Debate on the puberty blocker trial this afternoon, 23rd June

I said the other day on FB

People have just been assuring me, left right and centre, all over FB, that PBs are completely safe and reversible. Makes them seem more like aspirin. When a large sector of the population (probably university-educated) seem to genuinely believe this nonsense, where do we go from here?

I read a comment from my MP today that these drugs are “just” the same as what we treat prostate cancer with so they are fine. If you have ever seen the effects of prostate cancer hormone therapy causing grown men to cry and scream in pain then this is not something you would give to a child.

Who is selling them the testosterone and why aren't they being arrested?

I'm speculating, but Baroness Cass has been pretty clear:

"Today we have young people turning up in the clinics on testosterone at 11, which we know is irreversible,"

"It may be that if they were prescribed puberty blockers instead, that would give more time for the therapist to work with them and perhaps come to a different solution than a long-term life on medication."

That is fairly explicit that the aim is to get these kids on PBs to avoid them going on cross sex hormones.

Yes, I don't think that's a stretch at all. It seems the obvious conclusion. They kick the can down the road, and keep it on the agenda.

I think this is almost certainly true. There are trans zealots who want some children to have these drugs. The drugs have been banned but there's a loophole in the Cass report that said children should be allowed them if there's a clinical trial.

They're not expecting to discover anything, but they want there to be a continued stream of children being given these drugs in the hope that eventually it can go back to how it was before Cass. It's a way of keeping the cult alive.

ok, well, I wasn't going to be quite that cynical, but you might be on to something. Do you know this for a fact, because that would explain a lot. Or are you speculating?

It's set up to allow some children to get access to PBs, not to actually discover anything.

And damaged a few more kids.

It’s a cowardly choice. Just as everybody knows exactly what sex they are, and what sex any individual is, and the consequences of being female, but so many people are afraid of being labelled unkind/losing votes that they won’t speak up, in just the same way study is carefully designed to please nobody and offend only those who the designers believe they can get away with offending. At the end of the study the result will be the same as now. The same questions, the same concerns, from those who propose safeguarding. The same unfounded claims to evidence from those who prioritise genderism and Be Kind (Or Else).

But they’ve done a study - tick!

Sounds about right to me, @BridgetPhillipsonIsACowardlyJobsworth . The trial cannot be a 'success', and will achieve nothing, bar producing a few more damaged kids. And they are not even going to follow up on those kids long-term.

But for TRAs, just getting the trial to happen is a win. As is this looney Conversion Practices Bill.

I agree with pp that the design of the trial seems to set it up for failure on so many levels

I just had a weird thought: if the trial cannot measure "success" because success hasn't been defined (and neither has what they are trying to "cure"), therefore it is basically already set up to fail. BUT, at the same time, there is no definition of "failure" either, could it be surmised that the trial has been set up just to fulfill that part of the Cass Review so "they" can point to it and say "well, we've done the trial, look"?

At which point, we will have no success or failure, and we'll be right back where we are now, with puberty blockers banned and "they" can say "We've done everything we could, don't look at us if you want to complain".

Does this makes sense, or am I seeing conspiracy theories because of the heat?

Agree @Dragonasaurus - by definition anybody who has signed up for this is a believer in gender > sex, in the life-saving essentialness of blocking puberty, in the magical transformative properties of cross-sex hormones, in the suicidal/genocidal/hyperbolic narrative.

The feeling that you’re letting down other ‘trans kids’ (who comes after you) if your reactions mean that PB’s are banned

And, maybe, your parents too?

If you don’t know why you are prescribing a drug, if you don’t have a clear definition of what improvements in the condition the drug is supposed to bring about, if you don’t even have a stable definition of what the condition is… then it is not possible to test whether the drug ‘works’.

We know puberty blockers block puberty. But is having puberty blocked a good thing for children who express questions about their gender? Good in what sense? On what timescale?

Can you imagine being a child on this trial?

The assumption that you will feel better because of the medication (internal and external - no child gets signed up if their parents don’t fundamentally believe it will help them)
The pressure to say you feel better even if you don’t
The risk of doxxing and external influences
The feeling that you’re letting down other ‘trans kids’ (who comes after you) if your reactions mean that PB’s are banned

I agree with pp that the design of the trial seems to set it up for failure on so many levels

Absolutely! Very worrying.

This is the problem. The adults doing this to children are already so open minded, their brains have fallen out.

Well and also the minimum age limit is the minimum not the whole cohort so if the randomised sorting puts a girl of 12 in the start at once group and a girl of 11 in the wait a year group they are both going to start on PBs at the same age. So what will that prove?

Also, they will all also receive psychotherapy IIRC which is surely a confounding factor? Are they happier because of receiving good therapy or because of the PBs? Obviously I am glad for the individual trial participants that they will get therapy as well as this is a huge thing that they are embarking on but it seems to me that it makes it harder to show causation towards any positives.

Finally and also IIRC, there is another group who do not qualify for the PB trial that will undertake different testing and I think there has been argument discussion on other threads over whether this is a control group. I don't think it is as it is not the same cohort of children who the PB participants will be chosen from ....

Presumably the people who designed the trials are ideologically opposed to watchful waiting or talking therapy because they see it as unethical 'conversion therapy'. The inbuilt bias is glaringly obvious

100% agree, this is not a proper control group at all. Surely it's not standard when testing a drug to also give it to the control group but just make them wait for a while? Especially when the participants have such strong preconceptions about the drug they will be taking

It's a really badly designed experiment with an unproven assumption (that the only possible treatment for gender dysphoria is puberty blockers) built into it

I saw a tweet from Rosie Duffiled saying 200 Labour MPs had not voted. It would have made a difference if they had had the guts to vote against the trial rather than just not vote for it. These 200 may be good targets for letter writing to try and give them more courage for next time it's needed.

What is the purpose of the ‘wait’ group? How are they a control group? Puberty lasts over 10y, so what is the point of waiting 1-2y? Suppressing puberty may have lifelong effects, effects which - apparently! - we don’t know, and therefore have this glorious study to discover them. So why is it a relatively short-term study, rather than a longitudinal study?

It’s almost as if it’s a study designed to fail, so that nobody can say for certain what the effects of these drugs are in children, and therefore the Wild West of genderaffirmation can continue relatively in challenged.

Ok, yes, that's what I meant originally about the previous poster. I guess we'll see...

Yes, that's what I meant, as previous posters have alluded to.