Episodes
Thursday Sep 24, 2009
Trans Kids News Update
Thursday Sep 24, 2009
Thursday Sep 24, 2009
Twelve months ago this week I reported in detail from a special conference at Imperial College in London. Clinicians from Britain, Holland and the United States came together to discuss their different views about the best way to treat adolescents with persistent gender identity issues, and a strong desire to permanently change sex. The central issue is about how to deal with Puberty. If clinicians don’t do something to prevent normal puberty occurring then a trans child will undergo changes that are impossible – or at least painful and expensive to reverse in adulthood.Some children say they would rather commit suicide and their parents are understandably frantic. Puberty can be blocked in a way that’s completely reversible. So this is what doctors in several parts of the world are now doing. If the child should change their mind, you stop the drugs and puberty kicks in as though nothing had happened. It buys enough time till the child is older and their course in life is certain. British clinicians have been ultra cautious and conservative though. They fear factors which might be as yet unknown if you meddle with puberty’s course. Paradoxically they weight this more highly than the certain negative outcomes of an unwanted puberty and the results of foreign studies. That was twelve months ago. And on the face of it nothing seems to have changed much today. Clinicians at the UK’s only specialist centre for child and adolescent gender identity patients say they will still only prescribe blocking therapy once puberty has largely completed at the age of 16 – by which time irreversible changes have occurred. What has altered, however, is that the advocates for change – mostly parents of trans children – are getting more of a hearing for their case. In this show we feature a recent interview from BBC Radio Four’s flagship “Today” programme and afterwards I reflect on what mature media coverage does for the debate. You can also listen to my full original interview with Nicky's mother, "Gender Dysphoria, A Mother's Tale", first released in April 2008
Tuesday Sep 30, 2008
Trans Kids on the Block
Tuesday Sep 30, 2008
Tuesday Sep 30, 2008
Back in April this year I interviewed the mother of an intensely gender dysphoric child. She told how her child (now living as a girl) had become increasingly desperate and suicidal as the prospect of a masculine puberty grew larger. Specialists in the UK weren't prepared to medicate in order to delay the irreversible effects her child's body would undergo and, in desperation, she took her child across the Atlantic to Boston instead. The Royal Society of Medicine convened a conference to debate this issue in October. However, the country's leading specialist Professor Richard Green, was concerned that the speakers selected for that conference were mostly based in the "conservative" camp. In response he organised a pre-emptive conference of his own at Imperial College in London, where specialists successfully practicing puberty delay therapy around the world could present their outcome data and experiences. I went along to Richard Green's conference at his invitation and recorded interviews with many of the speakers for this detailed feature.