Mick Hartley

The dangers of leaving private clinics unregulated. GenderGP is run by Helen Webberley and her husband Michael – long term fans of dishing out puberty blockers and hormones virtually on request to troubled teens. From the Times:

A teenager was prescribed “dangerously high” levels of hormones that could have resulted in sudden death, a judge said as he warned of the perils of online transgender treatments.

Sir Andrew McFarlane, the president of the family division of the High Court, said in a ruling on Wednesday that there was “very significant concern” over children “accessing cross-hormone treatment from any offshore, online, unregulated private clinic”.

McFarlane had heard evidence from an expert witness that the dosage of hormones prescribed to the teenager by GenderGP after just a single online consultation with a counsellor was so high it was “highly abnormal and frankly negligent”….

At the heart of the case was a 16-year-old, referred to in the ruling as J, who was born female before beginning a course of cross-hormone treatment at the start of last year.

The autistic teenager is biologically female and has a history of anorexia and self-harm….

It is the latest controversy around the clinic, which was set up in 2015 by Helen Webberley, 54, a doctor from south Wales, and her husband Michael, 57, a former gastroenterologist. It is able to defy NHS guidelines because it is private.

Michael Webberley was struck off in 2022 for “wide-ranging failings” in prescribing hormone treatments to patients as young as nine without proper assessments. One teenager was prescribed testosterone without any consultation of medical records. They took their own life a few months later.

A Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) panel found there had been a “catalogue of failings” in relation to his care of the seven patients between February 2017 and June 2019.

None of this is mentioned on GenderGP’s website, in which he describes himself as “a highly experienced and respected consultant physician of 23 years’ standing.”

Helen Webberley is the public face of GenderGP. She was found to have committed serious misconduct by an MPTS panel in 2022.