NHS wrecked bodies of disturbed young people while branding us transphobes

The irony is beyond grotesque. The NHS - which has paid for and encouraged hundreds, if not thousands, of disturbed young people to forever wreck their bodies by changing their birth sex - is now setting up a unit to help them de–transition.

Translated - that means helping them go back to the sex they were when they came into the world. So, having been forced to shut down the Tavistock Clinic - which helped facilitate people changing gender - because it was deemed unsafe the NHS is now opening a unit to help people get back to their birth gender.

Trouble is many of them can’t go back. Many have had breasts removed, taken experimental drugs that mean they can never have kids, that have destroyed their bones, caused seizures, cognitive impairment and permanent mental health problems.

And now that their bodies are destroyed – not to mention their fragile minds - some in the medical profession are finally seeing the monumental harm that’s been inflicted on so many disturbed youngsters who, had they been properly assessed when they asked for help, it would have been discovered they didn’t want to change sex at all.

Some were just depressed others had been bullied, many were autistic. And some were just gay.

Yet our health service allowed them, and in many cases hurried clinicians along, into helping them change sex. Some youngsters were even started on hormone treatment on their second visit. How dangerous and irresponsible is that?

And now, having realising what it’s done , the NHS, after welcome intervention by new Health Secretary Wes Streeting, is now offering a service to try and repair the damage with a bright shiny new NHS unit. And Yes Streeting should be congratulated for this because even now there are people in his own party who still want people under 18 to be given puberty blockers.

The militant British Medical Association wants it too although doctors this week have angrily shouted "Not in My Name" and have written an open letter to their union over its "unethical" demands to give kids these drugs.

But the fact remains NO health service should ever have made changing gender as easy as ours did. When the Tavistock Clinic was doing its irresponsible work - doling out puberty blockers to kids after just a few hours of consultations - there were many of us who warned that in years to come we’d ask ourselves what the Hell we did to a generation of disturbed, fragile young people.

Well, it’s happening now and it hasn’t taken THAT many years and now we’re having to set up a unit to help put the casualties back together. And all this was facilitated and encouraged by doctors and clinicians – people who should have been more responsible with young people’s lives. And let’s not forget the insidious trans lobby and organisations like Stonewall and Mermaids who slated anyone who cautioned against giving young people these drugs as knuckle-dragging transphobes.

We weren’t. We were just concerned that in some cases young people were being used as guinea pigs in what looked like a grotesque experiment.

There were even some who took to the airwaves to tell us that in not allowing young people to take puberty blockers suicide rates among those wanting to change gender had rocketed. It was a lie. An independent review led by Prof Louis Appleby debunked all that and said not only does data NOT support that claim but the way the issue had been discussed on social media was “ insensitive, distressing and dangerous.”

The fact is many of the kids who now want to de transition were simply unhappy people whose gender dysphoria was related to other issues. And how much did this experiment cost? We’ll never know but while we were ploughing money into clinics that helped alter the bodies of fundamentally disturbed young people, while these youngsters were being treated by armies of psychologists, psychiatrists, family therapists, social workers, legions of ordinary people couldn’t get knee ops, hip operations, eye surgery because there was no money and huge waiting lists.

How unfair that there was no money for them but plenty to operate and treat young people who mistakenly believed they wanted to change gender.

But still the message was being hammered home that NHS gender surgery – breast removal, chest reconstructive surgery and genital reconstruction - was vital for trans men and women because not getting it could lead them to take their own lives. Something we now know there’s no real evidence for.

So as well as feeling desperately sorry for the ruined lives of these young people I’m also bloody furious that our money has been squandered by a few dotty clinicians and doctors who have irrevocably harmed God knows how many kids many of whom never wanted to change gender but were just unhappy people living complicated lives they couldn’t deal with.

Well, now thanks to some in our medical profession their lives are now a whole lot more complicated and unhappy than they could ever have imagined. And will be for years to come.

And what’s the betting no-one will ever be held accountable for that?