Unfortunately New Scientist magazine has added prejudiced interpretation in their reporting of the Endocrine Society's draft 'Guidelines on Endocrine Treatment of Transsexuals'. Transsexual teens are not "confused". If they were there would be no thought of assisting them to become the sex with which they identify. Neither do they "choose" their gender. No one would choose the difficult path that leads to changing sex.

Unfortunately the draft guidelines have their own prejudices, which hopefully will be eradicated before the guidelines are finalised, since they have no place in the published works of an internationally respected body for medical and biological science. There are neither medical nor ethical justifications for any of the delays they recommend. Indeed there is plentiful evidence that such delay is unnecessary, and unhelpful.

The consistent reason behind all those intended delays is a wish to avoid harm by intervening in a patient who might change their mind, but that ignores the certain harm to the lives of those unnecessarily delayed, not least given the lack of acceptance of the child's most central identity that indicates. No hormones until 16 means a female puberty commencing on average 7 years later than her peers, which isolates terribly. No intervention until male-scale Tanner 2-3 means height, hands and feet much larger than other girls. Making a girl live with male genitalia until 18 is the most wicked way of enforcing sexual abstinence.

The only "evidence" behind the belief in delay and non-acceptance - papers reporting changes of mind in studies intended to promote cruel methods designed to force children to hide their true feelings - all turn out to be fatally flawed, with poor selection of subjects, inadequate records, and no-follow-up.

This is what comes from including mental health practitioners (MHP) in the guidelines panel. People who see no need to declare a conflict of interest in writing recommendation that they be employed in all cases. Or in misusing an Endocrine Society publication to promote their side in the current battle to have transsexuality removed from the lists (DSM and ICD) of mental disorders (and instead recognised as a physical mismatch of brain to body), because most people with transsexuality score within normal limits on all mental health indices, and reduce the involvement of MHPs to those cases where mental disorder seems possible, as with all other conditions.