will continue to refer children to Tavistock.