Letter in support of Dr Jillian Spencer

The Hon Mr Timothy Nicholls, MP 
Queensland Minister for Health and Ambulance Services  
1 William Street 
BRISBANE QLD 4000 
Email: health@ministerial.qld.gov.au 

26^th September 2025

Dear Minister, 

We are a group of clinicians concerned about the harms to children of the Gender Affirmative Treatment model being used in Australian gender clinics. Dr Jillian Spencer has been instrumental in bringing awareness to this issue. As medical professionals we have a responsibility to raise concerns if we believe that medical practice or practitioners are placing the public at a substantial risk of harm. Similar “whistleblowers” in the UK have now been vindicated by the Cass review. 
Dr Spencer’s statements and actions are in line with the legal and moral obligation of the “duty of care” as a medical professional to prevent current and foreseeable harms.

Dr Spencer has received a termination letter and 14 days to respond to the proposed disciplinary action of termination. This has been issued before the results of the Vine “Independent review of Stage 1 and Stage 2 hormone therapies in Queensland’s public gender services”.

Australia is currently ignoring international systematic reviews that show a lack of evidence for and harms from these interventions. Growing numbers of overseas countries including Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Brazil and the UK have now restricted the use of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones in minors. It is clear that Jillian’s concerns were prescient and evidence informed.

The treatment of Dr Spencer by the Queensland Children’s Hospital is a breach of her human right to speak with conscience and promote safe and ethical care for children in our health system. Dr Spencer should be commended for her work in questioning these practices, highlighting their clinical risks, and enunciating the significant discrepancies between the espoused and actual evidence base regarding gender affirming care.

In addition to our concerns regarding the impact of Jillian’s case upon her own professional practice, we highlight the likely unintended consequences of her termination on other clinicians within Queensland Health in fields outside of gender medicine. 

Her treatment highlights a severe mismatch between the professed values of an organisation which seeks to build a foundation of psychological safety and ‘speaking up’, and one which employs significant effort to silence a clinician with genuine and evidence reinforced concerns. The very public silencing of scientific debate within consultant circles risks ensuring future silence of senior clinicians in the face of controversy in other fields. We believe current short-sighted attempts to silence one clinician in an attempt to protect a corporate image risks harming our organisation long term, when future potential cases of ethical breaches and witnessed patient harm pass without comment or critique. 

We note Children’s Health Queensland’s organisational values: 

• Respect – We listen to others. 
• Integrity – We do the right thing. 
• Care – We look after each other and show kindness and concern for others.
• Imagination – We dream big. 

Jillian lives these values every day of her life.  

She has listened to families and clinicians with concerns when others avoided hearing politically inconvenient perspectives.  

She has shown the integrity to advocate for an evidence based approach to childhood and adolescent development that avoids the harm of sterility, sexual dysfunction, permanent disfigurement, increased stroke risk, and much more. There is nobody within the last 10 years of the organisation who has sacrificed more to highlight unsafe practices. 

She has cared so much for the safety of all children throughout Queensland, that she has been willing to speak up for safety despite the threat to her own family’s financial security. This is a step that few would take, including some of us who contribute as signatories to this letter. 

Jillian is the epitome of respect, care and integrity. 

She is a kind, compassionate and fiercely intelligent clinician. 

She is a mother, a colleague and a remarkably articulate psychiatrist. 

We call for Queensland Health to withdraw the termination notice and immediately reinstate Dr Jillian Spencer to her role at the Queensland Children’s Hospital.