Table of Contents
Bob McCoskrie
The Ministry of Health is reviewing the use of puberty blockers here in New Zealand – and you won’t believe who they’ve asked to help review the evidence. A cheerleader for transing our children!
TRANSCRIPT:
The Ministry of Health is doing a review of puberty blockers. Puberty blockers are used as part of the process to help young people who are gender confused to start the process of trying to change their sex. Trying. They’re used to delay the changes of puberty and when taken regularly, they stop the body from making sex hormones. That includes testosterone for boys and estrogen for girls. So for boys, they slow the growth of facial and body hair, prevent voice deepening, and limit the growth of the penis, scrotum and testicles. For girls this treatment limits or stops breast development and stops menstruation.
Sounds problematic, doesn’t it? Whenever you interfere with the natural process, and especially puberty, there’s always going to be issues.
The Ministry of Health is reviewing the use of puberty blockers here in New Zealand – and you won’t believe who they’ve asked to review the evidence.
New Zealand has been prescribing puberty blockers – and at a rate 10x higher per head of population than the UK where puberty blockers have just been stopped because of what’s known as the 4-year long CASS review which concluded that:
Puberty blockers should no longer be prescribed to children except in the context of research due to these powerful drugs’ effects on brain development and bone health
Cross-sex hormones — estrogen and testosterone — should be prescribed to trans-identifying 16 and 17-year-olds only with an “extremely cautious” approach, and there should be a “clear clinical rationale” for not waiting until the teen is 18
The CASS report also destroyed the suicide trope – better a live son than a dead daughter – which is used to manipulate parents
- Young people facing gender-related distress had no significantly different levels of suicide risk to other young people with similar levels of complex presentations.
- No evidence that gender-affirming treatment reduces suicide risk.
So the Ministry of Health here in New Zealand is reviewing the evidence and as part of the process, they will be updating the guidelines.
Te Whatu Ora / Health NZ – this is what replaced all the 20 DHBs – and is the operational part of the Ministry of Health – have contracted a group to write up the new guidelines which are due in August. And they contracted none other than PATHA to write the guidelines. PATHA (professional association of transgender health Aotearoa) is a group of transactivists. They supported so-called conversion therapy bans, but they want to practice conversion therapy on kids. Ironic, isn’t it? Virtually all their leadership team and advisory board are transgender and are closely affiliated with the massively discredited WPATH – the world body.
But who’s reviewing the evidence from the Ministry?
Speak Up For Women did an OIA to the Ministry of Health to find out. Here’s the response
The Evidence Brief examining the safety and long-term impacts of Puberty Blockers will be released shortly on the Ministry of Health’s website, along with our position statement… The Evidence Brief was peer reviewed by Professor Paul Hofman of the Liggins Institute, University of Auckland, and Dame Sue Bagshaw from Christchurch.
Now I hadn’t heard of Prof Paul Hofman before this – but a quick bit of research confirmed my concerns.
He helped set up the guidelines 15 years ago.
In 2013 he said this: “Hofman said he was a ”cautious supporter” of intervention through puberty blockers, once a youth had been diagnosed by one or more psychiatrists and counselling support. ”This is a vulnerable group of children and adolescents. It’s a psychiatric condition, not medical.”
OK well if it’s psychiatric, why would you use puberty blockers?? That’s like using weight loss pills for anorexia.
After the CASS report came out in early April, Professor Hofman told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking that the blockers reduce self-harm and suicidal ideation in some patients, but there’s hasn’t been any strong follow up studies looking at quality of life and the impacts, nor any issues around safety.
But a major red flag: He says puberty blockers are “All reversible”. And safety is a bit of a beat up. By the way, the mention of precocious puberty is a completely different issue relating to when puberty begins too early for the child who’s going through it. Puberty blockers blocks the natural process at the right time.
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s expressing some concerns. Although using the suicide trope is a major concern.
But here’s the real issue. The other reviewer is Dame Sue Bagshaw. And that should make us all very cautious.
Sue Bagshaw has been the go-to person for the media on this issue because she is one of the few medical professionals pushing the narrative they want. Let me show you what I mean.
Starting in 2015
A transition with a never-ending cost 2015
Radio NZ 2 Nov 2015
For trans* youth …
The surgery involved ….
Then there’s a story about a 20-year-old person “born with a male parts”,”takes oestrogen pills and has had Botox and lip fillers in order to look more feminine, but she wishes to take her transition the whole way, including having genital reassignment surgery. Surgery can cost up to $30,000.”
[The boy] began her transition while he was still attending an all-male boarding school in Tauranga. He had to drive four hours to New Plymouth to see a hormone specialist. His high school’s dean drove him to the appointments and he advised him to freeze some of “her sperm” before he started taking oestrogen.
Where’s the parents, you ask? Good question.
Then it’s off to Dr Bagshaw
Dr Bagshaw says she ….
Yeah it’s got nothing to do with the medical professionals and school deans not dealing with the presenting psychiatric issues.
There needs to …..
Counselling, medical advice, hormone treatments and surgeries. Oh so the puberty blockers is just part of the process. As we knew. The Dutch protocol. Get them to the finish line.
Just on a side note, in 2019, Sue Bagshaw was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen’s Birthday Honours – sadly. In the article by Stuff celebrating the award, it said
After the arrival of their fourth child she returned to work, initially at the University Health Centre and then Family Planning New Zealand. It was in this role Bagshaw began working to improve access to sexual and reproductive health services [aka: abortion, killing the unborn child] for young women by expanding the number of (abortion] clinics in the South Island.
You can get a Queens Birthday Honour for killing the unborn, and confusing the child.
Then 2021 when the conversion therapy debate was happening, she was the go-to doctor for Newshub again to persuade anyone opposing transgenderism.
In fairness, she didn’t think that parents should be criminalised for opposing the transitioning of a child – BUT puberty blockers are safe as. Even the Ministry of Health says that. Of course, they’re wrong – and they realised that and changed it – but not Bagshaw
Later that same year
Controversy brewing over transgender children’s access to puberty blockers March 2021
Critics say the medical profession is far too ready to offer puberty blockers and they dispute the Ministry of Health’s claims they’re safe and reversible. However one expert who works with transgender children says the drugs are actually lifesavers
Bagshaw seems convinced that blockers are reversible but the literature review she had a student perform over the summer found potential impacts on brain maturation. In fact, in 2022 Otago University removed claims by Dame Sue Bagshaw in regards to bone density recovery after puberty blockers from its website due to inaccuracies. But here she is
Then a year later in August 2022
GP shortage: Rainbow community struggles to find the right health care
Rainbow communities are ….
Well she got her wish. Labour’s budget in 2022 included an additional $2.2 million for gender affirming care and $2.5 million to train GPs in advising trans youth. Apparently they have health needs that nobody else has. Apparently.
Then the following month (September 2022)
Radio NZ – Puberty Blocker use jumps as expert backs results
Dame Sue Bagshaw, who has …
Can I remind you what the CASS review said, and also the recent research out of Finland which backed this up
Young people facing gender-related distress had no significantly different levels of suicide risk to other young people with similar levels of complex presentations.
No evidence that gender-affirming treatment reduces suicide risk.
Continuing with the article…
…”If you’re going to say …..
Focus on mental health – healing the mind, rather than cutting the body. What a great idea.
Offering psycho-social support ……
How does she deal with anorexia nervosa, or suicidal ideation?? Too challenging to offer mental health support?
Psychological interventions were …..
Has she not heard of the internet or social media or TikTok? (!!)
Obviously in the last 10 years ….
Nope – you haven’t. Your argument is crumbling in front of our eyes – thankfully.
And then – even after the CASS review was released, she was the go-to for the media
Kids know what they want. Almost a moral panic. Only 2%.
Kids know what they want? What child going through puberty knows what they want for their adulthood?
According to Sue, not an adult’s mind.
Exactly. That’s the point. They’re not an adult or mature enough to be making such life changing decisions.
But this is who is reviewing the evidence brief for the Ministry of Health on puberty blockers.
Still got confidence in the process?
No I haven’t either. But given that this affects every young person who is struggling with their identity and may believe they’re the opposite sex, we should have absolute confidence that children will be protected from a flawed and destructive ideology that has harmed so many young people already.
It’s up to you and I to call it out.
Forum on the Family – Chloe Cole
