Doctors in row with HSE over claims children's transgender care is 'unsafe'

A number of doctors have claimed a service under which adolescents with gender dysphoria can be given puberty-suppressing hormone blockers is "unsafe" and must be immediately stopped, but their concerns were suppressed.

The service is provided in Ireland by flying in two clinicians from an NHS trust in London to run clinics at Crumlin Children's Hospital. But the Irish Independent has learned at least three doctors working in the gender area expressed grave concerns over the service provided by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust at Crumlin.

The concerns over standards of clinical care and governance were raised at a meeting of doctors and hospital officials in Crumlin last March. These included that children had been started on hormone treatment when they did not appear to be suitable. However, the issues raised and calls by the doctors for the service to be "terminated with immediate effect" were omitted from draft minutes of the meeting.

News of their concerns comes days after it emerged a lawsuit was being taken by a former nurse, a parent, and a former patient against the trust in the London High Court. The action is challenging the clinic's practice of prescribing hormone blockers and cross-sex hormones to children under the age of 18.

The trust has also been hit by a series of resignations by psychologists amid disquiet about the alleged "over-diagnosis" of gender dysphoria.

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Source: Irish Independent, 3 February 2020