A private clinic offering puberty blockers to British kids questioning their gender is registered in Singapore — where the powerful drugs aren’t given to children.
GenderGP is ran by Dr Helen Webberley, an ex-NHS GP who describes herself as an ‘advocate for LGBTQ+ healthcare rights and inclusivity’.
Critics told MailOnline GenderGP has shattered any ‘pretence’ that it cares about those rights by setting up in the south east Asian nation.
Her business, which boasts of helping anyone ‘however old they are’, advertises its £270 puberty blocking injections online, despite campaigners calling for an urgent crackdown on ‘cowboy clinics’.
Children can no longer get the drugs on the NHS after a landmark ruling last month, meaning they have to go private to get them.
Dr Helen Webberley is the face of private care for gender questioning youth in the UK an area of increasing controversy in the wake of the Cass review
Health chiefs said there was no evidence the drugs, which pause physical changes of puberty like breast development and the growth of facial hair, were either safe or effective.
Ministers have since pledged to ‘look carefully’ at ordering a ban on private clinics after a bombshell report by expert paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass expressed concern over their behaviour.
In the wake of the review, a defiant GenderGP said children ‘will suffer and die’ if the Cass review recommendations are taken forward.
GenderGP is an off-shore organisation that’s registered in Singapore, which doesn’t recognise gay marriage.
The island nation only repealed a ban on sex between men in 2022.
Singapore also doesn’t permit any under-18s to get puberty blockers and cross sex hormones on its equivalent of the NHS.
Kids can get hormones privately from the age of 16, however.
Because it is based outside the UK, it does not need to be registered with the regulatory body the Care Quality Commission.
The landmark Cass review on gender care for children in the UK put services like that of Dr Webberley’s under the microscope.
Led by expert paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, the scathing review found children were being set on a path of irreversible change despite ‘remarkably weak evidence’ to support medical treatment like puberty blockers and cross sex hormones.
Dr Cass’s review also singled out private services, finding GPs had been ‘pressurised to prescribe hormones’ by patients who had seen a private clinician.
The report, which ran to nearly 400 pages, issued a stern warning over ‘the use of unregulated medications and of providers that are not regulated within the UK’.
Dr Cass said GPs should resist attempts by private providers to prescribe puberty blockers or hormones, ‘particularly if that private provider is acting outside NHS guidance’.
UK advocacy group LGB Alliance chief executive Kate Barker told MailOnline: ‘Unregulated private clinics that sell puberty blockers to these children are cashing-in on their confusion.
‘Any pretence at “caring” is debunked by the hypocrisy of registering a clinic in a tax-haven which is actively hostile to gay rights.’
Dr Webberley’s GenderGP offers a range of treatments to youngsters experiencing doubts over their gender identity.
Its website states that it doesn’t enforce a strict age criterion for assessment and doesn’t require parental consent.
However, it does add children don’t need medical intervention until they reach a particular stage of puberty.
It uses EU-based prescribers to issue scripts for drugs like puberty blockers and hormones which are valid in the UK under a post-Brexit agreement.
This allows patients, even children, to bypass NHS guidelines on who should get these drugs.
On its F&Q page explaining its system it states that UK pharmacies are ‘not allowed to refuse to dispense’ such scripts without ‘good reason’.
In the wake of the Cass review, GenderGP issued a defiant message via social media, claiming children will die if the measures recommended are implemented in the NHS.
‘We know children and young people will suffer and die if these recommendations are implemented,’ it wrote in a message shared by Dr Webberley herself.
It went on to say: ‘GenderGP will continue to provide help for all people of any age who are transgender and who are seeking gender-affirming care.’
GenderGP described itself as being ‘owned by Singapore based GenderGP PTE Ltd, a global organisation which provides advocacy services for LGBTQI+ people around the world’.
Its website makes no reference to LGBT rights in its host nation.
Dr Webberley is not a stranger to controversy, previously celebrating news that 70 children aged three and four had been referred to NHS for gender treatment.
In 2018, she was convicted of running an independent medical agency without being registered and fined £12,000.
Later in 2022 she was suspended by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) over a range of charges that included failing to provide good clinical care in 2016 to three female patients, aged 11, 12 and 17, who were transitioning to boys.
GenderGP’s Singaporean HQ where the business that dishes out controversial drugs to youngsters in the UK
In its determination the panel found 36 allegations, including failing to provide adequate follow-up care to a 12-year-old who was prescribed testosterone, were proved.
Dr Webberley was suspended for two months by the MPTS but vowed to fight the ruling.
A year later in 2023 the suspension was overruled by the High Court who found the MPTS panel to be ‘confused, clearly wrong in places, and it omitted reference to important evidence’.
Investigations meant Dr Webberley had been suspended on an interim basis since May 2017 on patient safety grounds.
The appeal allowed Dr Webberley to continue practising without restriction.
But the same isn’t true for her husband and former medic Michael Webberley.
An MPTS tribunal in 2022 struck him off the UK medical register for what it called a ‘catalogue of failings’ in relation to his care of the seven patients between February 2017 and June 2019.
One was aged just nine-years-old with another, a teenager, killing themselves in the months that followed.
Mr Webberley was found, with all seven patients, to have provided treatment that wasn’t clinically indicated or had been prescribed without adequate tests, examinations or assessments.
Michael Webberley was struck off the UK medical register for a ‘catalogue of failings’ in relation to his care of the seven patients between February 2017 and June 2019
He’d reached diagnoses of gender dysphoria – ‘a sense of unease a person may have because of mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity’, according to the NHS – based on inadequate information and failed to gain informed consent from patients.
The tribunal also found he had acted ‘outside the limits of his expertise’ as a consultant gastroenterologist and had failed to establish multi-disciplinary teams.
In a number of cases, Mr Webberley had taken care of the patients after restrictions had been placed on his wife’s practice.
The most concerning case was for a 17-year-patient referred to in the proceedings as ‘Patient W’ who contacted Mr Webberley in 2018.
They had become unhappy at the long waiting lists for NHS treatment and said in an email that they wanted to transition as soon as possible as it would have a ‘massively positive impact’ on their mental health.
‘I have been waiting to go on hormones so long now and it means so much to me,’ they added. ‘I am so happy it is finally happening.’
Dr Webberley diagnosed Patient W as gender dysphoric without checking information with their GP.
The tribunal also found that he prescribed testosterone when it wasn’t clinically indicated and without establishing whether the risks were lower than the risks to the patient’s mental and physical health.
Patient W had been diagnosed with Asperger’s and had ‘complex’ and long-standing mental health issues but it ‘did not appear’ that Mr Webberley was aware of them, and he’d failed to obtain the patient’s medical records, the tribunal concluded.
Patient W died by suicide just three months later.
MailOnline approached Dr Webberley and GenderGP for comment.
Source: Mail Online
