Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Gender services

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:53): (793) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health and concerns the recent decision by the UK’s National Health Service to stop prescribing children puberty blockers at gender clinics. This is not a minor development; it is a complete reversal in direction after years of increasing pharmaceutical intervention in cases of psychological distress in children. And it did not arise from a minor change of opinion – the reasons are actually quite shocking. The review in question concluded that there is insufficient evidence to show how safe these drugs are. Let that sink in. They have been used for years now in Victoria too with insufficient evidence that they are safe. Worse still, there was no evidence to show they were sufficiently clinically effective to prescribe. They might not be safe, they might not work – it is a shocking conclusion. The report was the latest in a series of systematic reviews and research assessments. These have clearly shown that the use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists – in other words, puberty blockers – and cross-sex hormones on children cannot be medically justified, up by 2500 per cent in the years between 2009 and 2017.

These medical reviews have arisen at the same time that serious questions have been asked about the legality of the treatment model. The UK High Court’s Bell v. Tavistock highlighted the lack of evidence supporting long-term health outcomes as well as the rapid increase in diagnoses. The numbers alone should tell us that the vast increase is statistically improbable: 2500 per cent in the years between 2009 and 2017. This is before we even get into the incredibly fraught issue of consent. How can a child perhaps suffering mental distress possibly fully understand the long term and irreversible consequences of these treatments and therefore properly consent? They cannot. How can they understand their future thoughts and feelings, emotions and physical states, about which, by virtue of their age, they have no comprehension? And still less, can they properly consent when the evidence of safety and efficacy are incomplete?

Affirmation-only models constrain medical professionals’ ability to use their own judgement to assess what is really affecting children. The figures about comorbid psychological conditions are striking. We risk wrongly treating the conditions children present with and doing so irreversibly with drugs which may be unsafe and which may not even produce their claimed effect. I hope we are beginning to see the end of this successful ideological, not medical, lie. So, Minister, I seek a thorough clinical review, like the Cass review, of the treatment of gender dysphoric children in Victoria.