I spent years investigating the Tavistock clinic – I have serious concerns about its replacement

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November 13, 2023
In the media
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I spent years investigating the Tavistock clinic – I have serious concerns about its replacement
Recently I attended a conference in New York, hosted by Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), a US-based non-profit, where I was asked to give a presentation on ‘lessons from the largest youth gender clinic in the world’ – for that’s what GIDS was.

The conference was attended by professionals from other youth gender clinics around the Western world, which – like GIDS – have also received a rapid increase in referrals. And, like GIDS, they have seen a significant shift in the demographics of the young people being referred. But clinics in other parts of Europe responded in a very different way...

...As for the conference organisers, SEGM has been branded ‘anti-trans’ by some. I saw no evidence of this. The conference venue was kept secret to protect those taking part; some had stated on social media that they planned to disrupt the event...

...I am a cautious journalist. I’m sometimes criticised for it. I did my homework before agreeing to take part, and before the BBC, as my then employer, gave me permission to do so. Members of the organising committee answered every question I had, including who funded them. And it’s not ‘far-Right, Christian evangelicals’. Faith was entirely absent from the conference. Most attendees work, or previously worked, directly with gender-questioning children. Hundreds, if not thousands, of them. Others were academics and experts in evidence-based medicine. Whatever anyone present at the conference thought about the best way to help gender- questioning youth, everyone agreed that they deserved good evidence-based care.