Puberty Blockers Trial

Thanks for this, I will have a read!

Nio worries. Hope you had a lovely holiday :)

Thanks for these Sarah; I started reading on holiday and you’ve reminded me to go back and complete them. Youve clearly worked very hard on them

Ahhh, found the original post with my Substack link. Finally finished part 1 of the NIHR investigators if you're interested. It's not bad but the list isn't good either!
https://open.substack.com/pub/sarahmurraydickson/p/the-national-institute-for-health?r=3gxai8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Hi, apologies, I can't find my response with my Substack posts on this but I've finished part 1 of the deep dive on the investigators on the NIHR commitee. I will say it's not looking too bad (the line-up of members I mean) but it sure isn't great. Link here if you're interested: https://open.substack.com/pub/sarahmurraydickson/p/the-national-institute-for-health?r=3gxai8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

That was pretty horrifying. I wish this information was better known

That’s a difficult watch. The plastic surgeon is so good and so clear.

It was a good episode but it just makes you sad to realise that « transition » is rarely a good long term outcome. So many unrealistic expectations and magical thinking

The most recent episode of the podcast Beyond Gender had a plastic surgeon on discussing the ethics of the puberty blocker trial, it was very interesting.

Thank you, that means a lot and sadly, all of my articles include people who are involved. The NIHR are just the end piece to the prior jigsaw pieces and their potential agendas 😥

This looks great, Sarah. Well done! Looking forward to your piece on the people involved.

Hope this is okay to post, please remove if not.

If you would like any more information on some of the 'agents' involved in some of the committees, such as the children and young people's gender oversight board, I have done some digging over on my Substack.

Don't panic, I'm not 'touting for business' at present as all is free to read due to the importance of some of the information. Coffee and cocktails are always helpful and very welcome given my current circumstances though (I'm not proud, can't afford to be!).

Hope any of my research can help. I am currently about halfway through the NIHR board members and will hopefully have this out by the end of this week x

https://open.substack.com/pub/sarahmurraydickson/p/and-you-thought-the-gender-oversight?r=3gxai8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Can't help wondering, as I read this, if David Tennant will be offering up his wee rainbow child for the trial. Or any of the other celebrity trans parents for that matter.

Actually, it would be quite interesting to find out just how many of the celebrity trans kids have actually had blockers/hormones/ surgery because looking at a lot of them, I'd think most of them haven't.

Not quite willing to put their/their child's heath welfare where their mouth is?
Sorry. Sort of went off topic there.

That's a very interesting read.

I came across an interesting thread on TwiX discussing this trial and thought it was relevant to this thread:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1944280856752795768.html

The puberty blocker "trial" isn't as a real clinical trial, but rather a way for the medical profession to wash their hands of the children currently taking puberty blockers.

There arguably can be "no limit" so that the NHS can shift as many children currently taking puberty blockers onto the "trial".

These children are clinical negligence claimants, as they have been prescribed puberty blockers with what the Cass Review said was unclear rationale and weak evidence.

However if they are entered onto the trial, they can become "unfortunate clinical trial outcomes" and the medical profession can wash their hands of them.

Thing is there are still child patients on puberty blockers right now - they are literally a natural history study of puberty blocker effects. It is entirely feasible to identity everyone currently taking blockers and invite them to join a study. Why not do that? A new trial won't be double blind anyway so taking an existing group on treatment and pairing them with a group with the same level of mental health issues would be much simpler and cheaper.

Tracking down former patients is harder than it should be because they were given new NHS numbers.

Another stupid idea!

Records? What records?

The general rule for hospitals is to consider them for deletion after 6 years. Some types - for example childbirth, or if the person is still receiving ongoing treatment - will be kept longer.

So the Tavistock may not have complete records but should have at least 5 years worth.

Tracking down former patients is harder than it should be because they were given new NHS numbers.

They told Dr Cass there were no records. So either there weren't any/ they destroyed them/ they didn't want to give them to her because they contained evidence of malpractice and harm.
Whichever it was, it is damning.

I don't believe that the Tavistock 'don't have records' - medical information is retained for a set period (varies between organisations) - the data is all there, they just haven't organised it or followed people up. You absolutely could go back and trawl through all the records of children seen at GIDS and then contact them and ask if they would participate in an outcome study (some will be hard to trace, but not all).

It'd be difficult but so are clinical trials!

I can't imagine recruiting children to this trial will be easy now there has been so much negative publicity about blockers. I imagine the parent or responsible adult would have to agree with their participation- even if legally the child could consent without them it'd be difficult to arrange the multiple study visits without parental cooperation. And any parent who refused is safe in the knowledge that blockers aren't available via other routes in the UK.

Spot on. The medics involved know that what they're doing is unethical and likely to cause harm to numerous children and young people. They're hoping to take the money, make a "name" for themselves while avoiding all consequences.

IMO the fact that the Tavistock deliberately didn't keep records is very telling. In every other area of medicine, the need for accurate record keeping and retention is drummed into everyone.
In midwifery, for example, records must be preserved for at least 21 years. It may be more now (I am going back to what I was taught in the 70s).
Cancer trial records have to be retained and accessible for minimum 25 years.
Every medical professional in the UK knows about record keeping, which makes the whole thing worse.

RCTs can be useful without that. If it were possible to get patients to cooperate, we could look at, for example, the percentage that naturally recovered from gender dysphoria without social transitioning and puberty blockers.

The "random" aspect would mean you probably couldn't question that the cases were equivalent.

Yeah, it's as ethically questionable as it gets, but we are in too deep already. It's unlikely that things can just be stopped.

Do you think that's true?

I think it’s true in the sense that most people haven’t given it any deep thought or been challenged/challenged themselves on what that means. It’s just been blind acceptance of all the other TRA tropes they’ve been told, like pronouns, “most oppressed”, “just like being gay” etc. People see trans identifying adults and just assume they were kids once, ergo, “trans kids”. I agree that if challenged, no one thinks kids are actually born in the wrong body, but people don’t think about it. They just parrot the TRA mantras. But what people need convincing of is that “trans” as a concept itself is a vague ill-defined concept of circular definitions.