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

Having scanned this thread, I have another question about the consent for the study. Given that we know that 98% of chn who started on PBs ended up on CS hormones, we should assume that a significant proportion of the chn in the trial could do the same.
When the Tavi was using this treatment before there was a widespread misunderstanding of the law - it was wrongly assumed that when out and about people could use facilities according to their choice (probably in line with the hormones they took), rather than their sex.
Now it has been clarified that this is not the case, and that regardless of treatment or body changes these people can not access facilities for the opposite sex. Will this be spelt out to the parents & children in the trial, that there is a chance that they will progress from PBs to CSHs. If so they will still be obliged to follow the rules according to their sex and that if they’re not comfortable with that they will have to organise their lives around venues with third spaces.

We are discussing a trial of PBs not CSH. Where is the evidence that parents are buying PBs to give to their by definition prepubescent children?

Your position seems to be that the trial will show that there is significant irreversible physical damage to the children's bodies, and then doctors all over the world who have been prescribing these drugs will realise that they are doing the wrong thing and will instantly stop.

Are you really that naive?

These drugs have already been subject to dozens of clinical trials. They've been prescribed to thousands of people over a period of decades. We have loads of information about their harms.

Many people who have been involved in transitioning children, like Marci Bowers of WPATH, have recently spoken out to say they no longer think it's a good idea, but there are still the Helen Webberleys who refuse to listen to reason and will continue until they are actually arrested and jailed. If there's one country in the world where they can still operate, they'll be there. Other people doing clinical trials or stating they've changed their minds about transitioning children will have no effect on those people.

The trial will do nothing except harm the participating children, and according to you, this is the aim. If you're right, this should be explicitly stated in the protocol. It's not.

But it won't even achieve what you claim is the aim (to make everyone stop doing it). It's actually likely to have the opposite effect because it legitimises the transitioning of children, by suggesting that some of them are actually transsexual. Instead of sending out the message: "We won't do this trial because the idea of transsexual children is just a batshit notion dreamt up by some god-playing medics in the Netherlands and backed by a bunch of men who like cosplaying as women", they are saying, "Well, perhaps some children really are transsexual", which encourages people to continue with this absurd belief because it's being supported by scientists.

According to@noblegiraffe, the children are buying them themselves from the internet using their pocket money and then injecting themselves in their bedrooms without the parents knowing anything about it. The aim of the trial is to convince these children that this is a bad idea. I think I've got that right.

I've assumed this because they said that the drugs are sourced from overseas, and there are no culpable adults involved in the UK, such as parents, doctors or pharmacists, who can be held responsible and prosecuted.

Another factor to throw into the mix is NHS England banning cross sex hormones for u18s. Still a proposal but unlikely to be reversed at this stage. What is the 11yr old put on pbs for two years because of this trial supposed to do when the trial finishes?

Happily [ironic] the trial organisers have already floated the idea that some participants may want to stay on pbs beyond the trial.

And just like that we no longer have a ban. Just the same tactic GIDs used to introduce them in the first place

You're right, it could be just a way of getting round the ban. I think puberty blockers are still allowed to continue for children who were already on them before the ban came into place, so there'll be another exception for those who were on the trial to continue after the trial ends.

Then there'll be publicity about how happy all these kids on the trial are, and there are no ill effects (yet) and the ban will be lifted and it'll be GIDS all over again.

Happily [ironic] the trial organisers have already floated the idea that some participants may want to stay on pbs beyond the trial.

And just like that we no longer have a ban. Just the same tactic GIDs used to introduce them in the first place

And do we know for sure that the trial will follow such a person for years and years to come, to see what happens to them? Probably not.

The GIDs one didn’t. Participants and their parents stopped filling in the questionnaires and some of the scans didn’t happen because of “technical issues”. There were only 44 of them so we can extrapolate more will drop out or not participate fully in this trial which is targeting over 200. Let’s remember there’s no upper limit

Furthermore GIDs took £1.8million to follow into adulthood but then said they couldn’t because of changed NHS numbers…

So yes, I think this is lifting the ban through the back door.

Stella O’Malley mentioned on one of the Beyond Gender episodes that Sweden is prescribing pbs to more children now despite banning except for under trial/ or some such conditions.

No one’s looking because they’re supposed to be banned 😔

The trial will do nothing except harm the participating children, and according to you, this is the aim. If you're right, this should be explicitly stated in the protocol. It's not.

I've assumed this because they said that the drugs are sourced from overseas, and there are no culpable adults involved in the UK

@OldCrone there is no point in responding to you in good faith if you are just going to make stuff up and pretend that I said it.

I agree that court cases in the US will be extremely important for stopping this, in the US at least, because of their insurance model and I do hope that happens quickly. I think they are extremely gung-ho in the US about medicalising so the cases are likely to be 'I was pushed onto blockers, then hormones, then surgery and now my body is ruined'. It could merely be a message to be more cautious in prescribing, and it doesn't separate out the impact of the puberty blockers from the hormones and surgery which are more radical.

One of the problems with this is that despite the really long list of side effects, these drugs have been through trials and licensed for use in children. For precocious puberty.

So you're either arguing that these drugs shouldn't be given to kids at all, because they're too dangerous, in which case they shouldn't be given for precocious puberty either, or you think they should still be allowed for precocious puberty but not for gender incongruence in which case we're down to examining risks vs benefits. And when you have some people claim that they saved their life, or a child who potentially won't leave the house without them, it's not as clear cut as could be hoped.

Why have you quoted two paragraphs from two different posts as though the two comments are related?

The trial will do nothing except harm the participating children, and according to you, this is the aim. If you're right, this should be explicitly stated in the protocol. It's not.

Is this not what you've implied throughout this thread?

For example:
If we could take the opportunity to properly study a small subset of the children who are taking these drugs, do the MRIs, the bone density scans, the cognitive tests and can comprehensively document the harms that don't outweigh the benefits, then we have a chance to shut this crap down far more quickly than just hoping that it all blows over eventually.

I'm pretty sure you said (or at least implied) in other posts that you thought this was why the trial was being done - to prove what they know already that the harms outweigh the risks, but I can't find the posts. So perhaps I was mistaken and you don't think this is why they want to do the trial, and that it's just the reason why you support it. But the fact remains that you have said you know it's going to harm children for no good reason other than to (possibly) prevent harm to other children in the future.

To put the second quoted part in context, this is my full post:

According to @noblegiraffe, the children are buying them themselves from the internet using their pocket money and then injecting themselves in their bedrooms without the parents knowing anything about it. The aim of the trial is to convince these children that this is a bad idea. I think I've got that right.

I've assumed this because they said that the drugs are sourced from overseas, and there are no culpable adults involved in the UK, such as parents, doctors or pharmacists, who can be held responsible and prosecuted.

When I have asked you why nobody can be prosecuted for supplying these drugs to children, you go on about overseas clinics etc. But not a word about the parents who must be helping these children to do this. I assumed from this lack of any acknowledgement that parents must be involved that you believed that all the children were doing this on their own without any assistance from their parents.

But not a word about the parents who must be helping these children to do this. I assumed from this lack of any acknowledgement that parents must be involved that you believed that all the children were doing this on their own without any assistance from their parents.

@OldCrone

Precocious puberty is a genuine physical medical condition. Failure to conform to gender stereotypes (so-called "gender incongruence") isn't.

And unless you were born yesterday you must be aware that 'some people claim' all sorts of stuff.

So why are parents not being prosecuted for medicating their kids with illegal drugs?

So why are parents not being prosecuted for medicating their by definition pre-pubescent kids with illegal drugs?

It’s a typical TRA argument to say “they’re given to kids with precocious puberty all the time, this is no different.”

Ignoring, of course, that it is massively different. Puberty hormones are abnormally raised at a much too young age. There is pathology. Those hormones are suppressed until normal age then puberty is allowed to resume.

With gender reasons, there is no pathology. The puberty hormones are exactly as they should be. But they are made abnormal. And we know that puberty is never allowed to resume.

The side effects of the former are direct effects of the medication itself for the 2-3 years it might be given.

The side effects of the latter are direct side effects of the medication itself, and also the effects of never allowing puberty to resume.

A nonsense argument to compare the two.

Others have already pointed out this is a nonsense argument and a false dichotomy.

But just for those at the back.

Scenario 1:
The condition being treated - precocious puberty, has a clear definition and we know why it is harmful.
The treatment - puberty blockers, administered for a strictly limited period of time.
The outcome of the treatment - as a direct consequence of the drugs, the actual condition, namely precocious puberty, is paused for limited time, natural puberty then takes place.

Scenario 2:
The condition being treated - kid is sad due to abusive brainwashing, kid's body actually healthy.
The treatment - puberty blockers, administered for unknown duration and then what?
The outcome of the treatment - as a direct consequence of the drugs, we already know these pause puberty, but where is the actual link to the actual alleged condition? Kid who has been abusively brainwashed says they are less sad? And then what happens next?

Scenario 1
There is an impirtant social difference:
the child with prococious puberty has their puberty paused so they remain in synch with their peers. Their puberty is allowed resumed at the more normal age so, again, this keeps them like their peers.

Psychologically they are not being kept ‘different’ from all their group like puberty- blocked teenagers would be. Puberty- blocked children are effectively being set apart from their peers. This seems likely to add an idea of themselves as having a ‘unique’ identity, and one following a separate trajectory.

A major difference between prococious-puberty-blockers and gender-identity-puberty blockers is that they are not administered to the same aged bodies or minds.

For interest,
I have just seen that girls with true prococious puberty out number boys with the condition. Girls 0.2% Boys 0.05%
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK544313/

Puberty- blocked children are effectively being set apart from their peers. This seems likely to add an idea of themselves as having a ‘unique’ identity, and one following a separate trajectory.

This is what these children are being put through.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/transgender-children-puberty-blocking-drugs-for-the-past-four-years-i-ve-been-stuck-as-a-child-5s6tkh7z2

https://archive.ph/iZTk5

Thank you. What an important report on the experience of puberty blockers from first hand experience.

And it's been in the public domain since 2019. Seven years.

I gather the court case to block the trial has been lost, and now it will go ahead.

Four years on blockers? Blimey. I'm glad at least Jacob is feeling better having come off them.

But one of the things that Sallie Baxendale said (in the video about brain development linked upthread) is that there's a different "time window" for different kinds of brain development and puberty is a development period with a lot going on. Delay too long and the window(s) for some of them may close with permanent cognitive and emotional effects that have barely been studied.

I'm sure the cheer leader for unethical trials on children too young to give informed consent is thrilled.
The rest of us watch in horror as safeguarding children from the impacts of this age inappropriate adult belief is systematically eroded.