It gets worse - a new, fresh hell

There are only a handful of comparators. For instance this adult never went thru puberty because of the rare Kallmann syndrome m.youtube.com/watch?v=eitQYgCqA-0 In his case it seems that because the final stage of puberty never closed the growth plates in his bones, he just kept growing. He is taller than he would have been if puberty had happened naturally.
For these Phoenixes, there is no data.

Cardiovascular problems are well documented as a side effect of taking Lupron, the worst being congestive heart failure in 1% of patients. Now that can be considered an acceptable risk in the original patient group - men with prostate cancer, for whom Lupron offers a life-saving treatment.

But for the rest? Nothing short of a life-threatening condition should ever cause this to be described.

10 to 29% of patients develop depression.

Bone density in fully one third of the women studied in one project did not return to normal after treatment was stopped.

Side effects include:

tingling, itching, headache and migraine, dizziness, severe joint pain, difficulty breathing, chest pain, nausea, depression, emotional instability, dimness of vision, fainting, weakness, amnesia, hypertension, muscular pain, bone pain, nausea/vomiting, asthma, abdominal pain, insomnia, chronic enlargement of the thyroid, liver function abnormality, vision abnormality, and anxiety, and others.

And others! Including death!

I mean this is seriously fucking dangerous stuff. For 22 years the FDA has known about damaging side effects far beyond those admitted to by the manufacturer. And yet they're doing nothing.

They've known that two of the studies submitted in evidence to get FDA approval falsified 80% of patient data.

And yet the drug has gone on to be prescribed for ever more off-label uses. Now including longterm use in children.

Many of these side effects btw set in after the first use and persist for more than five years after treatment stops.

Anyone who writes an ethical paper considering longterm use of puberty suppressants without exploring these extremely serious safety concerns hasn't done the subject justice.

For anyone who wants to find out more,here's an article exploring the history of problems with Lupron from 2008. 2008! And we know it hasn't gotten any better.

Yeh but what does that look like? Does it mean no secondary sex characteristics but the kid gets taller etc? Does it stunt growth of everything?

I don't get this. Would the blockers stop all development?

No one really knows nevernotstruggling. That includes the endocrinologists giving them to children. Which means that the children are being used as guinea pigs. But that's not the real scandal. The real scandal is that everyone knows about this mess but just about everyone is too frightened to ask "Should we be doing this?"

don't think anyone knows NearlyGranny because pretty much every child that takes blockers goes onto cross sex hormones. Which is why the 'it's just a pause' argument is so disingenuous. Once you're on blockers, you are on an irreversible pathway to transitioning

YY. Which wasn't the case before puberty blockers and "social transitioning". For most of these children it was a phase they grew out of by adulthood.

Thanks, Softlysoftly123!

I don't really know what puberty blockers achieve.

They stop the biologically obvious occurring, the reality of which may help confused youngsters to desist as they mature. Desisting teens would undermine the trans ideology.

What I worry about with academics, or doctors and suchlike too actually, is that they find it very hard to backpedal on an issue once they've published a fair bit about it. Human psychology means people have a vested interest in continuing to argue the same corner rather than do a public U-turn and admit they were wrong.

Christ, I just clicked through to that Melbourne institute and by following something else Notini has published, which I couldn't access, I saw an article entitled by someone called Maura Priest from 2019 entitled:

Transgender Children and the Right to Transition: Medical Ethics When Parents Mean Well but Cause Harm.

FFS . Are all the medical ethicists busy supporting this shit or are there some naysayers? I worry because of what academics on FWR have said academia has been like on the trans front. People daren't speak up.

I don't get this. Would the blockers stop all development? I realise I don't really know what puberty blockers achieve.

She is a fellow of the "Murdoch Children's Research Institute" her other published papers are at the bottom of this page www.mcri.edu.au/research/projects/gender-research

A World Out of Time SomeDyke:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_World_Out_of_Time

See this brief snippet:

www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=512

This basic idea, I first came across in a Sci-Fi novel by Larry Niven, where intervention early enough would mean lack of sexual desire and adult development, but increased intelligence and immortality.

Other sci-fi says, what if you freeze their development at 5, at 10? Forever sweet little kids.................(or in the case of the story I read, a permanent kitten rather than an adult cat).

A bit different to what is being offered here, where normal mental and physical and sexual development being stymied for the sake of.....looking non-binary forever.

My take would be, do we have the right to take away normal adult development away from someone, just because they are in that gap where they are old enough to consent to some things, yet not old enough to fully understand what they are loosing.

Puberty is an important part of natural human growth, mentally and physically. This lie about pausing it, now becomes, why not just stop it happening altogether..........

This is at least the logical endpoint of the use of these drugs in childhood, that you never come off them, and what then? We have seen what happened to Jazz Jennings in terms of surgery and physical and mental development. Do we have a right to deprive anyone of their full mental and sexual development, even if they ask for it? No, because they don't yet have the full development to know what they are sacrificing. We don't have the right to deprive someone of full adulthood.

This is one of the most worrying things I've read and I've read quite a few things over the last few months that have made my jaw drop. But I can't quite put into words how horrifying I find it that this kind of treatment might ever be sanctioned by healthcare practitioners.

I just dread to think the damage that drugs like Lupron could do to a body through long term usage as an off-label drug. This article covers the side effects from relatively short term usage (7 years in one girls case) www.statnews.com/2017/02/02/lupron-puberty-children-health-problems/

ever

It is hypothetical research. I have no objections to hypothetical research, so long as, all of the possible outcomes are known and discussed thoroughly and that massively includes the effects of drugs.

If this every became accepted, Physicians in this area would never get insurance

@ScrimpshawTheSecond that's fairly normal for an academic paper in the humanities - the argument is stated first and the article then explains how/why that argument was reached. It doesn't necessarily reflect a lack of exploration in the research process itself (although, here...!)

I find anyone believing that puberty blockers are reversible or are just pausing puberty incredibly gullible. Do they really think that if a 12 year old started taking them, and at the age of 18 they stopped, then a "normal" puberty would kick in? Or stopped at 25, then suddenly a girl would grow breasts, brain would develop, add on several inches in height etc. Really?

Yes, even being madly optimistic and saying puberty would begin perfectly normally as soon as you stopped taking them, imagine pretty much starting your adolescence in your 20s. All your school peers have already gone through the growing of breasts, the acne, body hair, the sexual urges, the moods, the blazing rows with parents. They've already hit all the milestones you're meant to hit at that age, and done their rebelling while still having parental care, and they've largely figured out who they are by 25. Imagine starting that whole process alone much, much later. It's bonkers.

Most parents feel a deep sadness at some point at watching childhood eventually slip away from their kids.
For those who suffer this at pathological levels, they might grab at this as a chance to keep their children as children, forever, as a side-effect of being held up as an example of being a lovely "affirming" parent.

Yeah, I can imagine this would be Christmas come early for the parents with Munchausen by proxy. The idea that all parents are good and clear-sighted and know what is best for their child just isn't an accurate one.

Even clinics which hand out blockers with enthusiasm suggest that 4 years is the maximum you should take blockers because of the damage to bones. So the fact that ever younger children are being prescribed them means they will be moved onto cross sex hormones at a younger age

I don't think anyone knows NearlyGranny because pretty much every child that takes blockers goes onto cross sex hormones. Which is why the 'it's just a pause' argument is so disingenuous. Once you're on blockers, you are on an irreversible pathway to transitioning

NearlyGranny

I don’t think anyone knows the answer to your first question. If you withdraw puberty blockers at 25, 30, 35 etc? I would imagine there is a finite point where the hypothalamus just switches off, the way cells are generally programmed to.

I would also make the point that I don’t think there needs to be an epidemic. Just doing this to one child is scandal enough.

Thanks, Antibles. It's interesting to know the usual conventions & mechanisms for these things. I would have thought that as far as philosophy goes, problems are kind of invented to test the issue hypothetically as a sort of exercise in logic/argument, but perhaps applied ethics/bio ethics has a different slant/outcomes?