AIBU to think puberty blocker trial is child abuse?

Treating a psychological condition in children with medication to stop puberty is crazy, but it’s been normalised now.

We don’t give girls with body dysmorphia lip fillers and BBLs yet somehow, here we are.

these trials and policies need to be banned - full stop

what to help change their gender??? are you crazy?

It is total and blatant abuse of young people. Truly awful. Incidentally for all their faults (of which there are many) do you see Russia advocating this type of non-sensical policies??? i am sorry but for the most part (definitely not all) people who think are born in to the wrong bodies are mentally unwell and need to treated accordingly.This is a very tiny minority of people who would be wise to follow such a treatment journey.

I was listening to the GP on LBC on Thursday who runs a "gender change clinic" - she is utterly derranged in her views. Totally and completely unhinged.

I honestly believe that as a society if we are advocating these sorts of policies, we are a spiral of moral decline.

I believe all drugs should be trialled. This is a medical trial and the results will determine whether these are safe to prescibe. Saying that drug trials are child abuse would mean that we could never trial medicines to make sure they are safe, leading to worse outcomes for thousands of people. I say that as someone who had a family member with muscular dystrophy. When he was a child his parents consented to radical new surgery. It was a risk, but one which if it paid off (which it did) would lead to better quality of life for him. His bravery, and his parents bravery, paved the way for an evidenced based treatment that helped thousands of boys.

I meant all medication. Everything will need to be tested on its target group.

No @Inchworms you said everyone eventually goes through puberty, even after taking blockers for "gender questioning." This is not correct, as Hannah Barnes has shown.

Around 80% of those on puberty blockers for this reason go straight to artificial cross-sex hormones: they don't go through a healthy puberty.

That is the problem.

YANBU. Its institutional abuse to stop more children going through the essential biological process of puberty. I do not understand how people can be so cavalier about the rights of children to a fully functioning body. And for what? Aesthetics?

Why is anyone supporting radical cosmetic surgeries on children? There is no rational or ethical reason to destroy a healthy body to manage a (very likely temporary) mental health problem.

and who in their sane mind would have set up a bloody clinic (tavistock clinic to facilitate young people changing gender in the first place!!! totally insane thinking. I feel so sorry for the fact young people are exposed to this sort of mentally derranged thinking!

I think it is horrendous - the fact that we are even debating whether this is a good idea is just crazy. For anyone advocating it is "healthy" for yound people to be given the option of having puberty blockers is frankly insane. This whole debate is out of control. Just for clarity - there are two genders - male and female. Thats it. If you think it is wise to push drugs which effectively BLOCK somebodys sexual development is totally and utterly crazy. I cant believe we are even debating the pros and cons.

Decide that it’s better not to experiment with puberty blockers at all.

From an ethics POV I’m not sure what other trails would be acceptable where it’s known at least some in a group of young people will be harmed.

Any medication for under 18s will have to be tested on under 18s, surely? What else are they to do?

I didn’t say anything about what would happen later. Purely that the poster I quoted implied that people would stay on blockers forever and as you’ve rightly noted, that is not the case.

Running tests by giving them to children who cannot meaningfully consent.

The vast, vast majority of children placed on these drugs will continue to cross sex hormones. PBs block the brain maturation that happens at puberty and which generally resolves a child's distress around their sex. They don't provide a pause or time to think, they place children on a pathway towards being a lifelong medical patient.

These children will not go through puberty. The effects of cross sex hormones are not puberty. These children will never develop mature gametes. They will never develop a normal adult sexual response. They will be permanently sterilised and anorgasmic.

We're about to do this to ~200 more children, in addition to the thousands already harmed.

Thereby preventing them from growing out of their dysphoria, not having the appropriate brain development at the correct time, and probably condemning them to a life of cross sex hormones amd surgeries. All on healthy young bodies.
The blockers also have some gravely serious side effects.
It is utterly unethical and abusive.

That is why they are running tests, rather than allowing them for use.

That‘s a great idea 😊

This is the theory.

But as Hannah Barnes and Jesse Singal have shown - in their very detailed and evidence-based journalism - it is rarely the practice. Most children in the UK put on puberty blockers to medicate their "gender questioning" go straight onto artificial cross-sex hormones at 18.

It's abuse.

Indeed @F1rstDoNoHarm

Problem is, that various happy prescribers either have NO follow up records, or have refused to release them to researchers.

Professor Cass asked; the Tavistock & others refused.

So much for care and "science-led" medicine.

Without getting into the wider debate, everyone will go through puberty and the use in kids who are questioning their gender is to delay puberty while further investigation into whether they will start on cross-gender hormones is done. It’s not about putting off puberty forever.

You presumably still went through puberty, just at a more appropriate age.

There is a massive difference between using puberty blockers to delay puberty and using them to prevent puberty. Puberty is not just about physical changes to our bodies, there are also many cognitive changes. Preventing puberty will have an impact on cognitive maturing and we have no idea of the long terms harms that could cause.