Britain - Sex change drugs for 12-year-olds. ..
[2008-01-29 Birmingham
Mercury]
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Sex change drugs for 12-year-olds
Jan 28 2008
By Fionnuala Bourke
CHILDREN as young as 12 have travelled to America for controversial
sex change treatment that is banned in Britain.
The Sunday Mercury has discovered that at least three 'gender
confused' youngsters have received drugs to halt puberty, making a sex
change operation easier in later years.
One mother said her son, who has always believed he is a girl, tried
to commit suicide and threatened to cut off his genitals at the
thought of going through adolescence.
Now a Birmingham MP has called for the controversial treatment to be
made available in Britain.
Gender confused children as young as 12 are travelling to America to
receive controversial sex change drugs banned in Britain.
The youngsters have not yet reached puberty but feel strongly that
they were born the wrong sex.
Their parents say UK medics claim the kids are merely exploring their
emotional identities and will grow out of their 'tomboy' or 'cissy'
ways.
The British doctors refuse to give them the medication they
desperately want - even though some of the desperate children have
tried to kill themselves.
So far three British youngsters have turned to the US for the £140 per-
month treatment which suspends puberty and is reversible.
Two had made serious suicide attempts when denied the 'hormone
blockers' drugs by British doctors.
Yet since receiving the treatment they have ceased self-harming.
The effects of the drugs are reversible. So if a young patient changes
their mind and wishes to continue developing in their current
biological sex, then this can still be achieved.
If they wish to pursue a full sex change, then more hormone altering
drugs can be administered once they are older.
The youngest person to be treated this way in Britain was 17. In
Holland, patients can be treated from 16.
Now Birmingham MP Lynne Jones is backing calls for the hormone blocker
drugs to be made available to children suffering from Gender Identity
Disorder (GID) in Britain.
The treatment, which includes drugs such as leuprorelin - also used to
treat prostrate cancer - is readily available in Holland and the US.
But previous guidelines produced by the British Society for
Paediatrics, Endocrinology and Diabetes, based at Birmingham
Children's Hospital, say the blocker drugs can hinder young people's
bone development. They recommended that they should not be
administered until teenagers have completed puberty.
Doctors at the NHS Portman Clinic, London, where most GID cases are
treated in Britain, follow this advice.
But these guidelines are currently being reviewed.
Now a new debate has been sparked following research by Dr Simona
Giordano, a lecturer in bioethics at Manchester University.
She said: "A US specialist has reported having seen three patients
from Britain, all aged 12 to 14, not treated satisfactorily in the UK.
"He has also advised other families who have expressed an interest in
meeting with him.
"Two of the three British patients who have already travelled to
Boston had made serious suicide attempts after and during their
treatment in the UK.
"Neither have attempted self-harm since. "By depriving youngsters this
treatment in Britain, we are depriving them relief from extreme
suffering and exposing them to the anguish and terror of growing in a
body that is experienced as alien.
"The effects of the 'hormone blockers' are easily reversible.
"However, other therapies used at later stages, including
masculinising and feminising hormones and surgery, are more difficult
to reverse and are invasive.
"Current evidence on risks and benefits of 'hormone blockers' in
children and adolescents does not justify the strong resistance of
British specialists.
karen told me god had made a mistake! "This is especially so,
considering the risks of refusal of treatment.
"Many of these people, if they are refused medical help, will do
whatever it takes to get hormonal treatment because they can't cope
with what's happening to them.
"Lives are certainly at risk and the public is widely uninformed about
the matter; even GPs often lack competence to identify problems with
Gender Identity Disorder.
"There is no legal or ethical ground for presuming that a child or
adolescent with GID cannot be competent to make an informed judgement
abut this issue.
"GID is certainly not a mental illness as some medics claim."
Former Midland schoolboy Jamie Cooper previously revealed how she
began the first stages of a sex change when she was 16 in 2001.
The former performing arts student, from Selly Oak, Birmingham, said
she had felt like a girl trapped in a boy's body since she was nine
years-old.
By the time she was 11, all she wanted to do was become a girl after
watching a Jerry Springer show about transsexuals.
And when she was 12, she wrote a letter to her mum saying that she
should have been born a girl. Her family sought medical advice but
Jamie had to wait until she was 16 before receiving hormone treatment.
Dr Giordano said around 40 to 70 new GID cases are treated by British
medics each year.
"GID is a severe medical condition, associated with strong disgust for
the body and profound uncertainty over the sense of self," she said.
"Invariably, growing in this way causes great distress.
"Once they start puberty, trans-boys may develop female secondary sex
characteristics, such as breasts, and may even start to menstruate.
"Meanwhile trans-girls may grow beards and prominent Adam's apples,
experience erections and become taller than average."
Lynne Jones, MP for Selly Oak, has regularly campaigned for the rights
of transsexuals and supports Dr Giordano's findings.
She said: "As long as halting puberty doesn't cause irreversible
changes for the young person, then we should adopt the procedures
common in other counties, such as the Netherlands and the US.
"Each individual case should be treated on its own merit."
Dr Jeremy Kirk, Secretary of British Society for Paediatrics,
Endocrinology and Diabetes, said: "Our guidelines are currently being
reviewed and ratified.
"It is the BSPED view that this condition should only be managed by
appropriately experienced multidisciplinary teams.
"We are actively convening a meeting along with the Royal Society of
Medicine and interested parties to try to resolve the best way to
manage these patients."
In an interview with trans gender children's support group Mermaids,
Dr Dominico Di Ceglie, from the Portman Clinic, justified the
hospital's decision not to treat children who have not completed
puberty.
He said: "In some cases they may introduce some wholly reversible
intervention in the form of hypothalmic blocker which suppress the
production of oestrogens or testosterone and produce a state of
biological neutrality.
"This is likely to be around the age of 15 to 16. It cannot be done
before the growth spurt around puberty because of risk to bone
development and osteoporosis. "
"MUMMY, God has made a mistake - I should have been a girl."
Those were the words that Sheila Lanesbury's child spoke to her at the
age of just four.
Karen was born a boy. But from a very early age all she wanted was
'girls' stuff'.
IT worker Sheila, aged 39, began to realise from an early age that
there was more to her child's interest in all things feminine.
When Sheila sent her to nursery aged two-and-a-half, staff told her
they were concerned.
"Do you know he only plays with a little black dress and likes cooking
with the girls," they told Sheila repeatedly.
By the time Karen was seven years-old, she was officially diagnosed as
having Gender Identity Disorder.
Sheila said: "We followed the recommended line from then. That was to
keep her as a boy at school, but to let her have girl's stuff at home.
"The doctors wanted to see if the condition would resolve itself. But
as Karen got older, it just became more ingrained.
"She started to really struggle being a boy outside the house.
"In the end she became really miserable. She was living a double life
and being forced to pretend to be someone she wasn't when she left our
home.
"Eventually we decided the best thing to do was to let her be herself
all the time.
"Then I was waiting for her to start puberty to see if it would change
her mind. I was hoping for that.
"It does happen. I am a member of Mermaids, a support group for gender
variant children, and this is what has happened with some of the other
families.
"But puberty just sent her into complete depression. She said she
would kill herself if she became a man.
"I tried to get help from the doctors. But they refused to treat her
until she had completed puberty.
"I pleaded with them. After all in Holland and US, children with this
condition receive 'hormone blockers'. But they still refused. They
were determined she must live through full puberty.
"Cases are so rare here and there are so few doctors who are trained
to deal with this.
"They wouldn't move from the guidelines and referred me to a Dutch
team. But as Karen isn't a Dutch national, they couldn't treat her.
"Then one day I found her with a knife. She said: 'I'm going to cut it
off' (her penis). She took a couple of overdoses too. She was 12 years-
old at this stage.
"I knew that if she went through male puberty, she would find a way to
kill herself. If she started to look like a man and lost her voice she
said she would rather be dead.
"I had to do something. "I did more research on the internet and found
a clinic in the US who agreed to treat her. We were the first
international patients they had seen. Others from Britain have
followed since.
"The doctor there prescribes me the 'hormone blockers' and I buy them
online monthly. Me and my daughter's father fund the treatment
ourselves. We get no help from the NHS.
"Karen is 14 now. And she is a much happier person since she began
this treatment in October 2006 when she had just turned 13.
"It has stopped her from going through male puberty. She looks, acts
and feels like a young woman.
"I am so glad. She is pushing right forward. The endocrinologist over
there is just fabulous with her. He has so much empathy.
"But Karen still has a lot to deal with.
"She's started to like boys, but she knows she can't get involved.
"She's been bullied so badly at school.
"She's been slapped in the face and called: 'A chick with a dick.'
"She has to be taught in a much smaller unit because of this. We have
had to get the police involved too.
"I wouldn't want to get out of bed in the morning if it was me. But
she remains positive.
"The 'hormone blockers' have given her time to think.
"But she's never had any doubt. She's always been completely sure that
she has got the wrong brain in the right body, or the right brain in
the wrong body.
"She's very strong. But there's only so much she can take.
"Unless you know someone who has a personal experience of this, it is
difficult to understand.
"Your first instinct is to think: 'This is a bit strange.' "I knew I
had to do something when Karen told me God had made a mistake when she
was four.
"She is keen to receive treatment for a full sex change as soon as she
can." l Names have been changed to protect privacy.
--
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