Leo's story - a dreadful account of the damage puberty blockers do to children

"Better a trans daughter than an effeminate gay son"

Ahhhh ok fair enough thanks @Zeugma

though given the cheerleading they’ve done, the bbc should still screen something

It’s easy to get confused but it’s not the same Leo, Theeyeballs. The one in the DM story and in the documentary is Swedish.

I assume cbbc will be airing a programme about this now seeing as they were so keen to have Leo’s story on before

"Now, she is considering whether to sue the Swedish health authorities who gave Leo puberty blockers."

Quelle surprise! FFS.

Precocious puberty runs in my family and we have had numerous young girls in the family on Lupron. They are closely monitored by a pediatric endocrinologist at a children's specialist hospital and they have repeated scans to assess for bone age and density. In most cases, they are on it for up to 3-4 years, going off at about 10-11 to allow them to them go through puberty at a typical age.

Given it is the effects of the drug being monitored and not the cause, I wonder why a similar level of precaution is not being taken for youth who used it for reasons other than precocious puberty (aka gender dysphoria).

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/women-fear-drug-they-used-to-halt-puberty-led-to-health-problems

There's articles saying they are that bad too.

Think this is the one with a young chikd wheelchair bound now too.

Is this view a given though? Is it based on solid research. It's not solid enough. When I was concerned about puberty blockers, one of my friends managed to find a number of articles disputing that they were that bad.

Thank you @Zeugma and I'm sorry your mother also suffered from this.
It's a horrible disease (if disease is the right word) of old age. But she had enjoyed many years of good health previously. Something that will be denied to these young people.

I’m so sorry about your mum, @FannyCann. That must all have been so distressing for her and you. My late mother also had fractures due to osteoporosis and they were a constant worry and fear.

My mother, who sadly died in December, had osteoporosis. The last ten years of her life were punctuated by falls, fractures, and prolonged hospital stays. She had vertebral body spinal fractures (along with the other). The first time she had an op called a kyphoplasty, where the compressed vertebra is expanded to its normal height and the space filled with cement. There are very few places where you can get this in the NHS and her insurers refused to pay, it cost £10k. She had to suffer the pain for subsequent ones though I have recently seen a patient who has had three done in Bristol.
One of the problems is ideally they need to be done within six weeks of the fracture - it is a huge challenge to get a diagnosis and referral for treatment within six weeks on the NHS by the time one gets to see a GP, gets sent home with pain killers, tries to tough it out, gets referred for an X-ray and gets that referred to an appropriate spinal surgeon....
Hopefully when young people start presenting with these their treatment will be prioritised.
Then there are all the other fractures...
Mum's last fall meant she had a really nasty spiral fracture around the bottom of metal work already in her leg from a previous fracture. I had hoped, when she rallied after a complex operation that she was not expected to survive, that she might get to the point of being able to be up and about in a wheelchair but it was all too much for a 92 year old.

I don't like to think what the future holds for these teenagers who are already showing the same symptoms and problems that Mum had in her 80's.

I work as a health care professional and I dread the day I come across a child or family who buy into all of this rubbish of hormone blockers. I can’t say anything to anyone as I’d be called phobic etc.

i recall watching a documentary based in Canada where a psychologist was fired for not agreeing with hormone blockers. Can’t remember the name of it now…

Yet my 12yo DD with learning disabilities, who doesn't understand at all, will have to undergo menarche because when I asked about delaying puberty until she was able to understand a bit more, they looked at me like I was some kind of monster.

The real underlying issue to me in all of this is the idea that there is an intrinsic category of person which is "trans". Like left handed people, blue eyed people, trans people.

That's not an evidence based way to conceptualize it, but once you do, it leads to all kinds of other conclusions that are also not evidence based.

Limited studies have suggested that where bone density is impacted in young people using blockers, it is due to the absence of hormones rather than the result of the blockers, as hormones are essential for bone health.

So why is it that girls who were treated with puberty blockers to delay precocious puberty by a couple of years, and who then had puberty at the same ages as their peers, developed severe bone-thinning?

''timely use of gender-affirming hormones in trans youth'

I'd like to know what this means in real terms. When do they suggest children should be put onto hormones?

There is no mention whatsoever of side effects on their info page on hormones.

www.gendergp.com/how-hormones-impact-trans-nonbinary-people/

They can't market this treatment as a 'harmless pause' in that case, which has been the argument they have previously used when promoting the use of puberty blockers. Opposite sex hormones cause irreversible effects including sterilisation. Do Gender GP think the right treatment for a child who is confused about gender, or who is gay, is to sterilise them?

There is too much readiness in general to say, if you disagree on some issue, you are phobic or racist. I saw a discussion in a news source local to me that touched on the question of reparations, and what was so notable was that those who tended to think that was a good approach so easily assumed that those who disagreed must do so because they were racist. They didn't even bother to ask why, it was obvious to them on the face of it.

It's not a healthy way to think.

The attempts to equate ‘transphobia’ with homophobia are very problematic.

The enormous difference is that being homosexual requires no action or change from anyone. People just are homosexual. Any need to ‘come out’ arises purely because of heteronormative assumptions and homophobia.

But being trans requires you to transition - and have everyone else use different terms to refer to you. Then there’s all this medical intervention as well as social intervention.

Framing anything other than these huge changes and interventions as ‘conversion’ therapy is ridiculous. As is pretending that it’s the same thing as the dangerous nonsense that is homosexual conversion therapy.

Child abuse, this is shameful 😔

Gender GP says:

'Limited studies have suggested that where bone density is impacted in young people using blockers, it is due to the absence of hormones rather than the result of the blockers, as hormones are essential for bone health.

This supports the argument for the timely use of gender-affirming hormones in trans youth and not allowing prolonged periods without sex hormones.'

With regard to patients/parents doing research, while there are people who approach their medical care that way, it's important to realize that many, many people do not. Whether it is about a drug they are given, a medical procedure, whatever, many people simply do what their doctor tells them, and don't question it much. They trust the experts to at least tell them where there could be problems or controversies they need to think about.

And while this issue is in the news as controversial in the UK now, it wasn't a few years ago in the same way. It still isn't here in Canada where I am, many parents would not twig that there is something they should look into, it is treated as a standard of care that is totally accepted.

Christ. How can a phobia be something one can apply to medical condition??!

They are equating it yet again with homosexuality.

What is trans in children? Come to that, what is it in adults? The entire fucking issue needs to be hammered out.

And yet there in the documentary is footage from an EPATH conference last year at which two delegates complain about too much focus on the risks of treatment and not enough about the risks of transphobia. And that gender-affirming healthcare is attacked with the idea of protecting children.

I mean, who cares about the children, eh?

It's absolutely incredible, it really is.

There is so little research into the medical aspects of any of this or into detransitioning, because of the consequences for anyone trying to carry out such research. Bad things have happened to those who attempted it.

I believe the governments should carry out that research so that individual researchers careers and reputations could not be that easily destroyed based on what the findings might be.

I obviously don't urge biased research to be initiated (on either side), but want to see properly done medical and sociological studies with properly drawn samples.