The medical affairs committee of the nation’s peak endocrinology society opposed the prescription of hormones to children and expressed deep reservations over the lack of evidence underpinning transgender affirmative medicine standards of care adopted by children’s hospitals in explosive advice to a peak medical college.
The Medical Affairs Committee of the Endocrine Society of Australia – a subspecialty college of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians – did not support the endorsement of gender-affirmative standards of care developed by influential doctors at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, pointing to concerns about the lack of evidence behind practices including placing children on puberty blockers at a very young age.
The views of the ESA’s medical affairs committee are contained in a letter to the RACP, which in late 2019 was consulting the profession at the request of then health minister Greg Hunt who had requested advice on the treatment of gender dysphoria in children and adolescents.
The ESA’s letter reporting the position of its medical affairs committee advised that, after examining RCH policy documents, the specialist endocrinologists who made up the committee did not support giving puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to children and raised concerns that the effects of puberty blockers were not reversible.
It is understood the consultations leading up to the drafting of the advice were highly charges, with some committee meetings descending into screaming matches between experts amid accusations the RCH-dominated pediatricians faction was made up of activist doctors.
The external reviewer also challenged the RCH argument that parents who did not want treatment imposed on their children were raising their child’s risk of suicide.
“The RCH argument that non-treatment in the face of gender dysphoria is not neutral, uses an exaggerated risk of suicidality to make this unbalanced argument seem necessary.”