Leaked messages reveal that a physician at the NHS trans office approved treatments like allowing individuals to have both male and female testicles.
Messages from a cache of files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which publishes guidelines that have had an impact on NHS treatment, were leaked last month.
They demonstrated that doctors are prescribing puberty blockers and carrying out life-changing procedures even though they are aware that adults and children may not fully comprehend the long-term effects. One doctor described a transgender woman who underwent cancer as a result of her testosterone therapy.
Recent NHS guidelines allow some patients who have sex dysphoria to switch to a different gender and receive care through hormone replacement therapy and surgery.
Nevertheless, The Telegraph has received unredacted photos of the leaked messages that identify a prominent NHS physician, Jonathan Arcelus, a professor of mental health and trans health at the University of Nottingham, as one of those discussing and applauding questionable techniques that are now prohibited on the NHS.
Prof. Arcelus is a member of WPATH and practices as a medical physician at the NHS’s Nottingham National Centre for Transgender Health, where he provides emotional support to people, hormone therapy, and recommendations for gender-related operation.
The pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass published the monument Cass Review earlier this year. NHS England commissioned the report in 2020 in response to a sizable surge in patients whose gender identity services were being assessed by under-18s and questioned by them. It came to the conclusion that children were let down by a lack of studies and “remarkably poor” information regarding female treatment interventions.
Dr. Cass highly criticized WPATH in her report, claiming that while it had been “highly influential in directing international practice,” the University of York’s appraisal process had determined that its “guidelines were found to lack developmental rigor.”
Refusing to share data
Dr. Derek Glidden, who like Prof. Arcelus is also a member of the Nottingham National Centre for Transgender Health, is its clinical director, and is NHS England’s national specialty adviser for gender dysphoria, faced criticism for denying to release patient data to the Cass Review.
However, in the leaked WPATH messages, seen by The Telegraph, which form part of an internal message board discussing standards of care for non-binary patients, various members discuss a range of procedures, including patients keeping their original genitalia, as well as having all genitalia removed entirely.
The thread begins with one member asking how they come up with appropriate standards and best practices for non-binary patients, adding:” I’ve found more and more patients recently requesting’ non-standard’ procedures such as top surgery without nipples, nullification, and phallus-preserving vaginoplasty”.
In response to the message thread, Prof Arcelus suggests that such controversial procedures may become” standard” in future, and, as such, should not be referred to as “non-standard”.
According to the unredacted screenshots, Prof Arcelus said:” Is’ non-standard’ procedures the best term to use? Any other terms that could be used to describe these kinds of procedures without having to describe them could they become standard in the future?
In 2022, WPATH, which is a self-regulated membership body, published its updated Standards of Care: Version 8. The guidelines, which have since received widespread criticism from gender-sensitive campaigners and medical professionals, were co-chaired by Prof. Arcelus.
The new guidance, which he oversaw, includes a chapter on “non-binary identities” as well as a chapter on “eunuchs,” which describes groups of people who have been castrated as well as those who have been “assigned male at birth and wish to eliminate masculine physical characteristics, masculine genitals, or genital functioning.”
Eunuch gender identity
It’s deeply concerning that someone so closely connected to the second-largest NHS gender clinic in the UK played a key role in creating the Standards of Care Version 8 from WPATH, a discredited international organization that lobbies worldwide for removing gatekeeping from gender medicine, said Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at the charity Sex Matters.
This is the notorious document that removes all suggested age restrictions for children to undergo irreversible procedures and claims that baby boys can be born with an “eunuch gender identity.”
” It endorsed so-called’ non-binary’ gender surgeries – giving men fake vaginas alongside their penises, or women fake penises alongside their vaginas, or even’ nullification’ – removal of all sex organs. To put it mildly, there is no proof that these bizarre and risky procedures are ever clinically indicated.
It is shocking that Professor Arcelus appears to be suggesting that these Frankenstein procedures might eventually become standard in the WPATH files.
He has questions to ask regarding his ongoing involvement with WPATH and the NHS. Will the clinic he’s linked to start offering these surgeries? Does he believe that the NHS ought to be making them pay?
The Beaumont Society, a charity that supports transgender people, president and CEO Dr. Jane Hamlin, in contrast, stated:” The important issue for trans people is that the most appropriate support and treatment is available for those who need it.
Sex Matters is a group that is openly hostile toward trans people and regularly discredits us. I would not take their statements very seriously.
It would take years before it was offered to anyone because there are waiting lists at all UK gender clinics that are heartbreaking long, even in the unlikely event that these controversial procedures were to be adopted.
For comment, Prof. Arcelus, the University of Nottingham, and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust were contacted.
