My letter to the Irish Times yesterday… I can’t imagine why they didn’t publish it!
A chara,
The Irish Times seems increasingly determined to avoid a story even when it is sitting directly in front of them.
Genevieve Carberry’s piece, “Irish sisters in Miami: Weight-loss drugs have changed our plastic surgery business” (May 11th), presents Dr Sidhbh Gallagher as a glamorous Miami cosmetic surgeon enjoying a successful expatriate lifestyle. It is startling that Carberry omitted the fact that Dr Gallagher has become a highly controversial figure associated primarily with the medical transition of minors in the United States.
Here we have a doctor who built an international following on TikTok speaking about “yeeting the teets” of teenage girls - surgically removing the healthy breasts of deeply distressed adolescents - yet the article instead gushes about Pilates, paramotoring, dogs in strollers, and the “easy life” in Miami Beach.
Dr Gallagher became internationally controversial after being reported to the US Federal Trade Commission over allegations that her social media content aggressively marketed irreversible surgeries to minors.
The journalistic instinct to frame the medical transition of minors as progressive now looks badly dated. European health authorities are pulling back. Systematic evidence reviews continue to expose how weak the underlying evidence base is. Detransitioners are now speaking publicly in growing numbers.
I founded Genspect in 2021 to support families and detransitioners affected by trans medicalisation. We have helped over 5000 parents and over 600 detransitioners internationally. Yet much of the Irish media still covers this field with the breathless eagerness of a teenager newly admitted into the cool kids’ club.
I suspect that if a surgeon had built a public persona around removing healthy organs from any other vulnerable patient group, journalists might display rather more curiosity about this ongoing medical scandal.
Is mise, le meas,
Dr Stella O’Malley
Director, Genspect