1./ How did this scandal happen? How did an 8 year old girl in this clip from @libsoftiktok end up injected with a drug invented to treat prostate cancer in old men? Let me tell you how fake science turned her hospital in Boston into a Ground Zero of this medical disaster. 1/18
1./ How did this scandal happen? How did an 8 year old girl in this clip from @libsoftiktok end up injected with a drug invented to treat prostate cancer in old men? Let me tell you how fake science turned her hospital in Boston into a Ground Zero of this medical disaster. 1/18
2. The girl was treated at the Gender Management Service (GeMS) Clinic at Boston Children's Hospital. The clinic was founded in 2007 by Norman Spack, an endocrinologist, or hormone specialist. He was on a hormone mission ever since witnessing a trial in Holland a few years before
3./ In the mid 90s doctors there began giving a small group of teens GnRH agonists or puberty blockers to "pause" puberty. Spack now advocated for this to be embraced globally. He ignored the flaws of the trial, dissected here brilliantly by Michael Biggs. youtube.com/watch?v=9VHlkE…
4./ There had been no animal trials, nor human trials with a control group. Success was wildly exaggerated. The first patient (B) was revealed later to be deeply depressed and suicidal. Spack seemed more struck with how the kids looked; which he describes here as ...beautiful!🤔
5./ Despite a lack of evidence to back puberty blockers Spack stated openly he was "salivating" to start using them on kids. He got the chance when he was appointed as the first head of the GeMS clinic in Boston. He could now salivate as much as he liked. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
6./ Spack didn't stop there. In 2013 he wrote the Endocrine Society's Transgender Guidelines so that they now advocated puberty blockers. It was seen as "an attitudinal shift to be able to say the Endocrine Society supports this." It was milked mercilessly endocrinenews.endocrine.org/blocking-puber…
7./ The guidelines would continually be quoted as medical gospel and feature in the Keira Bell case. Yet how carefully had they been drawn up? In a @TEDTalks lecture Spack himself admitted he breached them when treating the son of Susie Green, CEO of UK trans charity Mermaids.
8./ Spack admits he "did something a little bit innovative". Innovative? He gave cross-sex hormones to her 13 year old. He then helped arranged the boy's castration in Thailand at 16; an age illegal in the UK & US. If you're thinking this is all rather Wild West you'd be right.
9./ Spack justified this medical abuse with reference to nothing more scientific than a posed magazine cover of twin boys. He said the difference between the boy who is going through puberty and the twin he treated with blockers "says it all". Here's why it doesn't.