This striking vignette in Hannah Barnes’s book encapsulates why GIDS was deemed unfit for purpose and finally closed last year. She drafted this, then emailed it to Carmichael for approval. Senior GIDS clinicians, including its director, Polly Carmichael, listened to Bellringer and afterwards one psychotherapist proposed writing a leaflet to forewarn parents of boys contemplating blockers. With insufficient skin for surgery, he was having to construct vaginas with stretches of bowel tissue, a more hazardous, expensive operation, prone to infection and an “unwanted smell”. A specialist in creating “neo-vaginas” in adult trans women, he had noted that natal boys were being given puberty-blocking drugs so young that their penises hadn’t yet fully developed. In 2016, James Bellringer, an eminent consultant urologist, visited the Tavistock child gender identity development service (GIDS) to issue a warning. This dogged, brave investigation shows what happens when self-righteous ideologues capture a field of medicine.
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