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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Puberty blockers Lupron.

33 replies

panjandrumpyjamas · 20/04/2018 23:18

I knew that there was a problem with Lupron with regards to osteoporosis www.statnews.com/2017/02/02/lupron-puberty-children-health-problems/

but I didnt realize that it was used as a chemical for castration!
clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00220350

Does anyone have access to information as to why this drug is deemed safe for children? www.consumeraffairs.com/news/new-report-describes-dangers-of-giving-lupron-to-kids-020317.html

OP posts:
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panjandrumpyjamas · 20/04/2018 23:24
OP posts:
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thebewilderness · 20/04/2018 23:49

It is not deemed safe for children.
It is being used off label.
www.lupronvictimshub.com/lawsuits.html

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LineyHasntLeftTheBuilding · 20/04/2018 23:54

I don't think it is deemed safe for children, from what I can see. Happy to be corrected, though.

I wonder who has an interest in promoting its use in children? And why?

I know there were potential issues raised by some parties way back re fluoxentine / prozac in under-18s from memory. Does anyone recall that? About lack of testing.

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Xenophile · 21/04/2018 00:16

It's not safe for children.

It's not reversible in the majority of cases.

It has a relatively high death rate.

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Xenophile · 21/04/2018 00:24

You can't test for drug safety with children. It would be an ethical minefield. Can you imagine?

"Oh, yes Mr and Ms Bloggs, we're doing a double blind trial of this potentially life saving drug, so, some kids will be getting the real thing and others will be getting something else, you good with that? Even if little Johnny gets the real deal, we don't know if it will have deleterious side effects, we good to go?"

What tends to happen is that drugs are tested on adults, often males, often white, and then dosages are tweaked for children's bodies. It's an educated gues, but still a guess.

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TerfinUSA · 21/04/2018 05:10

The liars at a certain charity will tell you it's not used in the UK, this is not true, it is. Further, there are other drugs that are more commonly used instead in the UK that work in exactly the same way, as they are from the same class of hormone drug (GnRH agonists). I think the specific coverage of Lupron just reflects the much bigger and more open US drug market, so the publicity reflects what's used over there.

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miri1985 · 21/04/2018 06:04

I came to gender critical feminism because of lupron. I have endometriosis was reading an endo board discussion about the side effects (note adult women are put on it for no longer than 6 months) and I was just shocked at what is being done to these children when I found out that this is the puberty supressing drug and did my research.

Every time I read people talking about puberty blockers being completely safe and allowing children to pause, make decisions etc, I cringe because the physical ramifications of these drugs are well known by now and they are anything but safe.

Others have already provided the links for the physical problems that lupron can cause but it also has effects on the developing brain that we don't fully understand yet.
They've done at least 2 studies on girls (not transgender) who were given puberty blockers for a short period as they were going through early puberty. On average their IQ went down 8 points (7 points in the other study) in the year or so they took the blockers, in the most recent study 2 out of 15 who were given the drugs ended up being held back a year at school.

7-8 IQ points aren't that much if your IQ is starting out fairly high but losing that amount (or more) makes a lot of difference if your starting IQ is low and as far as I can see there aren't studies on how this effects children who are suppressed for their whole puberty and beyond.

www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00044/full#B8

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11683207

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DisturblinglyOrangeScrambleEgg · 21/04/2018 06:26

The only way they justify this is by saying that it's safer than your child killing themselves. That's the only way you can justify any dangerous drug - are the side effects of the drug better than the thing you're using it to do.

Eg. The Pill - has side-effects, but safer than pregnancy. Vaccination - has possible side effects, but safer than the diseases themselves. Then you balance this risk/reward for the patient.

So someone with severe dysphoria, who's not got better with therapy, might go for surgery. Someone in continuous pain, will take strong painkillers that will probably eventually lead to their death.

And these puberty blockers are so dangerous, that the only way these people can justify giving them to kids is to say that the alternative is that the children will suicide - they're so dangerous, they have to go straight to death as the alternative to balance against.

And what's crazy about this, is there isn't even proof of this high rate of suicide specific to trans. Read any study, and there's a high rate of co-morbidity with other mental health issues, or with other reasons for increased risk of suicide (eg being gay or lesbian in an unwelcoming environment) - but rather than research this, or try to reduce the suicide risk in other ways (eg, the LGB - 'it gets better' campaign) it's used as a justification for damaging these kids with dangerous drugs.

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miri1985 · 21/04/2018 06:39

that the only way these people can justify giving them to kids

The thing is that they're not even trying to justify it, they're just lying and pretending like there are no side effects at all.
Looked up what Mermaids has to say about blockers and its just completely fantastical "However, the hormone blockers offered are reversible ........ blockers do not change your child’s body, but they do pause puberty to give them time to explore their gender further without the adolescent physical changes that can bring great distress. " www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/assets/media/FACTSHEET%20-%20PARENTS%20OF%20PRE_TEENS%202015.docx

I assume that GIDS actually talks through the side effects with the parents before hand in proper detail but if you've been told by other "experts" its grand, safe no physical side effects you won't take those seriously.

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LizzieSiddal · 21/04/2018 07:40

If what Mermaids is stating is untrue, shouldn’t the Charities Commission be informed?

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SophoclesTheFox · 21/04/2018 07:44

they're terrifying drugs. I would never, ever give to them to a child. I was on a similar drug for endo (decapeptyl) and it had ruinous and lasting side effects.

They're not properly tested, they're not safe, they're not reversible, they have catastrophic side effects and using them on confused and vulnerable children is a giant class action lawsuit waiting to happen Sad

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SophoclesTheFox · 21/04/2018 07:51

There is serious brainwashing going on in the trans affirming community over these. A few months back there was some total melt on here telling me that only "cis" people get side effects from these drugs, whereas trans people don't. Apparently because the drugs cause changes in your gender identity it feels like a positive change for trans people, because their gender identity gets aligned with their body, so they don't get side effects. "cis" people do get side effects, because it jolts their gender identity and makes them feel trans or something Confused

Utter bilge, and I rather suspect that person is involved in advising parents to put their children on these drugs.

I know there is some evidence for using them in cases of early puberty, by the way. Not arguing agains that: I don't know enough about the pros and cons there.

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SusanBunch · 21/04/2018 07:56

Yes, these drugs are very worrying and I am very concerned that they could be used without prescription and medical supervision. Osteoporosis is no joke and that's just the thin edge of the wedge. I posted an extract from a documentary on here a while ago where a teenage boy had been taking hormones (I think it was HRT or the pill rather than Lupron to be fair). He did undergo irreversible changes, including breast growth and bone fusion. When he was 15, he decided that he was not a girl after all, but was left with the side effects and suffered from depression and anxiety. A doctor specialising in gender dysphoria was on the programme and basically said 'don't give these drugs to teens because most of the time they will detrans anyway'.

Maybe more work could be done to reassure kids that if they do decide they are trans at age 18 or above, that it's still possible to acquire a reasonably convincing appearance. I think there are a lot of messages to kids that say 'you must do it now or never'. That would undoubtedly build anxiety to a massive degree. If they are encouraged to wait however, most of them are likely to accept their biological sex by 18 and the ones that do not can then make an informed choice.

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cromeyellow0 · 21/04/2018 08:33

To reinforce what miri1985 said about IQ, men who take it for prostrate cancer refer to "lupron brain" to describe their decline in cognitive ability and memory.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4333639/

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TerfinUSA · 21/04/2018 10:55
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R0wantrees · 21/04/2018 11:18

I'm not sure that she is still in that position... the Mermaid's recently updated website is unclear www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/mermaids-trustees.html
The mimmymum twitter account no doubt has a lot of very concerned parents and vulnerable young people following it who have sought support from the charity.

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TerfinUSA · 21/04/2018 11:27

There was a thread on TheStudentRoom where the child of the above marketing officer (who has many many Tweets saying how harmless these drugs) said that her mum had threatened to take her off the 'puberty blockers', because her mum said they were the cause of her bad behaviour.

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Xenophile · 21/04/2018 11:30

miri that's very interesting re: the IQ level, I hadn't read that before.

In precocious puberty, my understanding is that they are given for very short periods of time while the root cause for the problem is looked at as it can be caused by various tumours of the endocrine system which can be sorted out and life goes on. If they find nothing, then the child is taken off the drugs and life goes on, if that makes sense?

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TammySwansonTwo · 21/04/2018 11:35

I’ve posted on here before about my two years on zoladex (same sort of drug) and the negative effects it’s had on me mentally and physically for the ten years since. There is no way on earth it should be given to children, absolutely no way.

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PeakPants · 21/04/2018 11:39

If the NHS does not use Lupron, are there any studies on the drug that they do use- Triptorelin (apparently)?

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KittyKlaws · 21/04/2018 11:40

@TerfinUSA - quality user name btw.

The liars at a certain charity will tell you it's not used in the UK, this is not true, it is. Further, there are other drugs that are more commonly used instead in the UK that work in exactly the same way, as they are from the same class of hormone drug (GnRH agonists). I think the specific coverage of Lupron just reflects the much bigger and more open US drug market, so the publicity reflects what's used over there.

I'm not well up on the drug aspect (although I have read up about Lupron) you see to know more. Could I ask how do you know it is used in the UK? And do you know what other drugs are used as puberty blockers? - I'd like to read about them. Thanks

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TerfinUSA · 21/04/2018 11:54

NB note that TRAs such as Mermaids will tell you that these drugs are 'hormone blockers', which suggests a sort of defensive relationship against nasty 'hormones'. This is a false narrative - 'puberty blockers' are themselves hormones, that act to disrupt the normal functioning of the human body.

Clearly in some cases, such as prostate cancer, where the body is diseased , or where there is malfunction of the GnRH receptors, it might be preferable to treat a patient with this class of drug.

However, the TRA rhetoric is that puberty blockers 'buy time'. This is a lie, firstly studies show that nearly 100% of children put on puberty blockers go on to transition, secondly it's quite disturbing to suggest that to disrupt the body's normal function should be the DEFAULT response to usually temporary distress, and thirdly there doesn't seem to be any evidence-based study to suggest that these disruptive hormones, so called 'blockers' provide a better outcome than allowing the body to progress normally.

You would want to look at:

  1. relief of distress during puberty. TRAs claim sky-high suicide rates, of close to 50%, which are absolute nonsense. The alternative to blockers is non-medical transition (the Lily Madigan approach, for example), which is fully reversible, and you would need to weigh up temporary relief of distress, risk of suicide (such as it is), against the effectively permanent sterilization of children incapable of understanding the consequences of such a decision.


  1. infertility. those who transition after puberty can, and often do, have children. Even after taking cross-sex hormones, fertility may still be retained. However those who go on these so-called harmless hormones are rendered irreversibly infertile, as their gametes do not mature. They can NEVER have children. This is not a children a child of 10 or 11 (the age at which many are subject to these hormones) can offer informed consent to. It is impossible, and anyone says they can is a liar.


Here's a couple of videos put out by a TRA group in support of this in the case of a 9 or 10 year old biologically female child:

  1. long-term outcome, compared with transitioning following a normal puberty. The poster children for blockers who have gone on to take cross-sex hormones do NOT pass. I am not sure the full details, but so-called facial feminization surgery which is MAJOR cranio-facial surgery rearranging many parts of the face so that the ratios, fat levels in various places, etc., are closer to biologically female humans still seems to be necessary - the dosing of children on GnRH hormones from perhaps as young as 10 or 11, followed by cross-sex hormones, does NOT result in the same outcome as a child who was born with that biology. Sex hormones, while increased during puberty, act on the unborn child from just a few weeks gestation, so this trans dream where you can just press 'pause' with some magic blockers and then add some testosterone/oestrogen a bit later is just that - a dream.


  1. I am concerned that TRAs may see that a transitioned adolescent is a neutral or even preferable choice over one that has gone through normal puberty. Clearly this is not neutral, and sane people who are not either drunk on TRA kool-aid or Marxist bullshit (in the case of some of the lefty dudebro/handmaiden supporters) understand this and realise that a healthy, fertile human being is the default and preferable outcome for humanity. Now clearly in some cases a healthy fertile body may cause dysphoria for its owner, but its by NO means certain that a dysphoric 9 or 10 year old will be a dysphoric 20 year old, and we must reject the Marxists who suggest that because the latter has distress it's a neutral choice whether we send them on the pathway to a LIFETIME of medication, unknown health problems, shortened life expectancy, osteoporosis, and other issues, or more cautiously say that treating very young children with no conception of sex or fertility, with drugs that start a pathway that leads in nearly all cases to permanent transition and the above-mentioned lifetime complications should be avoided wherever possible.


Note that it is by no means TERF rhetoric that TRAs view the transitioned child as morally preferable to a normal healthy fertile human being, you can see leading TRAs like Zinnia Jones ENCOURAGING children to order these hormone drugs without medical supervision twitter.com/zjemptv/status/972134578411499522, perhaps because the likes of Zinnia Jones experience in their 'transitioned' state not dysphoria but 'euphoria', and see it is desirable to encourage others to follow suit.

  1. The body of evidence for children transitioning (as they will do, in nearly all cases) following taking Lupron and similar hormones, is rather scanty, but we can look at high-profile cases where there parents have chosen to make them a public spectacle, such as that of the head of Mermaids, Susie Green, who said, in a BBC documentary, that the surgery performed on her child was made far more difficult because her child had pre-pubescent male genitalia as a result of these drugs.


In a similar vein, Jazz Jennings has apparently been left (permanently?) by these drugs with no libido. www.teenvogue.com/story/jazz-jennings-talks-to-parents-about-orgasm
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TerfinUSA · 21/04/2018 12:19

"I'm not well up on the drug aspect (although I have read up about Lupron) you see to know more. Could I ask how do you know it is used in the UK? And do you know what other drugs are used as puberty blockers? - I'd like to read about them. Thanks"

You can check on the NHS website, just search for 'gnrh agonist', 'puberty blockers', and such like, there's lots and lots of documents.

Here's the official response.

tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/documents/591/16-17365_Puberty_blockers.pdf

"The actual prescribing of puberty blockers is done via our subcontracted sites at University College London Hospital or the Leeds General Infirmary, by Consultant Paediatric Endocrinologists.

  1. We usually use triptorelin tradenames Gonapeptyl Depot and Decapeptyl SR as these have a licence for children.
  2. Leuprorelin (tradename Prostap in the UK) is an alternative second line in case of a drug reaction but doesn't carry a specific child licence or for puberty blockade."


Hence they USUALLY use triptolerin under two different trade names, and they RARELY use leuprorelin.

There's a third drug licensed, which is in the same category

www.medicinesresources.nhs.uk/upload/documents/News/2008%20-%20March/17/Triptorelin1107.pdf

namely goserelin (In the US they also have histrelin, which is used on children in some instances also). However, it's possibly only the two drugs above are ever used on children, though I don't think there's in principle anything to stop a doctor prescribing any of the three UK-licensed drugs. The document notes that the cheapest drug is Decapeptyl SR, a form of Triptolerin, and this is probably a consideration within the NHS context.

If you read the document, it's concerned with prostate cancer, where they have done studies on the various side-effects and the default is to go for the drug with the widest body of evidence, rather than something untested. They all act in the same way, so they do studies on things like how well they are tolerated and then make a decision based on that. I'm not aware of a document suggesting that for child puberty that one drug is better than another, I think it's clear that all the drugs will do the same basic job, what you would really need to do is establish the extent to which the various side effects are essentially implict in the mechanism of action, and which are caused by fundamental differences between the drugs.

Clearly it would be EXTREMELY irresponsible to suggest that, for instance, a study showing a certain side-effect as a result of taking leuprorelin, because the study only covered leuprorelin, because that's American practice, and then say 'oh that's leuprorelin, the UK ones are different', without actually looking at clinical evidence that covered BOTH leuprorelin and triptolerin, and said 'actually these side-effects don't occur with triptolerin, only with leuprorelin'.

Clearly the presumption should be that side-effects from leuprorelin are also caused by triptolerin because the two drugs work in the same way, unless we have evidence to the contrary.
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