MISSION: INVESTIGATE – UPPDRAG GRANSKNING

*Children and young trans people have suffered serious side effects and injuries after hormone treatments at Karolinska Hospital. *Despite the fact that doctors at the hospital knew about the injuries, they have not disclosed this to the outside world. *The hospital has stopped new hormone treatments for children, but referred to potential side effects, despite seeing that the treatments caused real damage. *After our publication, the National Board of Health and Welfare completely changed its knowledge support and now writes that “the risks outweigh the benefits”, concerning hormone treatments for minors. *Because diagnosis and treatment are carried out in different clinics, follow-up and responsibility in some cases fall between the chairs.*Parents and children have not received any information about risks. *Through extensive research, we were able to prove that there are at least 13 children who received serious, sometimes permanent damage from the treatment. *When injuries were discovered, the hospital failed to write a deviation report or utrex< the injuries according to Lex Maria (however, this happens after UG’s disclosure).

THE TRANS TRAIN: Episode 1

3 April 2019

The increase of teenage girls with gender dysphoria worry parents and health care staff in several countries – because of the lack of research on the new group of patients. What if the irreversible decision to undergo a gender correction is a mistake?

THE TRANS TRAIN: Episode 2

9 October 2019 – Peachfree Yoghurt YouTube

Swedish politicians argue that fifteen-year-olds with gender dysforia should be allowed to undergo gender reassignment surgery without consent from their parents. Otherwise ​they are at great risk of committing suicide. But is this really true? Mission investigate continues to investigate transgender health care and explore the arguments from politicians.

THE TRANS TRAIN: Episode 3

12 May 2020 – Peachfree Yoghurt Youtube

Aleksa Lundberg, heartbreaking but full of dignity, said she would not have made the same decision now, while recognising there was no going back on the same day the programme was aired. – Twitter comment

THE TRANS TRAIN: Episode 4

Uppdrag Granskning – 2021 – CouchTripper Youtube

When Leo is 11 years old, doctors in transgender care start giving him puberty blockers. There are risks with the treatment, but his family are not informed of them. One day Leo says his body is aching. Mission: Investigate reveals what the doctors at Karolinska University Hospital knew, but didn’t reveal.

“The sex change of children is a big experiment”

CHRISTOPHER GILLBERG – March 14 2019 – Svenska Dagbladet

GOOGLE TRANSLATE – SWEDISH ARTICLE TO ENGLISH

Hundreds of children with gender dysphoria are subjected every year to “treatment” with hormones and then to genital mutilation, completely without a reasonable basis in terms of science, proven experience and often without ethical review. This is written by Professor Christopher Gillberg and others at the University of Gothenburg.

Gillberg: We do not question gender dysphoria

CHRISTOPHER GILLBERG – March 18 2019 – Svenska Dagbladet

GOOGLE TRANSLATE – SWEDISH ARTICLE TO ENGLISH

Representatives of Transammans and RFSL who responded to our debate post in SvD about hormonal treatment and surgical removal of genitalia in children with gender dysphoria do not seem to have read what we have written or what we are referring to against us. Representatives from BUP Region Skåne have also made comments any of which may be misleading.

We, seven clinical researchers, have together, after a total of more than a hundred years of clinical and research experience, questioned the reasonableness of children – many of whom have neuropsychiatric problems – in practice alone before adulthood and after three conversations (which is the rule in Stockholm and also in several places internationally) – can decide whether to carry out treatments with hormones and surgery, treatments that have irreversible biological consequences, and we have pointed out that there is a lack of relevant research in the field. Such decisions as we
are referring to are made many times a year in Sweden, if not in Scania.

The guidelines from the National Board of Health and Welfare that are invoked by BUP Region Skåne have not presented scientific evidence that the treatments in childhood of gender dysphoria with first “symptoms” in the age of 10-17 have any positive effect in any respect. On the other hand, it is positive if Region Skåne has created the conditions for longitudinal follow-up research in the area.

We have not at all questioned the existence of transsexualism or the “phenomenon” of gender dysphoria. We have clearly pointed out in our article that our post should not be interpreted as us questioning the important rights issues that, among other things, the LGBTQ movement is pushing for the right of all adults to live as they want.

We have no preconceived notions about what the research we are calling for will show. As a child psychiatrist, child neurologist, child endocrinologist, child psychologist and brain researcher, we wish that growing children will be helped to have as good an adult life as possible and that they will not have made irreversible decisions on their own that they may regret for the rest of their lives.

Christopher Gillberg – senior professor, senior physician

Eva Billstedt – professor, psychologist

Jovanna Dahlgren – professor, senior physician

Elisabeth Fernell – professor, chief physician

Carina Gillberg – docent, senior physician

Nouchine Hadjikhani – professor, doctor

Darko Sarovic – PHd student, doctor

all working at Gothenburg University and Sahlgrenska University
Hospital

Teenage transgender row splits Sweden as dysphoria diagnoses soar by 1,500%

For several days this week the veteran Swedish journalist Malou von Sivers will cover the same topic in every episode of her nightly TV chat show: the extraordinary rise in diagnoses of gender dysphoria among teenage girls.

Lukas Romson, an equality consultant and one of the country’s leading trans activists, is prepared for the worst. “There will be no serious trans activists in the show, because none of us trusts Malou at all,” he says. “I’m afraid she’ll just use us.”

But the fact that a mainstream programme is devoting so much time to the issue demonstrates just how much the debate has shifted in Sweden over the past year. “It’s been a very big change and very sudden,” Romson adds. “Everyone – but especially young people – feels worse because of what they perceive as the media’s hatred of them.”

The immediate trigger for Von Sivers’s themed week is a report from Sweden’s Board of Health and Welfare which confirmed a 1,500% rise between 2008 and 2018 in gender dysphoria diagnoses among 13- to 17-year-olds born as girls.

But it also reflects a rapid change in public opinion. Just a year ago, there seemed few official obstacles left in the way of young people who wanted gender reassignment treatment.

In the autumn of 2018, the Social Democrat-led government, under pressure from the gay, lesbian and transgender group RFSL, proposed a new law which would reduce the minimum age for sex reassignment medical care from 18 to 15, remove all need for parental consent, and allow children as young as 12 to change their legal gender.

Then in March last year, the backlash started. Christopher Gillberg, a psychiatrist at Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy, wrote an article in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper warning that hormone treatment and surgery on children was “a big experiment” which risked becoming one of the country’s worst medical scandals.

In April, Uppdrag Granskning, an investigative TV programme, followed up with a documentary profiling a former trans man, Sametti, who regretted her irreversible treatment.

In October, the programme turned its fire on the team at Stockholm’s Karolinska University hospital, which specialises in treating minors with gender dysphoria. The unit has been criticised for carrying out double mastectomies on children as young as 14, and accused of rushing through treatment and failing to consider adequately whether patients’ other psychiatric or developmental issues might better explain their unhappiness with their bodies. The Karolinska disputed the claim, saying it carefully assessed each case.

At the same time, Filter magazine profiled the case of Jennifer Ring, a 32-year-old trans woman who hanged herself four years after her surgery. An expert on psychosis who was shown her medical journal by her father, Avi Ring, was quoted as saying that she had shown clear signs of psychosis at the time she first sought treatment for gender dysphoria.

Indeed, the first clinic she approached refused to treat her, citing signs of schizotypal symptoms and lack of a history of gender dysphoria. But the team at Karolinska went ahead. “Karolinska don’t stop anyone; virtually 100% get sex reassignment,” says Ring.

Sweden’s authorities are starting to respond. Shortly before the bill that would have lowered the sex reassignment minimum age was due to be debated in parliament in September, it was shelved, and the Board of Health and Welfare was ordered to reassess the evidence. Its report is due on 31 March…