Review says puberty blocker curb has not led to suicide rise

"We only saw a small rise, so until statistically significant numbers of children kill themselves, the brutality will continue."

Why is "suicide" the metric for healthcare to begin with? Imagine if dentists acted like this. "No one committed suicide from not receiving a root canal in the last 3 years, so we've determined them to be medically unnecessary."

"We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong."

Mr Maugham said the review considered "current and former" Gender Identity Development Service patients, while his figures were directed to the larger group of "those on the waiting list".

The DHSC has insisted that patients on waiting lists were included in the review as well.

They literally didn't, from the review:

I have examined the figures provided by NHSE on deaths in each year between 2018-19 and 2023-24. They are based on an internal audit by the Tavistock of deaths among current and former GIDS patients

Not especially surprising, given how difficult it is to get any form of healthcare for trans kids. The change has actually quite limited scope.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

There is no evidence of a large rise in suicides in young patients attending a gender identity clinic in London, an independent review has found.Professor Louis Appleby was asked by Health Secretary Wes Streeting to examine the data following claims made by campaigners of a rise in suicide rates since puberty-blocking drugs were restricted at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in 2020.Prof Appleby's review concludes "the data do not support the claim".And he added that the way the issue had been discussed on social media was "insensitive, distressing and dangerous".The Department of Health and Social Care said it was vital that public discussion around the issue was handled responsibly.

"One risk is that young people and their families will be terrified by predictions of suicide as inevitable without puberty blockers - some of the responses on social media show this," he said.There was also the risk that distressed adolescents hearing that message could be led to copy the behaviour warned about.He also said the claims placed in the public domain about an "explosion" in suicides "do not meet basic standards for statistical evidence".

The claims have been led by legal campaign group, the Good Law Project, on X, formerly known as Twitter.The group is challenging the decision by the previous health secretary to end the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs by private clinics to children and young people with gender dysphoria.That was recommended in the Cass Review, published in April, which found "remarkably weak" evidence on the use of the treatment.In response to their claims, the new health secretary launched an independent review led by Prof Appleby which analysed data from NHS England on suicides of patients at the Tavistock clinic, based on an audit at the trust.Covering the period between 2018-19 and 2023-24, he found there were 12 suicides - five in the three years leading up to 2020-21 and seven in the three years afterwards.

"This is essentially no difference," Prof Appleby says in his report, "taking account of expected fluctuations in small numbers, and would not reach statistical significance.

"The patients who died were in different points in the care system, including post-discharge, suggesting no consistent link to any one aspect of care, Prof Appleby noted.However, he said it was likely there had been a rise over a longer period as more young people at risk came forward with gender identity problems.

The Good Law Project is thought to have based its claims on unpublished figures provided by two members of staff at the now-closed Tavistock clinic.Project executive director Jo Maugham said: “I was not contacted in advance of the statement being released and will obviously need time to respond.

The original article contains 596 words, the summary contains 443 words. Saved 26%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

So their data set was people attending a gender identity clinic? Looks like they were at least getting Tx

I have known plenty of young people who had a phase of self hatred who thought being trans can fix their problem. Unsurprisingly it didn't. Thankfully many of them snapped out of it before they could get their hands on medication/surgery.

Sooner or later, a trans woman forced through male puberty by arbitrary rules/culture-war politics will snap and attempt to assassinate the PM or health minister. Then the other boot will come down: the Daily Mail will demand a crackdown, and the usual voices in the Guardian will join in, and the government will follow.