BBC admits their report on 'trans milk' misleading and inaccurate

Now it's time for the NHS CEO to admit his mistake.

Back in February, thirty three thousand of you read my post about a BBC report on their programme The Context, reporting that an NHS trust had claimed ‘trans women’s milk was as good as breastmilk’.

Dear BBC, you've got your facts wrong about 'trans milk'

Do read the full post if you haven’t already, but if you’re strapped for time, here’s a quick summary.

• A letter was leaked by an organisation called Children of Transitioners, written by the medical director of University Hospitals Sussex, Rachael James.

• In the letter, Rachael James treated all milk as ‘human milk’ and all evidence on induced lactation as equal. She made no distinction between induced lactation in females or males.

• Four out of five of the studies cited by James as seemingly supportive of babies being fed induced lactation in males, were on induced lactation in females.

• In the letter, James also cited World Heath Organisation evidence that ‘human milk’ is best for babies. Again, these WHO recommendations are entirely about female milk - male ‘milk’ is not mentioned.

• The opening words of the BBC report (which you can watch in full on my earlier post) were: “Transgender women’s milk is just as good for babies as breastmilk - that’s according to a letter from the medical director at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust…The trust referred to studies and World Health Organisation guidance, including one case which found what it called no observable effects in babies fed by induced lactation.”

• This statement from the BBC clearly implies that the ‘studies’ and the ‘WHO’ all support the claim that ‘transgender women’s milk is just as good for babies as breastmilk’ - which is untrue. To repeat, four of the five studies and the WHO information were all based on lactation in females.

• The BBC then invited Kate Luxion on as their sole voice to comment. Luxion is not a breastfeeding expert, and on the programme even falsely claimed that ‘trans milk’ is ‘at least if not higher quality’ than women’s milk. (again more on this in the original piece).

Yesterday, the BBC published the findings of their Executive Complaints Unit, after many of you pursued the complaint (having been initially fobbed off by their original response - published here).

You can read the full findings of the ECU here.

The ECU found that the BBC report was inaccurate and had misled the public in several ways. Here is my summary:

• The ECU discovered, as I had outlined in my own investigation, that the evidence to support the claim of the equivalence of ‘trans milk’ was only based on a single study on a single male, and that the other studies were all on females. “The weight of relevant evidence was not, therefore, made sufficiently clear and in the ECU’s judgement viewers would have been left with a materially misleading impression.”

• The ECU also agreed that the opening remarks of the report implied that the WHO supported the claims about ‘trans milk’, when in fact, “the WHO guidance does not refer to trans women, and so…the audience would have been left with a misleading impression of the evidence.”

• Regarding the remarks of Kate Luxion, the ECU also found she was wrong to state there was persuasive evidence of the nutritional value of trans milk or lack of any potential risk: “It should have been made clear to audiences that more research is needed before such conclusions can be drawn with confidence.”

It’s excellent news that these complaints have been upheld and I’d like to thank all of you who pursued this with the BBC. It’s great to have it in black and white that the report was misleading from an authority (other than myself!). At the time of the news story, the claims spread rapidly and globally and only fuelled claims of the trans lobby that questioning male lactation is bigoted.

The above are just a snapshot of the headlines that are still out there, misinforming the world via the wonders of google.

Hopefully the BBC statement will help to counter this, but in the meantime, I found myself wondering, how did this all happen?

My own part in the story began when I was contacted on 16th Feb by a journalist from the Telegraph who had been sent a press release by the think tank Policy Exchange. It seems like the letter from Dr Rachael James to the Children of Transitioners had been leaked to them, and published in their newsletter Biology Matters. Policy Exchange were right that Rachael James had written a letter claiming that ‘trans milk’ was in some way equivalent to women’s milk. But they didn’t drill down into the evidence she used to substantiate that claim, or see how she had created a false equivalence between induced lactation in males and females.

Neither did I, initially, when I was contacted for comment. I was busy. I read the press release but not the James letter or the links, and gave a quick comment to the journalist. Here’s my reply to the Telegraph journalist.

Wow. 

Sometimes it’s hard to know what to say, isn’t it? I mean - the insanity is just…off the scale. It’s like being asked to comment on the Royal Family being alien lizards underneath or something??!

Anyway. Here we are. And you need me to say something. So…

Male people, however they identify or describe themselves, cannot breastfeed. This should not need saying or explaining. There is no evidence that the tiny amount of ‘milk’ that a male nipple can excrete - given the right drugs - is in any way comparable to female breastmilk nor has it ever been able to nourish and sustain a baby. Offering a baby such a liquid, particularly given the restrictions that breastfeeding women are subjected to (for example limiting alcohol) is a safeguarding failure of epic proportions. 

Breastfeeding is not to satisfy or affirm adults, it is entirely to feed and nourish the baby. A baby is hardwired to seek the mother’s nipple and their doing so is an act of ultimate trust in the mother to nurture and care for them in their complete vulnerability. To offer a male nipple to a baby is a breach of this trust - I would go so far as to describe it as child abuse. That an NHS trust is normalising this practice and making false claims about it, is a medical and political scandal. 

What I said was fine and correct (especially the part about lizards ha ha) but with hindsight, I wish I had taken the time to delve deeper into the letter and the misleading links, because then I could have potentially stopped the misinformation in its tracks. As it was, it wasn’t until after the story had been published and then featured on the BBC that I took the time to explore what the Rachael James letter actually said, and realised what a house of cards it was.

So, whilst I think the BBC apology is excellent, I think we need something else. I think we need Dr Rachael James to be held accountable as the source of this story. Her letter is also signed by her on behalf of Dr George Findlay, Chief Executive of NHS University Hospitals Sussex. We have to ask why two senior officials in the NHS are not only misrepresenting the science in writing to Children of Transitioners, but then remaining completely silent when the content of the letter goes viral and misinforms people globally.

Rachael James seems to now be in private practice, and I can’t see her listed on the Sussex hospital website. But George Findlay, whose name was on the letter, is still in post as CEO.

Here is his page on the NHS website.

Here is his twitter account.

And his email is george.findlay@nhs.net.

I intend to contact him and ask him why he has allowed this misinformation to go unchecked, and to ask him to issue a statement clarifying the content of his letter.

I’ll also tweet him, of course!

Please do so too and let’s continue to hold these people to account. One of the screenshots I posted about was from the International Breastfeeding Institute, an organisation training breastfeeding counsellors in the USA, who are using the false claims in the James / Findlay letter to suggest to their trainees that induced lactation in men is rubber stamped by the NHS. This all needs challenging because babies, who don’t have a voice, will be directly harmed as a result if it is not.

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The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed there was no The Word is Woman this week. This is because I was writing this story up instead. There’ll be a bumper edition to compensate next Friday! Subscribe now so you don’t miss it!

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This substack is the ‘lite’ version at the moment because I’m working flat out on a book. It’s all about ultra processed food and women. It’s out next February but you can preorder it already!