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

The lack of understanding of what it is to be a parent, the different challenges you face with different ages along with the potential interactions that parents must make with schools, the NHS and other institutions is very stark isn't it?

You don’t actually have any idea about my personal experience.

You have no idea how hard it is as a parent to tell your child they can’t change sex - or not hard to tell them but have them accept this - when their teachers say they can. When their school supports this and demonises the parents for saying no. When their child adopted the idea due to it being rampant in their school friendship group and when the school refuses to take any safeguarding action to protect their child from what is going on at school.

it’s very bloody hard. I think you blaming parents is downright cruel at this point.

No, but given previous research, one would not expect devastating changes to the above in the 2 year span of the trial.

You can, however, positive think your way around the cursory mental health measures that have been proposed.

Usually the idea is that parents should just tell their kids that they can’t change sex.

Now it is impossible to expect them not to actively sign their child up for, and lie about their consent to a clinical trial, even if the thought ‘horrifies’ them?

You can’t positive think your way into a particular x-ray, blood test, urinalysis, MRI scan outcome.

I think you are looking at this very narrowly and underplaying the influence of The Establishment, in this case the medical profession and schools (amongst others institutions).

Of course an unconsenting parent cannot be forced to consent to their child being signed up to a medical trial. However, they can be influenced by people in positions of trust to give consent because they believe a trial will be safe.

Some parents have greater agency than others. Even with agency it is difficult to hold the line.

IMO this trial puts more pressure on parents to consent to medicalise their children. [Some] Adults with influence will continue to treat those who refuse as bigots. Of course not all teachers but in my experience there will be plenty that enjoy exerting moral superiority in this way.

Parents deserve empathy- they are in a very difficult position.

ETA and I don’t believe parents are being given the information they need to consent

You don't seem to understand the pressure parents are under from all sides when their child identifies as trans and demands puberty blockers. Not just from their child, but from people like activist teachers, doctors and social workers.

You also seem to think parents are extremely well-informed, when most of them will be getting their information from newspapers like the Guardian and believing MPs who declare that the drugs are harmless. They're also likely to believe that if Dr Cass has endorsed the trial then it must be safe for children.

No, they won't be forced with a gun to their heads, but they'll be under a lot of pressure, direct and perceived, to do so. And although they'll give "informed consent" in many cases their understanding will be far from complete.

So, just to clarify, the children who will be put forward for this "trial" will be those who have been brainwashed affirmatively into thinking they are the opposite sex, convinced that the magic sweeties are life-saving wish-granting potions without which they will literally die in desperation, unwilling to consider watchful waiting and genuine exploratory mental health support and therapy... and their parents are just as deluded and possibly even more so, having probably initiated the children's gender distress in the first place?

Remind me again, what objective outcomes are being measured in this trial, and are we seriously expecting anything but the most positive self-reporting of the most imaginative benefits?

The idea that parents will be forced into signing a consent form for a trial that they don’t consent to by pressure from teachers(?) when the parent could simply say ‘they didn’t qualify’ when it’s suggested is stretching credulity somewhat.

And the kid doesn’t qualify. To qualify the parent has to want them to have puberty blockers.

Because some people have children experiencing gender distress and they are in the wilderness. The ban on PBs was helpful. This trial is unhelpful. It sends us back to square one. Suddenly PBs are not unsafe and parents who don’t want their children medicalised will be demonised again. Particularly by teachers participating in the school to clinic pipeline. I believe you are a teacher. Perhaps bear in mind that flippantly hand waving concerns could lead to devastating real life impacts to real children. This is not a joke

The suggestion was that parents should lie and consent to a trial that they don’t actually consent to. I mean, that’s a fairly bizarre scenario in the first place so why not add in to this extremely hypothetical scenario that they pretend to consent to keep their child happy but fudge the paperwork so the child isn’t accepted onto the trial and it’s all good?

Why should they have to? Why should parents of children with gender distress not be given the information about desistence rates with watchful waiting (60-90%) and support for their child’s comorbidities? Why must they lie to their child or the authorities to avoid medicalisation?

It’s very isolating trying to protect your child from medical malpractice when at a societal level medicalisation is seen to be the correct option.

Having to lie to or avoid institutions means no access to any treatment or support.

Assuming that they are somehow unable to say no to their child, they could always lie and tell their child they didn’t meet the entry criteria. Or lie to the doctors so they don’t meet the entry criteria.

There is a big assumption that all the parents of the children selected for the trial will be fully on board, will be the ones happy to get PBs for their child from the black market because they are the ones pushing this.

But what about those who are quietly horrified? The ones going along with it because they are terrified of losing their relationship with their child? The ones hoping against hope that the government will come it's senses and say 'no'?

In a sane world, we should be protecting kids from the first group and supporting those in the second. A PB trial is an utter betrayal of second group.

It is unclear what you are talking about when you say ‘follow-up’. The linkage study or some sort of phoning them up extra data collection effort.

Both.

It is unclear what you are talking about when you say ‘follow-up’. The linkage study or some sort of phoning them up extra data collection effort.

The data linkage study will show how many have died. What it will be hard to do is to form any conclusions from that death data because of poor prior data collection.

So say you have 10 patients that have committed suicide. That seems bad compared to the general population. But trans patients can’t be fairly compared to the general population for suicide risk because we know they are likely to have mental health issues, childhood trauma, be neurodivergent or all of the above. You need to compare them to a group who would otherwise have a similar risk profile for suicide and see if being trans, or the various treatments are associated with an increased risk. So you need to know about neurodivergence, other medications (e.g. antidepressants can cause suicidal thoughts), childhood trauma and so on.

We know that the Tavistock mostly didn’t collect that data. There’s a hope that it would have been collected and stored elsewhere by the NHS but that’s not definite (e.g. a private diagnosis of autism may not be recorded).

So you’re at the point where you know that 10 people committed suicide but you don’t know whether that’s bad for that cohort or possibly even a positive with any statistical confidence because of the patchy data records.

If the number of deaths is overwhelming then obviously that would suggest that being trans is an increased risk - but how? The drugs? Dissatisfaction with surgery? Lack of acceptance? Fallouts with family? We still wouldn’t know.

We won’t know with any confidence how many desisted because the adult gender clinics didn’t collect that data. It would be guesswork.

Until an attempt is made to collect the data we don't know how many will refuse to cooperate but these patients need to be followed up. If for example it's discovered that half the patients seen by the Tavistock are now dead then that would indicate that something very serious is going. Likewise if half of the patients are found to have desisted that again is very important data.

It is insanity and it is child abuse.

Child abuse.

And if the self-identified Right Side of History hadn't lost their collective fucking minds, everybody would clearly have seen that it is child abuse.

These parents should have been arrested, not feted and celebrated and platformed to boast about what they've done.

If you’re talking about tracing them and contacting them for new data, you’re missing the consent part. The people you trace aren’t actually compelled to comply with any request for new info.

I think there has been a lot of discussion online among the trans community about not co-operating with any of this, originally about not giving consent for their data to be used in the data linkage study. We can assume that that reluctance to help would carry over to this suggestion in a manner that would completely bias any data (i.e. those responding would be a biased sample or give overly positive answers).

This.
It's been catastrophic to allow all the male led lobby groups to influence what happens in child care, nurseries, schools and anywhere that children are. They've intimidated and bullied professionals out of safeguarding these children from their at times misled but dangerous parents.
Everyone who cares for babies and toddlers knows that a toddler claiming to be the opposite sex is as reliable as their claims to be a dinosaur or a helicopter. These organisations have openly enabled the abuse of children with all the responsible organisations who should be safeguarding them, instead colluding with their abuse.

I think the linkage study has, from the ethical point of view, to come before any PB trial. We won't know the quality of the data until it is conducted. Adult clinics were not collaborating, but the access to the NHS records should overcome that problem, and highlight other issues (e.g. cancer, cardiovascular problems..).

The PB trial as it stands will again provide low quality data, because the follow up is too short, and it does not consider the cross-sex hormones as part of the treatment; thus it is unethical.

I still can't imagine a PB trial design that is ethical, though, since the PB trial form the Tavistock, the Olson trial in the US (still unpublished, only a pre-print), have both shown a lack of clinically meaningful improvement. Finally, the recent Finnish study (which did not consider PB, only cross-sex hormones/surgeries for adolescent and young adults), which showed an increase in contact with the psychiatric clinics following treatment, is casting doubt on the treatments the PB are trying to bridge.

I think that you missed your opportunity to rebut this

If there were a possibility that PBs caused cancer long term they would trace every single patient.

yes, we should be able to tell if they are still alive. No, we probably won’t be able to tell if they are happy. We could probably tell if they are on antidepressants but that’s not the same thing.

We know that lots of people have private prescriptions for hormones so a lack of NHS prescription doesn’t automatically mean that they are not on hormones. You’d hope this would be recorded somewhere on the NHS but there’s certainly no guarantee.

What I mean is they can't contact them with a new questionnaire (e.g. about the current quality of life). That's my understanding on how clinical trials work, from an adjacent profession, but I'm happy to be corrected.