Dr Helen Webberley on LBC: trans healthcare, with Tom Swarbrick, LBC
When a doctor pushes back on gender-affirming care, people assume it must be evidence-based: that the resistance comes from careful clinical reasoning. So the pushback feels authoritative, even when it isn't.
What I was pointing to there is something I've seen again and again: the resistance so often comes not from evidence but from a gap in training. Gender diversity simply isn't taught well in medical education, and a doctor who has never been given the tools to understand it will fill that gap with fear. That isn't a character flaw, it's a system failure. But it does mean that a paediatrician's discomfort is not the same thing as a clinical verdict, and it shouldn't be treated as one. The people who pay the price for that confusion are the children waiting for care.