A Demand for Transparency on $26 Million Grant for Gender Diversity Research
By Malcolm Roberts
$26 million in public money has been set aside – in the middle of a financial crisis – specifically for gender diversity research grants within the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
While improving healthcare for the LGBT+ community is important, what we politely call ‘gender diversity’ often translates into a range of medical systems in which individuals, and increasingly children, are encouraged to reject their biological gender and instead lean on severe and permanent medical interventions.
This is a matter of public concern, particularly for Australian parents and especially if it is to be funded by taxpayers.
Crucially, this $26 million grant specifically mentions transgender children, adolescents, and young adults as part of its area of focus. Does this mean that public money will be used to facilitate research into puberty blockers and surgery for minors? What about the funding of therapy that encourages children to transition into a life-long relationship with the medical industry? Has anybody asked the public if this is an appropriate use of funds?
The key here is transparency.
Given the pace at which ‘affirmation’ treatments are racing ahead without wider community consultation and alongside a growing body of criticism, including from patients who believe they were rushed into surgery they regret, there needs to be guarantees, boundaries, and safeguards put in place to ensure public money is not spent on medical research contrary to the public interest. So far, we have seen the removal of safeguards where parental rights have been usurped by government policy.
It is imperative that we are given answers to these questions when we consider the harrowing backlash from the UK and US to the gender transition of children where court cases are being lodged by de-transitioners who have permanent, life-altering consequences to deal with and only limited support from the medical community that was all too keen to set them on the path of transition. Their stories are part of a rising body of medical evidence that suggests this entire industry needs to have a re-think when it comes to regulation.
There is good reason to suspect that Australia is on the same path as the US and UK.
An Insight+ article from May 8, 2023, titled, Male participants will no longer be the norm in medical research, it is noted that this grant will:
‘…explore models of care for sexuality and gender diverse people with innate variations of sex characteristics. This is the largest ever investment in LGBTIQA+ health and medical research by an Australian government.’
Announced at the WorldPride 2023 Human Rights Conference, Mark Butler said, ‘While many LGBTIQA+ people live happy and healthy lives, others continue to experience discrimination, stigma, isolation, harassment, and violence – all of which leads to poorer health and mental health. The sector called on the government to develop an action plan – we listened and we have acted.’
The detail offered by the NHMRC is cryptic in the way most government grant descriptions tend to be. There are four streams of research outlined, all of which say effectively nothing. The MRFF – Emerging Priorities and Consumer Driven Research Initiative – 2023 Models of Care for Sexuality & Gender Diverse People & People with Innate Variations of Sex Characteristics Grant Opportunity says:
Stream 1: develop, implement, and/or evaluate the effectiveness of multidisciplinary, patient-centred, and sustainable models of care for sexuality diverse people, through co-design with consumers and/or community-controlled providers
Stream 2: develop, implement and/or evaluate the effectiveness of multidisciplinary, patient-centred and sustainable models of care for sexuality and/or gender diverse people experiencing intersectional disadvantage, through co-design with consumers and/or community-controlled providers
Stream 3: through a competitively selected national consortium, conduct research to develop, implement and evaluate the effectiveness and acceptability of multidisciplinary, patient-centred models of physical and mental health care for transgender and gender diverse children, adolescents and young adults including those with intersectional disadvantages, through co-design with consumers
Stream 4: through a competitively selected national consortium, conduct research to develop, implement and evaluate the effectiveness and acceptability of multidisciplinary, patient-centred models of physical and mental health care for people with innate variations of sex characteristics, including those with intersectional disadvantages, through co-design with consumers.
The outcomes similarly tell us very little about exactly what this research will involve.
Stream 1: improving the physical and mental health of sexuality diverse people including those who live in regional, remote and rural areas
Stream 2: improving the physical and mental health of sexuality and/or gender diverse people experiencing intersectional disadvantage
Stream 3: improving the physical and mental health of transgender and gender diverse children, adolescents and young adults
Stream 4: improving the physical and mental health of people born with innate variations of sex characteristics.
The grant will only be available to certain registered medical research institutes, universities, Commonwealth entities, and corporations on the approved MRFF Eligible Organisations list.
While we can hope that the bulk of this $26 million would be spent on the minority of intersex people who have very real and serious medical conditions that require complicated surgery, and the general welfare of LGBTQ+ people, it seems more likely that it will be gifted to universities and gender transition initiatives inline with the current popular social media and corporate zeitgeist.
Gender dysphoria, for which gender transition is one avenue of treatment, was once considered a serious but rare medical condition that largely resolved itself during the course of puberty and early adulthood. Most children grow out of their confusion or realise that they are queer.
Instead of waiting and letting these cases resolve without harming the physical bodies of these children, there is a new philosophy that seeks to capture and even encourage these feelings of confusion, leading to a rapid rise of dysphoric children headed toward the transition industry and a lifetime of medical dependence.
There have even been some medical professionals that warn transgenderism has become a social contagion – something that is seen as ‘cool’ by kids who get caught up in the movement where they are snatched by the medical industry. Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire put together a documentary called, What is a Woman? which featured some of these stories and showed what is, in my opinion, a medical industry that needs to be slowed down.
That is why One Nation is asking, will this $26 million go towards ensuring more rigorous and stringent rules regarding the protection of children, adolescents, and young adults to make sure that only those suffering from true gender dysphoria end up on the path to transition?
It seems highly unlikely.
The market saturation within schools, social media, and brand marketing campaigns has turned gender dysphoria from a condition into an activist community where an ecosystem of therapists, hospitals, influencers, Big Pharma, institutions, and social groups directly profit from encouraging individuals to reject their biology.
Last Thursday, I proposed some questions regarding this $26 million allocation of funds, including visibility about who has applied for this grant so far.
We live in a time where cultural movements are escalating the risk posed to children’s immediate social, mental, and physical health. At the very least, we should be learning from the UK and US about the so-called ‘safety’ of treatments such as puberty blockers, which are often viewed as the least intrusive affirmation care, and offered to children in many countries starting from 8 years old. In Australia, they are available to children if their parents consent.
Will the $26 million investigate the long-term effects of puberty blockers and confirm whether or not they are truly ‘reversible’?
Again, this is unlikely.
It is my view that children cannot consent to life-altering medical interventions that will almost certainly leave them sterile and prevent the natural onset of adulthood (which, incidentally, resolves most feelings of dysphoria). If we are to spend money as a nation on the medical care of gender-diverse individuals, it should be to investigate what has already happened and report back to the public the truth beneath the promotional social media trends. Parents, in particular, deserve this clarity.
We do not want to see Australia repeat the mistakes of other nations where, in the US, children as young as 12 are removing their breasts while the National Library of Medicine notes that there has been a thirteen-fold rise in procedures in adolescents. These figures end in 2020. This should shock any parent.
If we’re going to spend $26 million, we need to know what we’re buying into.
