Early in my career for a time I worked for a doctor who was also a keen gardener, who gave me some sage advice about putting oneself in the patient’s shoes: ‘Never go to a doctor whose plants are dying!’ I’ll come back to that later. I like to think that I am an open minded person – [...]
Today I’m going to take a look at NHS England’s Interim Specialist Service for Children and Young People with Gender Incongruence, published 9 June 2023. In the very title we have a problem. What do they mean, ‘with’ gender incongruence? If they were writing about, say, children and young people with diabetes or appendicitis it would be perfectly [...]
There are three main actors in this truly shocking story: Jazz Jennings, the boy who was brought up as a girl; Jeanette Jennings, his mother who earned millions through pushing Jazz to ‘transition’; and Dr Jess Ting, the surgeon who allegedly 'made it up as he went along' in attempting to change Jazz’s genital anatomy from male to [...]
Readers may be aware that the title is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and means, literally, to be blown up (hoisted) by one’s own bomb (petard), and thus indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice. I was recently reminded of this situation when I came across a curious YouTube video: Bible of Psychiatry At first, I honestly thought it [...]
A little while ago I joined a certain online medical discussion group. It’s lively, informal, and iconoclastic – just up my street. But in one aspect I found it disappointing. Doctors, being highly educated and having at least some degree of sophistication, you would expect to take a little thought before committing themselves in writing on a semi-public [...]
The British Medical Journal (BMJ), which boasts of being one of the world’s oldest general medical journals, from time to time publishes articles intended to guide general practitioners and other doctors on how to diagnose and treat musculoskeletal disorders. These are the very common ailments affecting the moving parts of the body (the joints, muscles, and tendons) [...]
Why is it that medical men and women practising the honorable profession of psychiatry are sometimes disrespectfully referred to as ‘headshrinkers’, or ‘shrinks’, or even, by a deliberate mispronunciation of the word, as ‘trick cyclists’? Perhaps the answer is to be found in a production of the American Psychiatric Association – where else? – called Diagnostic and Statistical [...]
These days there seems to be a proliferation of organisations involved in the curious business of transgender issues. One I came across recently is called Genspect. Since it’s based in Ireland it’s not surprising that the people who devised the content of their website appear to have kissed the Blarney Stone. This is what they say about themselves [...]
Everything should be made as simple as possible – but no simpler. Albert Einstein I am a man and have never had any doubt about this fact, but I would find it very difficult to say what it feels like to be a man. I would have to compare it to some other state of being, such as [...]
The right path? Let’s start by looking at an organisation pompously calling itself World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). In 2022 they produced their ‘Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, version 8.’ This is an impressive document running to 260 pages that lists 118 contributors and has sixty-eight pages of references. [...]