The Australian has a story about how the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation recently pulled an article “on transgender suicide research from its journal and accused its author of ‘hatred'”. The author is a registered nurse from New Zealand called Jason Watson (pictured). The story is an interesting instance of how much enthusiasm there is for suppressing any research that does not fit with an ideologically based narrative:

Australia’s nurses union has retracted — and apologised for — an article in its official journal that accurately summarised the research on suicide in transgender people, following complaints by the union’s “LGBTQIA+ reference group” that the paper was causing “significant distress to the transgender community”.

The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation expressed its “sincere regret” for publishing the article, which outlined a number of long-term studies challenging the narrative that the risk of suicide increases dramatically if trans children and teens are not provided with gender-affirming medical treatment.

The author of the article, New Zealand registered nurse Jason Watson, is now threatening to sue the union after it accused him of “negativity and hatred” and of harming the transgender community.

It seems that Watson’s research did not produce results commensurate with the narrative the union’s “LGBTQIA+ reference group” wants:

The article summarised six long-term historical studies produced in the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Finland, which, like the Cass review in 2024, do not support the claims of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health about the increased risk of suicide.

Watson, who has worked as a mental health nurse for more than 40 years and has a masters degree in education, concluded in the article that the WPATH suicide narrative was “at least tenuous and at most simply incorrect”.

“This seems to fit with the Cass review narrative that the significant majority of current transgender research is of a dis­appoint­ingly poor quality and is ideologically rather than scientifically based,” he wrote.

Watson told the Australian he submitted the piece because “I work in a crisis team for children and adolescents so suicide is our No. 1 thing, we see it every day.

“I looked at the long-term ­follow-up studies that use 30 or 40 years worth of data. It’s research based, I haven’t muddied the data, it’s just fact.

“I’m a nurse and I thought it would be good to have nurses talk about it like we do every other subject. When there’s a new treatment, a new drug, a new methodology, how does it compare with the last one, and what is the ­science?

“This is the only area where they go well, actually, no, you can’t offer any other view because it really does appear that the lobby groups are making editors gun shy.

“They don’t want to be ­labelled the things I’ve been ­labelled as – hateful and narrow-minded.”

The acting secretary of the ANMF’s Victorian Branch, Nicole Allan, said the union’s LGBTQIA+ reference group would be consulted before any future publications that contained material potentially affecting them:

In a letter sent to Allan on Wednesday, Watson said he was “shocked” at the way the ANMF had acted.

“I was not given the opportunity to answer any questions, clarify any concerns or make any amendments,” Watson said.

“There was no mention in the apologies of the material, where it came from, the context of these long-term follow-up studies or the teams that created them.

“I was not asked for my opinion or if I wanted to respond to these apologies which describe this article and by association myself as being ‘damaging and harmful’, ‘causing immediate and significant distress’ to the trans community… ‘demonstrating discrimination’, creating an ‘unsafe environment’, being ‘unethical’ and demonstrating ‘hatred’.

“Is it common practice for the ANMF to make such emotive and damaging statements about a nursing clinician without any form of communication or consultation? I consider what you have done to be defamatory.

“Please reply promptly as depending on your response I need to decide if legal advice needs to be sought by my representative regarding this defamation.”

The ANMF declined to answer questions from the Australian about what it considered damaging, harmful or inaccurate in Watson’s article, or why it had chosen to accuse a nurse of engaging in hatred and causing harm without giving him the opportunity to respond.

The Australian has now published a leader condemning the union’s action:

Mr Watson has not been given the opportunity to answer questions, clarify any concerns or make any amendments. After working as a mental health nurse for more than 40 years, he says the World Professional Association for Transgender Health suicide narrative is “at least tenuous and at most simply incorrect”. The union’s unnecessary apology shows that narrative is also pervasive. It has influenced media outlets such as the ABC, bureaucracies and medical bodies, to the potential detriment of gender-confused young people.

The Australian’s article is worth reading in full.