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Dr. Jillian Spencer worked at the Queensland Children’s Hospital (QCH) that follows the Australian Standards of Care ‘affirmation-only’ model that puts a child on a path of social transition (change of name, pronouns and clothing) and moves to puberty blockade, cross sex hormones and surgeries.
Dr Spencer was also aware of the growing evidence of harm exposed by multiple European systematic reviews in Finland, Denmark, Sweden as well as the U.K. Cass review commissioned by the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS).
All of the reviews led to countries abandoning the ‘affirmation-only’ model where children were fast-tracked to medicalisation – Dr. Spencer was concerned that children presenting with gender distress at the QCH and who were offered a single pathway were not being given the psychological, social and developmental assessments necessary to explore the full range of factors contributing to their gender distress.
After speaking out, QCH placed Dr. Spencer on leave awaiting a hearing in the administrative industrial tribunal on multiple fronts including discrimination, whistleblower protections, and unfair dismissal under Queensland law.
The landmark four-year 2024 U.K. Cass Review and its commissioned systematic reviews by the University of York team concluded that gender medicine was built on sand – there was ‘weak’ and ‘poor’ evidence of benefit and emerging data regarding long-term harm. Over the past 18 months, the U.K. many European countries and more than 20 U.S. states have severely restricted the medicalisation of youth.
One of the Cass systematic reviews focused on the guidelines for the Standards of Care (SOC) for gender dysphoria reviewed 23 international and national guidelines for youth gender medicine using the AGREE II tool which scores areas like methodological rigour and editorial independence on a scale of 1–100%.
The Australian SOCs developed under Dr. Michelle Telfer, Director of Gender Services at the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) scored 19 out of 100 for its lack of rigour and 25 out of 100 for its lack of editorial independence. While the combined rating across a range of factors for Australia’s SOCs was a mere 43 out of 100 falling into the category – not recommended for practice.
Any ordinary reader, but especially medical or health professionals and politicians would expect an immediate pause to Australia’s gender medical practice following these damning results post-Cass. Yet Australian practitioners, peak bodies, politicians and the mainstream media dismissed the Cass review within 24 hours as inapplicable to Australia.
The failure of the Cass Review to shift the conversation mobilised a group of medical and legal experts to launch a new organisation – the Coalition for Advancing Scientific Care (CASC) to coordinate efforts of all those challenging the affirmation-only medical model for gender medicine.
The CASC inaugural conference was held in Adelaide on October 17-18 with international speakers including Riittakerttu Kaltiala who leads Finland’s national gender clinic along with Australian experts including Dr. Roberto D’Angelo – Psychiatrist, Alison Clayton – Paediatrician, Dylan Wilson – Consultant Psychiatrist, Patrick Clarke – Psychiatrist and Belle Lane – Barrister.
Unlike the U.K.’s national health service, Australia’s federal system allows both politicians and doctors to kick the can down the road – hoping that when the music stops someone else will be blamed.
Australia’s Federal Health Minister, Mark Butler commissioned a national review of gender medicine yet at the same time said that state health ministers must make their own decision regarding puberty blockers that underscores the failure of national leadership in this matter.
This is where CASC comes in as it seeks to challenge the current intransigence in Australia to the risks and harms associated with paediatric gender medicine. Please visit the website at www.casc.ltd for more information.