Hilary Cass sent a document to every single MP and Peer, justifying and defending the puberty blockers trial

There is an opportunity to study a small subset of them. Give them the drugs carefully, in a controlled environment, and collect lots of data as it's done. Really nail down the problems with them. Use that data as evidence to shut down the prescription of these drugs and protect all children, soon and into the future. There is an opportunity to study a small subset of them. Give them the drugs carefully, in a controlled environment, and collect lots of data as it's done. Really nail down the problems with them. Use that data as evidence to shut down the prescription of these drugs and protect all children, soon and into the future.
Nobody who is determined to use these drugs on children for whatever their actual reasons are is going to stop this based on one study with 250 children that we can already see the flaws in the design.

So in your world, we have to spend several years and a load of taxpayers' money doing yet another harmful experiment on children in order to convince a bunch of deranged adults that they shouldn't be telling children that they can change sex.

Do you really think it wouldn't be better to just tell the deranged adults that they can't just demand that more children are harmed in order to prop up the delusional fantasies of adult male fetishists?

"Loads of people have lost their minds so we have to harm a bunch of children in order to convince them they're wrong."

No. People who've lost their minds won't listen to reason. There need to be some actual rational people in charge who just say "no" to the delusional and the fetishists.

Ok, well, thanks for being honest that you are advocating for using drugs to experiment on a few hundred UK children in order to hopefully get some kind of useful data and, hopefully, possibly, maybe persuade the rest of the world to stop using these drugs on their children.

I hope, if this experiment does go ahead, that these children feel in years to come that sacrificing their physical and mental health for other people's wellbeing was worth it.

(I also hope you don't have any actual influence on whether or not this trial proceeds)

'I need a study to prove this drug is harmful'

'What makes you think it is harmful'

'Well, we already use it to castrate sex offenders and we know it is harmful for long periods on other kids as we limit the exposure to the barest minimum to avoid all the thousands of already identified issues, so I was wanting to try it on kids'

'Are you out of your fucking mind?'

Is how the 'trial design' should have gone.

Thank you. Jesus it’s like arguing with a toddler.

A toddler who has clearly never conducted a piece of research in their life.

@noblegiraffe:

There is an opportunity to study a small subset of them. Give them the drugs carefully, in a controlled environment, and collect lots of data as it's done. Really nail down the problems with them. Use that data as evidence to shut down the prescription of these drugs and protect all children, soon and into the future.

I don’t know how many times I can say this to you, but I will try once more: the puberty blocker trial will not nail down anything, because the measures that it is proposing to collect, and the circumstances and duration under which it will collect them, are weak and insufficient.

Maybe there is a trial design that could do what you are hoping to do - although, again, as PPs have pointed out, if you were the researcher and you proposed a trial to prove that a particular drug was harmful rather than beneficial, you would be shut down, because that type of study is unethical.

BUT THIS STUDY IS NOT IT.

The data linkage trial is not a replacement for the puberty blockers trial, it is a necessary precursor to it. We need to analyse the hell out of whatever data we can get before we expose more children.

The data linkage trial can establish at least floor and ceiling values for some of the outcome variables. It can answer methodological questions for a new study. It can establish what data the NHS is capable of storing over a long period, how data gets lost and and how it can be maintained and accessed; it can validate some of the questions that might be asked of the new cohort and raise new issues.

And yes, even weak linkage data with little more than floor and ceiling values might be enough in itself to establish that the puberty blocker trial is unnecessary, infeasible or unethical. (I personally think we have the evidence for unnecessary and unethical already but if the data linkage study came up with results against my expectations then I'd respect that.)

That's not the world as it is, that's the world as you'd like it to be.

In the world as it is, many adults are telling kids a bunch of crap, and other adults have to deal with the fallout.

I did and have answered this. You didn't like the answer, but that's on you, not me.

My perspective is that thousands of kids around the world are being given these drugs, some illegally, most being prescribed them legally.

There is an opportunity to study a small subset of them. Give them the drugs carefully, in a controlled environment, and collect lots of data as it's done. Really nail down the problems with them. Use that data as evidence to shut down the prescription of these drugs and protect all children, soon and into the future.

Or, we could let thousands of kids take these drugs and not properly study a small subset of them and hope shouting 'no they're not' at the people who are shouting 'they're lifesaving' works eventually.

If there is no data about these children, and nobody kept any records about anything they saw then
a - where did Hannah Barnes get her stats from?
b - why are all these medical professionals still employed?

I've looked at the objectives, and also how they define the term "gender incongruence".

Inclusion criteria:
1. Diagnosis of gender incongruence according to
ICD-11, which includes:
a. Strong desire to be a different gender than the birth-registered sex.
b. Strong dislike of sexual anatomy or anticipated secondary sex characteristics.
c. Gender Incongruence persisted for a minimum of 2 years.
d. Strong desire to ‘transition’ and live as the experienced gender.

You're expecting good data from this?

The so-called medical condition under investigation is described as a combination of desires and dislike of the body. An experiment on children is taking place because they dislike the stereotypes for their sex and the changes happening to their bodies at puberty?

Primary Objective
To determine the short/medium-term benefits and
risks of GnRHa for puberty suppression in CYP with
gender incongruence. This will take a comprehensive approach to domains of possible benefit and risk, including quality of life, mental health, gender identity/dysphoria and body satisfaction, impact on cognition and brain development and physical effects including bone mineral density.

Quality of life. How is quality of life measured? Is there some sort of scale that provides good data for this?

Mental health. I'm not sure how keeping someone childlike while all their classmates are going through puberty is likely to help a child's mental health. I would have thought they'd feel more and more isolated so there's unlikely to be any benefit from the drugs.

Gender identity/dysphoria and body satisfaction. What is the scale of measurement here? Surely "body satisfaction" isn't any sort of relevant measurement for a teenager, a time when hating your body is the norm. There's unlikely to be any good data resulting from this.

Impact on cognition and brain development and physical effects including bone mineral density.
These are actual outcomes which can be measured and studies have already been done. We know there is a negative effect on brain development and bone density. We don't need to harm more children in order to know the outcome.

What on earth is the point of this trial really?

Vulnerable children as collateral damage

This is it exactly. ⬆

And I'm still hoping to get an answer from @noblegiraffe to my question from yesterday:

No data is worth harming one single child for. No data. Not to cure something as ethereal and undefinable as "gender identity." Not to cure cancer. Why is it acceptable to you to harm children to get some data?

Because no one has been willing to answer this question yet. It's so obvious to many people that this is not the way to go about getting data that you want/need. But, apparently not obvious to everyone?

And finding that they are willing to sacrifice your child for the greater good

That is what I can absolutely not get my head around and I'm a scientist who was prepared to take personal risks during my career (working in extreme environments). Vulnerable children as collateral damage, all while knowing that no TRA will ever accept any outcome of this "study" that doesn't fit their narrative. It's utterly disgraceful.

I agree.

In the world as it is, people are male or female, and people can't change sex.

In the world as some people would like it to be, we can actually change people's sex (or at least the sex they appear to be), which is what this trial is all about.

Perhaps you should offer your advice to the people who are proposing this trial.

And all responsible adults should tell children that they also have to live in the real world as it is, where people can't change sex, not the world as they would like it to be, where they can.

You have dismissed the possibility of any statistical validity of the data on a purely negative view of what you perceive to be available. The idea we can’t gain any insight into outcomes for children by looking in to this is wholly without basis.

I’m afraid that statistical validity doesn’t rely on a positive can-do attitude, rather complete, clean datasets.

Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. Not worth being ‘troubled’ over.

But it’s not completely unusable.

Most people are of the opinion that we should find out what’s happened to the children who have already been experimented on before experimenting on any other children. It’s possible to attempt this, only blind pessimism and negativity, or an imperative to hide the problems is stopping this.

It’s not impossible at all.

That is how your argument started, but you have developed into a 'nothing to see here' argument which, frankly, I find troubling.
Anyway, I think we have explored the subject as far as it will go and we are just repeating ourselves now. Good night.

Because some people think that the data linkage study can replace the puberty blocker trial, which it can’t.

^1.6.5 Long-term follow-up
Gender incongruence may be a life-long condition or may resolve over adolescence or adult life. The aim of all interventions, Psychosocial and medical, should be to provide support that promotes the short and longer-term health, wellbeing and quality of life. In order to understand the impact of interventions, long-term follow-up is essential. The National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) has agreed to fund an open-label extension study to provide longer term follow-up of PATHWAYS TRIAL participants into adulthood, over and above the routine data collection already in place within routine NHS Gender Service care. The investigators will submit an application by month 12 and no later than 15 months post-first randomisation for this follow-up. The open-label extension if approved will include measures of physical health, mental health, gender identity and gender/body satisfaction, quality of life and well-being. This application for long-term follow-up will undergo the usual scientific evaluation and will be subject to regulatory approval.^

It sounds like a good intention, but I do not understand what is meant by submitting an application by month 12 and no later than month 15 in regard to a study going so many years beyond that.

What do they mean by "live as a girl", "be treated like a girl", " behave like a girl" "feel like a girl"?

Because what some of that stuff is likely to boil down to is:

1. Hating the messiness and physical discomforts of periods and bras.

1. Hating the discovery that in many ways, you will be a second class citizen in a nominally equal but actually quite sexist society. In particular, you will be seen by many as a sex object or as a failed sex object.

1. The particular milieu you grow up in and what it considers to be "for girls" and " for boys" and "for everyone".

Yet the questionnaire seems to consider that the meaning and significance of those phrases is self-evident. It isn't. Framing the three things above as issues of gender identity is social and cultural and not even consistent across society.

Is there any chance they’ll need to agree to longer? And have funding for longer?

Say an 11 year is on the trial they’ll still only be 16. It needs to reach well into adulthood.

But she wants it done and she has said this in black and white and has persuaded the Govt to lean on the adult clinics witholding the data. She would not bother if she did not think that there is valuable data here that will not be available from the trial. Your insistence of 'nothing to see here' is becoming puzzling (or not).

I’m not Cass. She’s pretty clear that there’s no point in waiting on it.