Mermaids Trustee Doctors & Their Influence on the NHS (Part 2)

The Mermaids Trustee in GLADD & GLADD’s Nationwide Gender Identity Affirmation Medical Schools Charter

As I have described previously, GLADD UK (the Association of LGBTQ+ Doctors & Dentists) is a highly influential national Special Interest Group which has been granted extensive input to NHS education and policies despite their extreme positions regarding so-called gender identity. GLADD is a member of the British Medical Association’s Equality, Diversity & Inclusion advisory group and ‘regularly reviews the equality impact of policies for the General Medical Council and medical Royal Colleges’. In 2019, GLADD even contributed to the Parliamentary Women and Equalities Committee’s inquiry into health and social care for LGBT people.

The General Medical Council’s Guide for LGBT patients was produced with GLADD and Stonewall, while GLADD is also a member of the GMC’s Strategic Equality, Diversity and Inclusion forum. In 2022, the GMC also invited GLADD to participate in the review of Good Medical Practice, the GMC's professional guidance and standards document for doctors. Considering the level of professionalism shown by a certain GLADD committee member in recent months, this is somewhat ironic and alarming. Bizarrely, the same committee member - Dr Joseph Hartland - recently led a teaching series about professionalism (p.18) for ASME (Association for the Study of Medical Education) which intimated that ‘traditional models of professionalism’ are ‘outdated and no longer fit for purpose’. This fits with gender identity activists’ belief that reality can simply be changed by ‘queering’ the definition of words such as professionalism, care and harm. Words mean whatever I want them to mean.

Summarising who is welcome to join them, GLADD’s website states ‘we open our membership to any doctor, dentist, medical or dental student who supports the values and constitution that GLADD stands for’. As GLADD’s resources page links to Stonewall, WPATH, GIRES, GIDs and the Proud Trust, it is clear that this would not include LGB doctors and dentists who are gender critical. It should also be noted that GLADD is one of the partner organisations behind the NHS Rainbow Badges scheme, alongside Stonewall, the LGBT Foundation and the LGBT Consortium.

Considering this extensive level of influence, it is hugely concerning that GLADD wrote to the British Medical Journal as recently as February 2023 outlining that they are seeking to stop healthcare professionals being allowed to ‘favour one gender identity over another’ when treating patients via their proposed definition of conversion therapy. In this letter, GLADD stated that they want the government to implement a ‘robust trans-inclusive ban on so-called conversion therapy’. This means that doctors would not be able to favour the reality of a patient’s intact body over their imagined (and often very changeable) ‘gender identity’. Doctors would be required to affirm a patient’s self-proclaimed gender identity rather than maintain their healthy body, opting for the path of irreversible surgery or hormones whenever a patient requests it. This is clearly a very extreme position which would lead to widespread medical harm. The majority of the public are also unaware that GLADD is lobbying to put this into the NHS.

However that is explicitly what GLADD is doing with their gender affirmation only Medical Schools Charter, which 80% of UK medical schools have signed despite it including the promise that doctors will ‘affirm patients’ gender identity’. According to GLADD’s website, no new medical schools have signed this charter since November 2022. However, with only 8 medical schools left to sign the charter, GLADD clearly remains desperate to put pressure on the remaining medical schools to do so. In June 2023, Dr Joseph Hartland advertised it in Attitude magazine, somewhat ironically stating ‘The General Medical Council is clear on not letting your personal biases affect healthcare’.

Attitude’s article states ‘The Charter has already had significant success, with 36 of 44 UK medical schools signed up in 18 months. Jo is determined to sign up the remaining eight’. If GLADD did manage to gain 100% of UK medical school leadership signatures, it is clear that this organisation would use this to lobby the government further for a change in the legal definition of conversion therapy to one that would clearly put vulnerable patients at risk of undergoing irreversible procedures in order to ‘affirm [their] gender identity’.

Interestingly, Sex Matters carried out a recent campaign in which they sent Hannah Barnes’ book Time to Think to each medical school who have signed the GLADD charter, in order to ask them to read this book and potentially reconsider their signature. While no medical schools appear to have removed their signatures yet, no new schools have signed the charter for 9 months. This appears to show some awareness that the other schools’ EDI-prompted rush to sign may have been a little hasty. Dr Joseph Hartland responded by writing a ‘fact check’ in response to Sex Matters’ letter and book campaign, which accused Sex Matters of ‘misinformation or misrepresentation which may result in harm’. This response was both published on the GLADD charter website and sent to the medical school signatories.

Considering GLADD’s continuous promotion of healthcare staff being made to ‘affirm patients’ gender identity’, it seems very relevant that GLADD’s Trans Rep Dr Katie McDowell is also a current Trustee of the charity Mermaids. Interestingly, in recent months both Dr McDowell and Dr Hartland appear to have been removed from GLADD’s committee page. However, a current reference to Dr McDowell being GLADD’s Trans Rep remains on their Activism page. Mermaids is currently under investigation by the Charity Commission for potential ‘serious systemic failings’ and their trustees page carries a regulatory alert. Dr Katie McDowell was described in this article from October 2022 as a doctor working in paediatrics who refers to biological sex as being ‘a concept’.

In GLADD’s Trans Rep committee profile below (now taken down from their website), it states that Dr Katie McDowell is a Mermaids trustee ‘interested in [changing] the medical school curriculum to better represent the needs of trans & non-binary patients’. As previously described, GLADD’s medical schools charter is affirmation only and so this Mermaids trustee’s stated aim would appear to have had some influence.

Current Mermaids Trustee Also Trans Rep for the LGBTQ+ Association of Doctors & Dentists (GLADD UK) Who Wrote National Medical Schools Charter