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

What benefits do you think this treatment will provide to the participants?

What exactly is the condition which is being treated and why are puberty blockers the chosen treatment?

What does a good outcome look like for the participants?

I'm not appealing to my authority to convince you, I'm explaining why I don't need to rely in Transgender Trend to form my opinions.

This was a criticism of a retrospective study of the Tavistock patients, not the current puberty blocker trial protocol.

I would hope, if the trial goes ahead, that it shows that puberty blockers provide no benefits compared to the children who are on the comparison study who aren't taking puberty blockers. I hope that any risks are minimal due to short exposure, but if there are any, that they are clearly demonstrated.

I hope that the international medical community then take notice and gender clinics all over the world switch to non-medical interventions.

I don't think that this will happen without a proper trial being conducted. I just can't see it. Therefore I think that not conducting the trial will not prevent harm to children, but potentially prolong it.

Ah, well as someone who has some knowledge and experience in this area without needing to be told, if there's a whole bunch of missing data, it's inconsistently recorded, and they didn't record major things like mental health issues before intervention or other medications being taken (e.g. antidepressants) then there is fuck-all useful statistical analysis that can be done to assess the efficacy of a medication or intervention.

Are we not being told that the trial will do rigorous selection and no child with mental health issues will be recruited? So no child will be or at age 12 ought to be on antidepressants.

For me, @noblegiraffe you seem to support the trial. Apart from data, what do you see as being achieved by it?

No need to be condescending. If you have to appeal to your authority it makes your case appear weaker.

Ah, well as someone who has some knowledge and experience in this area without needing to be told, if there's a whole bunch of missing data, it's inconsistently recorded, and they didn't record major things like mental health issues before intervention or other medications being taken (e.g. antidepressants) then there is fuck-all useful statistical analysis that can be done to assess the efficacy of a medication or intervention.

If you look at the Finnish study where the data is complete and consistent and then see the extremely limited conclusion that they could statistically draw from the data, you might start to appreciate the limitations of retrospective studies.

@BonfireLady

Thank you so much 😍! But to be honest, being here is really not that hard at all. I mean, dealing with the facts of a situation is a whole lot easier for me than keeping the faith in something that doesn't make sense to me. And sure, there are things that are complicated to deal with when you're GC and trans, but there were also complicated stuff to manage previously, so basically I've exchanged one set of problems for another 😛And if I can help as well as learn around here, then so much the better!

But yeah, the kids... That's just not right 😡Like, how many people would agree that the NHS should give nose jobs to 11yo kids, under the pretense that if they don't get it officially, they'll get them on the black market anyway? What about boob jobs (up or down) to 14yo under the pretense that they know what they want anyway, and why would we force them to suffer for years with a boob size that distresses them so much? I mean, yes, there are kids who will indeed go on to have this nose or boob job as soon as they can, but nobody argues that because those kids exist, all the other ones who argue for 6 months that, no, really, they need that surgery or they'll die!!! should be given it too.

People have no problem going, "lol no, you're gonna change your mind, and if you don't, you can decide for yourself when you're old enough" for those purely cosmetic surgeries, but when it comes to so-called trans kids, where the dangers are so much higher, all caution and reason go to the wind. Why??

As the Transgender Trend article outlines, the problem is that the story about the usefulness or otherwise of the DL study keeps changing. We already have a low level of trust of these people, they are not doing themselves any favours by contradicting themselves and each other.

Except that it seems that Cass is not (or, at least, no longer) pushing the 'true trans' narrative and has pivoted to children that were socially transitioned by their parents at a young age. How can she know whether those children's distress is because they are 'true trans' or the result of Munchausen-by-proxy or because they have naive parents who were persuaded by bad actors that their children were 'trans' and would kill themselves if not socially transitioned? The presence of girls in the cohort works against the true trans narrative.

In the letter linked in the OP she explains why it won't be any use to assess the efficacy of puberty blockers.

Because the data is crap.

I know I've said this to you before, but it certainly doesn't hurt to say it again. I absolutely love it that you're here on this board. I have a huge admiration for your strength in navigating everything that you read in these threads and making sense of it in relation to your own life and the concern you have for vulnerable children. I'm not sure if I've put it like that before (maybe I did?) but that's the sentiment I've consistently felt reading your posts. Thank you 💐🙏

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/assets/pathways/trial/pathways-trial-protocol.pdf

“Retrospective studies are a form of observational study looking at earlier data in a
cohort of individuals. They are used to identify potential causal factors that can be
formally tested in more rigorous designs. Retrospective studies have all the
drawbacks of prospective observational methods, outlined above. They also require
that relevant data were collected at earlier timepoints.
It has been suggested that UK research on GnRHa for puberty suppression in
gender incongruence might start with a retrospective study of the young people
previously seen at the Tavistock Service who are now young adults. It would not be
possible to address important questions about GnRHa for several reasons. First,
clinically recorded information on this patient cohort was not standardised or
recorded at specific timepoints. Second, published reports from this cohort suggest
high levels of attrition which are likely to be biased in relation to clinical outcomes.
Third, some important classes of data, including cognition, childhood adverse
experiences and neurodiversity, were not recorded at all. Hence, we conclude that a
retrospective study would not provide alternative evidence.”

and for the adult gender clinics
”The absence of any patient outcomes data, alongside limited and inconsistent quality data reporting, and minimal clinical audit makes it impossible to properly understand patient outcomes and the safety of these services. These gaps place these clinics outside standard NHS quality assurance expectations.”

and “The review heard that, following assessment and treatment, some patients express regret or dissatisfaction; a smaller number choose to discontinue or reverse their gender transition. Some later decide to retransition.
99. The number of patients who express some form of regret, dissatisfaction or choose to detransition is unknown due to the absence of GDC outcomes data.”

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/operational-and-delivery-review-of-nhs-adult-gender-dysphoria-clinics-in-england/

Cass commissioned the data-linkage study so she obviously didn't think it was garbage.

https://www.transgendertrend.com/data-linkage-study/

That's chilling.

Susie Green didn't buy the drugs off the internet, she took her son to the US to be treated by Dr Norman Spack. He recalls in this article from 2015 how he started 'salivating' when he first came across the idea of giving puberty blockers to children as the Dutch had been doing.

The New Girl in School: Transgender Surgery at 18 - The New York Times

But the drive to treat children is relatively new. One of the first and biggest hormone programs for young teenagers in the United States is led by a Harvard-affiliated pediatric endocrinologist, Dr. Norman Spack, at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Spack recalled being at a meeting in Europe about 15 years ago, when he learned that the Dutch were using puberty blockers in transgender early adolescents.

“I was salivating,” he recalled. “I said we had to do this.”

Yes, why put TiF on puberty blockers and stunt their growth? They are likely to be small for men in any case, and even less height gain can't help, surely?

I notice that we still haven't had an answer to this question from someone who thinks the trial should go ahead.

We've just had some speculation that it's all about passing, just like in the original Dutch protocol. Which means at the very least that no girls should be recruited to the trial, because it doesn't apply to them.

But people saying "but the Scandinavian studies all show!" and so forth can claim to be right, because Finland isn't in Scandinavia.

I thought the data hadn't been released. How do you know it's garbage?

As a former "True Trans kid" myself, who transitioned in my late 30s, I'd be very wary about making the jump from c) to d). There's a whole lot more involved in being happy as a trans adult than just passing, from accepting the extent to which one's sex cannot be changed, to dealing with the challenges of sexuality with a trans body, to dealing with the potential medical side-effects of transitioning and the limitations they might put on every-day life, and so on. Passing well is not some kind of Graal which, once obtained, makes everything else right, far from it.

As you said: "a lot of assumptions and a very risky strategy", indeed.

I'd be interested in Cass' definitions of "true trans", "pass", and "happy."

I think she
a. is deluded and/or confused
b. is related to someone she considers to be "true trans"
c. is an activist
d. couldn't care less what happens to these children as long as she gets to hear her own voice in the HoL quite often
e. has "secret" information about the whole thing that we don't know about, or
e. all of the above

If Cass
a) believes in True Trans and
b) believes these True Trans children will never desist and
c) believes PB and cross sex hormones will help them 'pass' as adults and
d) they will therefore be happy adults

It is understandable that she supports the trial and believes it to be time sensitive.

But that is a lot of assumptions and a very risky strategy.

Try this: https://sex-matters.org/about-us/what-we-are-up-against/timeline-of-puberty-blockers-and-cross-sex-hormones-for-children/

Yes, I got to it via the Sex Matters timeline of the PB trial. Hang on, I'll see if a link to that works...