Newsnight tonight: Britain's Experimented with Puberty blockers

Other than a pause, are there any benefits for taking puberty blockers, at any age, let alone children?

They are sometimes used in the very short term
when treating almost-pubertal girls for cancer - the idea being that the ovaries are kept dormant until after chemotherapy is complete. This is because post pubertal oncology girls have more ‘late term side effects’ than prepubertal girls.

This is, of course, entirely different to giving puberty blocking drugs to children with healthy bodies.

I don’t know if there is an equivalent for boys (but my little bit of knowledge is due to being an oncology mum, not a medical professional).

@ArnoldWhatshisknickers

The pro ana sites have mostly been shut down now, with most platforms having robust policies for removing harmful content.

There was a huge furore recently on Instagram where there were loads of pages springing up. Public pressure forced them to act.

This issue has gained more mainstream discussion.

I am a member of prescribed harm communities, which mainly focus on antidepressant and benzo use, both in adults and children.

These are people who have campaigned about antideressant use in adolescence for a while, and are shocked at what is going on here.

There can be no calls of transphobia there since most know very little about trans issues, just concern over children being damaged.

(The way it's all delivered on YouTube is very merrily and flashy and normalising*

Yes they all seem far too happy. Not that they shouldnt be happy. Everyone should be. However given their happiness is dependent purely on others playing along it's not convincing.

In what other circumstances would a cause if action be advised or prescribed that would only possibly work on the willingness if complete strangers. People you know have been basically threatened with the police/law /exclusion/denial.of entry or usage to pretend along with you.

Makes no sense at all.

One thing that shocked me recently was a prominent American trans man YouTuber talking about now going on blockers on top of everything else to stop breakthrough periods. zero mention of risks that I remember but I didn't watch it all.

The way it's all delivered on YouTube is very merrily and flashy and normalising.

One thing ive been very curious about over this whole infiltration and activism is how many of the peope who have spoken to these clinics, and all the prominent activists who say how harmless it all is, well how many of them went down the blocker route?

Publically we know of the 2 big cases both of which broadcasted the surgery issue as a result of the blockers.

But how many peope pushing it onto kids on you tube and in.schools and even contacting these clinics.

How many of them have the relevant experience to be able to say how harmless and reversible it is

*Perils of off-label use
Brooklyn Harbin said she received Lupron after she started her menstrual cycle at age 10. The chance to slow her puberty had passed but she hoped to add a few inches to her 4-foot 9-inch frame before her body matured any further.

According to medical research, doctors prescribe the puberty blocking drug to short kids to essentially give them more time to get taller, since puberty culminates with the body’s long bone growth ending.

Medical researchers have repeatedly warned against such off-label usage. A 2003 study in the New England Journal of Medicinee_ concluded that some kids on drugs like Lupron developed osteopenia and lost too much bone density during a three-year course of treatment to justify the therapy. In other words, the lifetime risk of breaking a bone outweighed the reward of growing a bit taller.
Still, Harbin said she began getting shots of Lupron in 2006. Soon afterward, she said her physical problems began.

At 10, after her 10th shot of Lupron, she said she collapsed during a Wal-Mart shopping trip with family. She could feel nothing from the knee down. Harbin said she spent six months in a wheelchair before she regained her strength and could walk again. She had to give up cheerleading, basketball, gymnastics and karate because of her low bone density.

By seventh grade, she said she spent a month at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota learning to cope with chronic pain.

FDA records obtained via a public records request show that her pediatric specialist reported that a pharmacy erroneously gave her grandmother an extended-release, 3-month formula of the medication, instead of a monthly dose at the same strength. It remains unclear whether the dosing error impacted her health.

Harbin said she was diagnosed at 11 with osteopenia, a thinning of the bones milder than osteoporosis. Although her bone density returned to a normal range at 16, her chronic pain has forced her to reconcile her dreams with her physical limitations.

“I felt like little pieces of my life were just taken away from me and no one wanted to own up to it,” said Harbin, who is now 20 and lives in South Carolina. “Suicide became very, very real for me.”

So it's possible that the result is very tall 'transgirls' and very short 'transboys'.

So not really a desirable outcome for anyone then and potentially if the transboys in the study had been younger when starting on PB they may well have ended up very short in stature (and with poor bone density).

The conclusion from the GIDS research I linked to.

Transboys did not show significant growth on GnRHa or CSH, but they were were older at presentationand all post-pubertal at start. Transgirls grew extensively on GnRHa and then unexpectedly only had modest growth when female puberty was induced with oestradiol. This may have arisen from the extension of the pre-pubertal growth phase leaving little growth potential. In some cases, this might challenge gender preferences as a taller final adult height could interfere more with “passing” in their preferred female gender. These are preliminary conclusions and further study is required.

So it's possible that the result is very tall 'transgirls' and very short 'transboys'.

Link again:

www.statnews.com/2017/02/02/lupron-puberty-children-health-problems/

Wiki is telling me it's Lupron that's mostly used.

I don't know if it's Lupron that's used but:

Women who used Lupron a decade or more ago to delay puberty or grow taller described the short-term side effects listed on the pediatric label: pain at the injection site, mood swings, and headaches. Yet they also described conditions that usually affect people much later in life. A 20-year-old from South Carolina was diagnosed with osteopenia, a thinning of the bones, while a 25-year-old from Pennsylvania has osteoporosis and a cracked spine. A 26-year-old in Massachusetts needed a total hip replacement. A 25-year-old in Wisconsin, like Derricott, has chronic pain and degenerative disc disease.
“It just feels like I’m being punished for basically being experimented on when I was a child,” said Derricott, of Lawton, Okla. “I’d hate for a child to be put on Lupron, get to my age and go through the things I have been through.”
In the interviews with women who took Lupron to delay puberty or grow taller, most described depression and anxiety. Several recounted their struggles, or a daughter’s, with suicidal urges. One mother of a Lupron patient described seizures.

Thanks Old Crone

But that's in precocious puberty so a different thing.

Puberty blockers were originally used to help deal with precocious puberty I believe, so helped attain higher height. But brought added issues.

See Lupron link above.

Does anyone have any idea about PB and adult height in females?

This is one of the publications listed by GIDS as part of their output from their early intervention study.

abstracts.eurospe.org/hrp/0089/hrp0089P1-P211

This showed that only 14 of the cohort of 44 in the study had reached final adult height at time of data collection. Data were therefore insufficient to comment on impact of GnRHa on final height.

I think the answer is, they don't know.

I can't see if this has been linked or not but is very pertinent.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0006zt4

2.30 ish

Marcus Evans who resigned from the service on the newsnight piece on r4 today

*"This has been penetrated by political force there's a sort of idea that there's only one answer to this problem and that's transition... the tryst don't answer the fact that staff are anonymously going to the papers and the trust is just not listening and are peddling the same old story. That's why I resigned."

"There needs to be an external body who can over see what we're doing with children in this area... political forces are infiltrating what is basically a clinical system; a sort of barrier in a way needs to be created so that we can do a thorough, proper job of thinking about these kids and what's in their long term interests."*

it seems very clear to me that this was a major motivation for coming up with the idea of puberty blockers in the first place

Assuming the primary motivation for PB was to benefit males mainly it's even more concerning that the majority of children currently given them are probably female.

We know that PB will stunt the height of a male child (an alleged desirable outcome) but how does this work out for female children? Will they end up as unusually small transmen or does testosterone administered later on boost height?

If it doesn't then surely that's a huge negative outcome (for someone who wishes to present as male) and all the PB will have achieved is preventing breast development and prevention of menses?

Trying to look at it from pro-treatment model, breasts and periods can be dealt with via other interventions but height is fixed by a certain point.

Does anyone have any idea about PB and adult height in females?

That teen was 19

Most of us were working at that age or studying at college/university and maybe working part time at that age...

And if that person is the argument for blockers well it's had more of an effect on their brain development than it has on the likely hood of being able to pass more easily.

It was the bbc so perhaps this is the nest we could ask for as far as they go. Could have been done better. Having said that, it did highlight some important points.

Would have liked to have seen them mention the hormone treatment leaving them sterile. And even the effects of not going through puberty has on the possibility and complications when it comes to future surgery options.

And what the fuck was the point of the teenager being interviewed? To paraphrase 'I always thought puberty blockers were step one and hormones step two, I wouldn't have listened if anyone had warned me of side effects but I trusted that doctors wouldn't offer me anything dangerous'. Person wasn't in the trial and added nothing to conversation.

Perhaps it was to demonstrate that children and younger teens are not best placed to make these decisions, as they don’t have an adult’s understanding of the seriousness of the longer term impacts.

To add; delayed or interrupted puberty is one of the side effects of anorexia as the body needs to be over a certain weight to menstruate. I believe oestrogen levels are linked to fat levels.

So taking puberty blockers is to benefit others, and in turn that that makes a young person's life so much better?

Is that it?

They must have known about bones.

I did a primary teachers course on teaching nutrition and they emphasised that milk is actually more important in the early teens due to bone density being laid down then.

We know that anorexic teens risk bone health; a uni friend told me this herself over 20 years ago as she'd been anorexic in her early teens and knew she had bone risks as a result.

What are the drugs used? Lupron is known to have issues on bone density. Oestrogen plays a part in bone health which we know from the menopause.

Sadly the tweet with all the info in by the endo in America who spoke to Ben Boyce has been deleted, but that contained a lot of info.

Lupron issues:
www.statnews.com/2017/02/02/lupron-puberty-children-health-problems/

Other than a pause, are there any benefits for taking puberty blockers, at any age, let alone children?

There are no benefits for children of normal pubertal age taking puberty blockers. It is possible that there are "benefits" for some other parties in children taking drugs which stop them from going through a normal puberty. I won't say more or my post will be deleted (it might be even without saying any more).

what they can't say, because it's so fucking awful, is that puberty blockers are about the aesthetic result that can be achieved for males

a boy who has never been through puberty can be more easily made to resemble a female

it seems very clear to me that this was a major motivation for coming up with the idea of puberty blockers in the first place