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

They allow parents to refuse blood transfusions for children on religious grounds but I can't think of any case where the NHS will do an active intervention that supports a belief.

In the UK parents absolutely do NOT have a right to refuse a blood transfusion for their child on religious grounds. The interests of the child are paramount. If a child needs a blood transfusion they will be given one. In an emergency this will be done pragmatically simply ignoring the parents wishes. If it's not an emergency then NHS Trusts may go to court to endorse the need for a transfusion but that's not strictly necessary.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-48868210

It's not just insufficient, it's useless. We know that the gender clinics were shit at collecting data. How can you possibly draw any conclusions about the impact of a medication on mental health or whatever if you didn't collect data about their mental health before they went on any medication? Let alone whether they were on any other medication at the same time.

And if we know that those on puberty blockers mostly went onto cross-sex hormones, how can you possibly isolate any impact of puberty blockers from the impact of the hormones?

Indeed. There are reasons the data's been deliberately concealed by the self interested medics / transactivists who run the adult services.

The idea that data collection takes priority over safeguarding children is quite an astounding argument

But that is what's planned to happen. There's a planned Pathways study where the ones on puberty blockers on the trial are matched to kids not on puberty blockers and receiving other interventions.

I understand where you’re coming from.

But, if one of my undergraduate students had written a proposal for a project in which they intended to collect new data, but refused to even consider a brief examination of extant data, no matter how poor that extant data was, I would be having a serious talk with that student.

You have to grapple with all the data. You cannot just say “well my data will be better than the old data” - particularly when no one has even been able to see, let alone examine, the old data. Even if you end up saying, yes, the old data was insufficient, we need new data, you still have to look at the old data and establish this.

Nobody thinks the linkage study will have any evidence of success, that's the point. If there was, they would be shouting from the rooftops.

The original trial was turned down by the ethics committee so they kept going until a different committee said yes.

They then completely disregarded their own age limits.

And the guy that did all this, ended up as president of the royal college of paediatricians. After cass had ended her time as president.

They are all in on it.

It's baffling to me that people who can be laser-focused on pointing out potential issues with the puberty blockers trial can at the same time think that the data linkage study could possibly provide anything of statistical value.

Either you care about good data collection or you don't.

Really?
I feel so sick about this.

Yes.

Finland knows that almost all children given puberty blockers go on to cross sex hormones; but, conversely, almost all gender questioning children who do not get puberty blockers desist.

Surely the trial designers would want the results of the data linkage study, incomplete as they may be, to help to inform the trial design. It really feels like they are putting the cart before the horse.

No, definitely won't happen again.
Medical scandals are always reported, learnt from. Of course they are.
We always go forwards, to better outcomes based on superior info and data.
This is like the lobotomy scandal and reclaimed memories cults.
But in some ways worse, we moved on (sometimes to other horrible outcomes, but sometimes to more enlightenment) from those, but this PB trial means things haven't been learnt from The Tavistock and the horrors of WPATH bad medicine, the medical profession is still ideologically captured, the arrogance of doctors is as bad as ever, now with the cover of trying to mend social ills and uphold minority rights.

Excellent points. From a safeguarding children perspective, it blows my mind to see anyone arguing that we'll just sterilise and potentially impair the brain and body development of a small number of children as it will benefit the greater number in the long run.
Sadly that's what Cass & others seem to be arguing. It's not an argument I'd ever make, but as we know, this area does appear to be an ethics free zone in terms of harming children.

Not only did the Tavistock cohort go down the PB route, but their use at the Tavistock started as a clinical trial! And then quietly, with no fanfare, more and more kids were prescribed them and the trial aspect slipped away.

And yet somehow this won’t happen again.

What I cannot understand is how the former 2 1/2 year old being told they were the opposite sex all their life by their parents, who now that he is 11 needs puberty blockers to prevent himself and school peers from knowing the truth, will be matched with a trial double.

To do so shouldn’t they have other similarly raised parent-transed- as- toddler 11 year old boys, some of whom would receive placebos under the trial, and some of whom would have psychological help while they come to terms with the truth and perhaps go to a new school etc as their true sex.

But none of that will happen.

It blows my mind that we already have a cohort who've gone down the PB route, the thousands out there via the Tavistock etc.
But for whatever reasons, have not been followed up on.
In an area where your brain explodes regularly following this subject, this is right up there.
Let's say we were starting a trial on regular heading of a football causing (or not) brain effects long term, and we had data from decades of thousands of boys heading millions of balls, we would rather take hundreds of new kids to head balls thousands of times, rather than check previous data?
Ditto rugby injuries.
Road traffic accidents.
Asbestos poisoning.
Etc etc etc.
Society is absolutely stupid.

@noblegiraffe

And we have a method which can help decide who is right - the clinical trial which has long been used to provide statistically valid evidence of efficacy or otherwise of drugs.

I think that many of the people who object to the proposed trial are doing so on the basis of a) understanding what makes a water-tight clinical trial, and b) recognising that the proposed trial is so far away from being water-tight as to have already sunk, beneath the waves, never to be seen again.

There is value in collecting good data. This trial is proposing to collect bad data, and in doing so will almost certainly harm a new cohort of children.

I read a great line once.
"Gender dysphoria is simply body dysphoria"
Just as we don't infantilise people who learn to hate their limbs by offering to cut them off, and to top that, tell them that's just fine, pretend they'll be happier, and society will smile at them and never dissent against their choice, we shouldn't infantilise the body dysmorphics who rather than hate their legs, instead hate their breasts, and fucking never betray the trust of children as their protectors by buying into these fantasies.

People saying that Cass must be saying this because she has had death threats and been forced into it, or because she's madly in favour of transing kids are just barking. She has clearly stated her reasons, and while you may disagree with her reasons, there's no evidence of her being an ideologue or coerced into what she has said.

The is a very good point to be made. At the moment, we have two 'sides' yelling at each other - one saying that these drugs are dangerous and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near kids and the other saying that these drugs are lifesaving and totally necessary. Both sides can wheel out people who have taken them to support their view.

And we have a method which can help decide who is right - the clinical trial which has long been used to provide statistically valid evidence of efficacy or otherwise of drugs.

Will not doing the study prevent harm to children - unlikely. There are many, many people, internationally, happily giving these drugs to kids.

Will doing the study and finding statistically valid evidence of issues prevent harm to children - yes. The unethical internet doctors will probably still keep peddling their crap but it should certainly halt at least some of the evidence-based ones. And parents and carers can be pointed in the direction of some solid research to protect them from the unethical snake-oil salesmen.

People going on about the 'data linkage' study: Cass has already outlined why it would be crap data and easily dismissible. It certainly wouldn't be statistically valid data against puberty blockers in particular and it definitely wouldn't stop the people yelling that they are life-saving.

Exactly! If it’s not about sex’ how can it some how, at the same time, be all about how you must replicate, as far as possible, the sex you are not.

Body dysphoria is about sex though, and hating your own. But again, getting another (apparent) sex instead is never really going to help. It is all just pasted on to the original body for a start. The answer must be through mental help, as far as that is possible.

IMHO, it's because what was always 100% a lifestyle choice has been 100% successfully reframed as civil rights, the last great evil of persecuted individuals to fall. As opposed to a kink or affectation to be tolerated in very restricted circumstances.
Once you reframe men in twin set and pearls tottering around the shops in the 70s from a pure lifestyle choice (even if most people back then understood these men were troubled and somewhat compelled), that could not come close to outranking women's and kid's rights, to civil rights, minority rights, then the whole focus and picture looks totally different. Now, those newly reframed rights are competitive with women and kids.
So, in an alternative universe where the liberal West didn't lose it's collective marbles, rights for transsexuals not to be harassed, to live their life free of fear, could and should have happened. That wouldn't mean broader society and those vulnerable within it having to accept it as normal, certainly not to subordinate to it. Certainly not to it becoming an equal and competing right.
It would mean men outed living their lifestyle in private couldn't be sacked or discriminated against unfairly.
But society would have maintained it's guardrails and general disdain.
The trans child, other than the most pathological expressions of self hate (which have always been recognized) would not have even been close to becoming a thing, let alone a phenomenon that has undermined all mores.
So, lifestyle choice to civil right, and thus civil right obliges the need for the trans child that becomes the transsexual man.
Because, if there was no trans child, then the transsexual man would have to be a lifestyle not a marginalized minority.
So, the trans child becomes the conveyor belt of useful bodies, and also the poster child that justifies the whole phenomenon.
Because without the trans child, all you have is a bunch of men unhappy in their skin, a kink and affectation that needs as much protection and affirmation as Furries or Goths or self IDd Jedi Knights.

If there's any joy in this totally destructive detour for the West, it's reading the increasingly unhinged anger of the likes of Ian Dunt, James Blob'rien and Jolyon Maugham, as Terf Island just will not shut their mouths.

I used to think it was fear. Fear of losing their jobs, fear of being doxxed, fear of losing their children, their families, their friends. Some of it is that. But it can't be all of them.

FOMO?
Wanting to be with the "in crowd?"

That's just stupidity, isn't?

And the laser focus that the most motivated men always bring to a project meant that men belittled in the 70s walking around a supermarket in their twin set and pearls, have a half century later wrangled liberal society their way, in their own image.

Yes, that’s a good way to summarise that mindset. The laser focused men with a kink, I get. Angry, entitled and wholly focused on his wants experienced as his right, I can understand that man. I’ve seen enough variation of him without the dress.

And what better way to embed this than to create "the trans child" that the Be Kind and Suicidal Empathy broader civic society were only too eager to subscribe to.

I still do not get these people, those eager to do the angry transsexuals bidding and throwing children under the bus to do so. Just why?

Oh, completely agree - my take was predominantly with regard to the introduction of PBs into the medical procedures offered to transsexual men.

First off, it was the doctors who came up with the idea that passing or not passing was the source of their patients’ ongoing lack of improvement in mental health. There was no sense (to my knowledge) that they were doing this on the basis of a deep understanding of the psycho-social state of their patients’ minds - it seemed to just have been a theory they threw out there.

And second, PBs are not really needed for trans-identifying females (that’s what I meant about testosterone being a strong drug). Testosterone in a female body that has gone through puberty causes much greater physical changes than estrogen in a male body that has gone through puberty. Kiera Bell has commented on this, querying why they’re prescribed for girls at all (she found the mental and physical effects of them so dreadful that she couldn’t wait to get switched from them to hormones).

Basically, whatever you think about the whole idea of medicalisation of gender confusion, the scientific motivation for including PBs in that treatment path is slim to nonexistent.