AIBU to think puberty blocker trial is child abuse?

That's what it will be like though. These drugs are presented to the children as a good thing. Great, even. They will make them very happy and let them magically change sex when they're ready to. If not, they can stop taking the sweeties and go back completely to normal.

Except it won't be normal will it. They will not have grown at the same rate as their peers. Their brains will not have developed at the optimum time and may never achieve full maturity. Their peers will have moved on, grown up and these poor children will never catch up fully.

I am not accepting that comment, as nothing I have said either implies or states I want drugs “handed out like sweeties”.

Ok so you're a female person who "identifies" as non-binary (you identify as neither sex), is married to a male, and you are pregnant on purpose. One of the most quintessentially female experiences there is.

And yet here you are advocating for harmful drugs to be handed out like sweeties to pre-pubescent children, which will most likely ensure that they will be unable to have children of their own?

Fucking hell!

Because my DH and I would like kids and he can’t do the production side of things, so I will have to deal.

Again, I meant all medication. But it would be great to see those studies if you still had the links. If not, don’t worry.

Indeed. That’s why the burden of proof is to show that it would be very serious not to take the drug. There is no such evidence for puberty blockers and gender dysphoria. In fact, the studies show that without gender-affirming treatment almost every gender-questioning child or teenager grows out of it and goes on to live happy and healthy adult lives. But taking the treatment almost always leads on to cross gender hormones, with serious and proven physical and mental health consequences.

Probably. Except you have the choice not to become pregnant. A choice which you have full capacity to make and which will not harm your health. Children do not have the choice not to go through puberty, because doing that does harm their health, and because they do not have the capacity to understand the consequences.

I’m puzzled why you would choose to become pregnant, anyway. Why would you choose to do something quintessentially womanly, that only women can do, when considering yourself to be a woman is apparently so distressing that you reject yourself as a woman?

Or to provide Mounjaro or similar to someone with anorexia.

The remedy for psychological distress is psychological support.

Whereas if we applied your logic to the situation you now describe, presumably the remedy would be to sterilise you so that you cannot experience pregnancy and any related distress.

Then isn’t it always a risk to use?

Ah so, I’m non-binary and I’m currently considering the dysphoria I will feel when I’m pregnant - which will be even worse than I experience now. Seems very real and without any kind of pathologising. Isn’t this the same kind of thing?

Secondly, we don't do drug trials on children or other vulnerable groups. Ever wondered why you can barely take any medications when you are pregnant? It's not because they've been tested on expecting women, it's because they CAN'T be tested on expecting women, no trial would get past ethics to test on pregnant women and unborn children. This is (usually) the same with kids.

The very few exceptions to this is in highly highly dangerous conditions where the alternative to experimental treatment is death such as childhood cancers, or other incredibly serious outcomes.

Puberty blockers CAUSE so many serious life changing side effects. Teeth and bones crumbling like octogenarians, lack/loss of sexual function, urinary problems, shortened stature, lack of mental maturity/IQ reduction, infertility.

We need to be looking at very very compelling reasons to take these drugs to make all these side effects worth it. Any decent studies show no improvement to happiness or mental health on average. The original results of the danish study that the whole edifice was build on, have NEVER BEEN REPLICATED despite several attempts.

Please tell me a compelling reason why anyone should be on these, what is the outcome we are seeking here? Because you can't change sex. Puberty blockers will only ever break the healthy bodies of a group of people who are already struggling. They will never get what they want, not really.

The reasons need to more then 'they wanted it'

All drugs?

Even ones that fail initial safety assessments?

Ones being proposed on a purely speculative basis?

Irrespective of known risks and harms?

That's just not how ethical and effective clinical trials work. Of course clinical trials have a place, but they are not there to just road test any old hypothesis.

Should all drugs be tested on pregnant women to ensure we have accurate data about precisely which birth defects they cause and the miscarriage and stillbirth rates? We don't currently because it is considered unethical.

Exactly. PBs are only licensed to suppress puberty until the appropriate age is reached which would be about 11/12, not 18+

I might have missed this mentioned in the comments but...bps don't delay puberty, because puberty isn't something you can just put off.

If you delay puberty by, say two years, then you have missed that part of it. You don't 'catch up'. You've missed that part of the process. If you spend all your teen years on pb, then you miss it entirely. Coming off at 18/19 will not fix what you have missed.

It's a hugly complicated process that involves more then just the hormones in the drugs, so your body is surging, sending all the signals to start growing up, learning etc to start this process but...it's blocked, once that body surge ends, that's it. Opportunity gone. You are stuck physically and mentally roughly where you were when you started them, but now, you're legally an adult...

I was on them for a long time, as I definitely did show signs from about 3 or 4, very scarily young, for my poor mum. I cant remember the dates obvs but i'd say closer to a decade than not.

The PB trial starts with the premise that humans can change sex. That's a problem.

That's a whole lot of pain stored up for these children when reality hits. It's really not fair to lie to them and expect them to deal with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

You were on them for a decade? So you showed signs of puberty age 1 or 2? Are you quite sure about that?

Gender distress in children is a psychological issue, very often with unexplored underlying reasons for it such as autism, homosexuality, or sexual abuse.

I seriously question anyone who is advocating for "medication" which is known to be damaging to healthy young bodies and brains, when the majority of these children's gender distress is proven to resolve through puberty, and the others can be helped with proven care such as talking therapy.

😄 yes kevin bridges i did

It was for maybe the best part of a decade I think, but can't say exactly how long as I'm in my 30s now

No.

Before one even designs a treatment one has to decide what the 'diagnosis' is.

A bunch of men who would have passed better as the opposite sex if they hadn't progressed through puberty, who made up a condition that never existed, isnt a reason to put kids who play with the 'wrong' toys on drugs that are used to castrate paedophiles and sex offenders by stunting their growth and keeping them in a permanent childlike state.

If someone had written this as a horror story it would be called 'Frankenchild'. And yet here we are in 2025 having to defend kids being allowed to grow up. And being called nazis and bigots for it.

Did ye aye?

And I’ll wager it was time-limited, medically monitored, and you didn’t move on to cross-sex hormones.

"How else will you ensure it is safe for use without tests?"

How about not experimenting on children?

Maybe we should be testing on animals first (if at all).

The long term effects on gender confused children who have taken puberty blockers have already been discovered to be detrimental. Lowered cognitive function and IQ, loss of sexual function and no ability to orgasm in later life, early menopause and osteoporosis for the girls, increased likely hood of some cancers, and I'm sure there are others that I'm not thinking of right now but that's more than enough to be getting on with to say that we absolutely should not be doing this to children, it obviously isn't safe!

Added to that, the children cannot consent to this. Legally, but also because they are not able to understand the consequences even if they are explained to them.

This is medical experimentation on children, no one should be supporting this!

No. That’s not the first step in ethical research. The first step is to consider the subject group.

Listing the vulnerabilities:

Children (massive ethical risk)
Mentally unwell (they are, and that’s not a pejorative judgement, it’s simply true)
If the stats from the Tavistock are to be believed, a high proportion have abusive parents
High proportion are neurodivergent

With all those vulnerabilities, then you have to prove that your trial is likely to improve the life of THAT child. Not other children, not adding to current knowledge. It has to benefit the child in the trial.

AND consider known side effects. Removing natural development, the ability to have children, orgasms, normal brain development including costing IQ points?

The only way this would be ethical is on terminal patients who will die without it. And we all know the rhetoric around that. Not statistically more likely to die. Actually, this patient will die without intervention. And therefore the ethics are borderline acceptable.

I’m stunned this made it through an ethics review. I cannot fathom how.