Keira Bell's experience reflects Tavistock's protocol, not standard care
Dr Helen Webberley on Times Radio: the gender debate, with Jo Coburn, Times Radio
Keira Bell's experience proves that puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones is the standard clinical pathway for trans young people, and that her harm reflects what gender-affirming care looks like everywhere.
What Keira Bell went through was specific to the Tavistock's own protocol, which required puberty blockers for a full year before hormones regardless of age or individual circumstance. That protocol was wrong, and it was not what the Endocrine Society guidelines or the WPATH Standards of Care actually say. Good clinical guidance is individualised: it does not impose a fixed sequence on every young person as a condition of access. Keira Bell's experience is a real account of real harm, and it deserves to be taken seriously on its own terms, not used to indict a global standard of care that the Tavistock was not following.
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