Update on the puberty blockers trial

Of course. It's bollocks, and you want someone to stand up in the House and say so. I didn't hear the debate, but I guess one or two MPs did, more or less. But the machine rumbles on anyway. For all the relatively good news recently, if the trial goes ahead, it feels like a big defeat.

The rationale for this trial is really bizarre. These kids are apparently going to find ways to get these pharmaceuticals anyway so let's at least give them to them in a "controlled way". Why not give kids cigarettes then, since they're going to get their hands on some and try smoking anyway. Or give heroin addicts heroin on the NHS? That way they can't get pure stuff - not the stuff filled with dangerous impurities - and have an eye kept on them so they don't suffocate on their vomit.

What fascinates me is that they never bother to ask just why these kids supposedly believe that they are the opposite sex when they are quite patently not the opposite sex. Just what causes so-called "gender dysphoria"? Why don't they look into that first?

Thank-you, and goddamn

Nobody is the opposite sex to that which they are.....and in that there is no such thing as 'trans'. What we have is people who adopt trans 'identities'. Some persist for a few years; some persist for decades.....though many desist and/or detransition, and no longer claim such an identity.

How many damaged and highly distressed kids are worth it for one happy one? Why does the happy one matter more than them?

That's assuming that one "true trans" kid would be happy in the first place, when they would have plenty of reasons not to be. So the end result could very well be NO happy kids at all in the end. Literally zero. Kind of a huge deal.

Does that make it right to take a healthy child and sterilise them or render them permanently unable to have a sex life? Before there's any possible chance of them knowing what they are losing?

What about the ones who will be sterilised and deprived of a sex life and later realise it was a mistake? How many damaged and highly distressed kids are worth it for one happy one? Why does the happy one matter more than them?

What about the clear evidence that many of these kids are gay and autistic and this is effectively removing them from the gene pool? What are the ethics there?

Is there really no other less harmful and less unethical way to support gender confused children?

There isn't an excuse to do this to kids.

@Zoonosis

Or maybe unlike the fanatics and ideologues here, she accepts the reality that trans people exist, that there are people living in our society who have transitioned and are happier and healthier for it, and all of those people were children once.

Please explain how you go from, "Trans people were kids once," to, "It's okay to mess with children's health and deliberately make them sick."

I think Cass is a "mild" form of true believer - she thinks there are some children who might really benefit. And she wants to be balanced and to be seen as balanced. I wouldn't object to that if only she would put her foot down about getting positive results from the data linkage study first!

She has also gone down the "harm reduction" path, that there are parents who will deliberately get all kinds of bad medication for their children if the NHS isn't supervising them.

I don't accept any of that myself but I can see why she might, and not only for self preservation reasons. It's also because her position has obliged her to see "both sides" to focus on lack of evidence rather than seeing that lack in itself as evidence of failure.

Or maybe unlike the fanatics and ideologues here, she accepts the reality that trans people exist, that there are people living in our society who have transitioned and are happier and healthier for it, and all of those people were children once.

Yes, i don't think she is a true believer; but she has chosen to opt for this compromised position for the reasons you suggest ( self preservation).

I think she could have just not addressed it at all, and then wait to see if anyone noticed or said something about 'an omission.' It's so deliberately incongruous with the rest of the report, at least from what I have read.

Instead of deliberately leaving it out, she deliberately added it in. I can only assume she wants this experiment to proceed, for...reasons. I'd like to know what those reasons are.

I have no idea. I've come to accept that like many senior in the NHS she's a cult believer. But I'm also minded of how many very unpleasant senior staff there are in the NHS who promote all this stuff. It must be frightening to work alongside them knowing that even using medically accurate terminology about women will have you marked as a transphobic bigot. I do wonder whether there are elements of self preservation with the decision about the trial?

The more I understand about how this trial will/should work, the more suspicious I become of Cass and her motives. What's her real agenda here?

Does she really think this is a good idea?
Did she "bury" it in the report, hoping no one would notice except activists and/or those who want a trial? Or did she put it in the report because she wanted to call for a trial, but she didn't want to be the one on the WSOH if it all goes pear-shaped and history starts looking for someone to blame?
Does she want to create a cohort of unhealthy, sterile human beings?
Does she not have a clue why she recommended this trial?
Does she ever stop to think: would I put my own child through this?

I know some have said she's "a true believer." Would this alone explain everything?

Implants are not the same as real breasts and only a man could think they are.
Amen to this!

Where a girl had already started her periods she will be in a permanent chemically induced menopause)

I have had a similar personal experience in that my chemotherapy (for breast cancer) sent me into an early chemically induced menopause. You can't mess around with fertility - once it's gone you might not be able to get it back. It gives me the rage that some politicians, journalists and medics are so blasé about this issue.

Similarly, there's an airy dismissal of concerns about giving girls and young women mastectomies: one surgeon said if they change their minds later they can have implants. Well, as someone who also had a mastectomy for breast cancer, again, this gives me the rage. Implants are not the same as real breasts and only a man could think they are. They can't be used for breastfeeding, and surgery causes permanent loss of sensation

One of the arguments against this trial is that it is too short term and there is no funding committed to longer term follow up. The initial comparative trial is only 2 years long. I think the longer study period is about 5 years but I'm not sure how much of that has funding.

From https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/assets/pathways/trial/pathways-trial-connect-faq.pdf

"2.11 How long will the researchers follow participants for? Participants taking part in PATHWAYS TRIAL will be regularly followed up in the trial for 2 years after their baseline assessment. During this time, they will complete research procedures every 3 months.

We want to know how young people who start on puberty suppressing hormones do in the longer term. We want to know their longer-term choices around gender identity and gender care, their physical and mental health, as well as their quality of life and wellbeing. After the first 2 years, all participants will be included in annual follow-up throughout the study period.

Follow-up into adult life is important and participants will also be asked to consent to long-term follow-up through ongoing involvement with the PATHWAYS team, with a national health registry for gender care and linkage to health information routinely collected by NHS England."

One has to assume that children being put on this trial are being encouraged in the belief that should they permanently 'socially transition' then this would mean that the world would then treat them as the sex ( " as the gender") with which they 'identify', but this is simply not true.

They will have no right to use opposite sex facilities, or be entered into opposite sex sporting categories ( certainly if their sex is male), and they will not be able to expect that people will always use preferred pronouns. Will these matters be broached by the clinical staff?

In other words, what is the logic of this experiment? What is it meant to achieve for the child? It cannot surely be simply about a shorter term reduction in distressed feelings. What is the longer term goal?

But the way this trial is set up it won’t show harm. It will show PB are a jolly good thing because the group that gets them immediately will be “happier” than the group that has to wait a year (because they got what they wanted). After two years everyone will go home so we won’t know what the impact was on the 11 year old started on PBs as part of the trial (who may be given dispensation to continue on them after the trial) when she’s 35.

of course we don’t know how much of the impact is PB’s, missing puberty or subsequent cross sex hormones. We already know that 98% of children given PBs by GIDs went on to cs hormones and also per research referenced by the Cass Review that 60-90% of children desisted when undergoing watchful waiting.

When you add in the evidence from the Finnish research there’s no defence for this trial.

Is there any other situation in the NHS where the illegal behaviour of parents has resulted in drugs which are known to be harmful to be given to physically healthy children?

Cass is saying "we are going to cause arrested development in some children because if we don't then parents will cause arrested development illegally in more of them".

And that's before we even start on the fact that none of these children are allowed to have a proper psychiatric analysis done of their gender dysphoria, never mind any counselling for it, because all "care" is required to be gender affirming.

The more I think about this the more mad I get about trans activists who have already been failed by the system using another generation of children to shore up their own misguided beliefs.

In the HoC debate, so many MPs say that they want to follow science, not ideology. They seem unable to see that by talking about 'trans children' they are showing that it's ideology that's leading them.

Could any of them even define what they mean by a 'trans child'? Belief in 'trans children' is ideology, not science.

Do they believe that some people are literally born in the wrong body? This is ideology, not science.

Or is a 'trans child' someone who suffers from a hatred of their body and wants to change it to appear like the opposite sex? This is a psychological problem which isn't solved by using medication to change their body.

Or is a 'trans child' just one who hates the gender stereotypes they are expected to perform? This isn't even a psychological problem. It's a perfectly normal human reaction. The child just needs support to understand that they don't have to conform to stereotypes.

Why do these MPs never explain what they think a 'trans child' is?

Good post from Hoardasuras. When you boil it down to basics, gender medicine practised on children is both profoundly stupid and profoundly unethical. There is no justification for it whatsoever.

The fact that our lawmakers, policymakers, doctors and so on have gone along with this insane and harmful ideology is almost too depressing to contemplate.

I am so depressed that this trial is going ahead. I hope the conservatives force a debate on it. Otherwise we are sacrificing these children on the alter of the trans cult.

These drugs should only ever be used for end stage cancers never on healthy children.

This is the crux of the matter. These are healthy children and the government is going to experiment on them with drugs to see if they are still "healthy" at the end of the trial!

Setting aside the ethics for a moment, where's the logic in that?