Pathways Puberty Blocker Trial - High Court Proceedings start 27th July

didn’t she say she’d experienced alot of public abuse and couldn’t use public transport as a result? It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s throwing them a bone to get them off her back

It does seem terribly convenient that she changed her tune when put into a position of power (house of lords)

It's hard to escape the thought that Cass has been very, very heavily steered and pushed where the political agenda required her to go, and turned into a mouthpiece for it.

Thank you for that link. The difference between the review and the briefing is quite stark when set out like that. Cass doesn't seem to believe in the 'true trans' child (anymore?), so why can't she just came straight out and say that we have a cohort of children, in early puberty, that have been horrifically let down by all the adults who should have safeguarded them and, being pragmatic, we have to give them PBs for a short time while we catch up on the many years of psychotherapy that they were denied. With the emphasis that this is a one-off short term measure for these specific children and that policies are being implemented to protect future cohorts of children from ending up in this heartbreaking situation.
Many of us still wouldn't have agreed with it, but it would actually be more honest than this figleaf of a trial.

Unless that isn't what is going on here.

Someone had previously posted the gender questionnaire given to children to ascertain their ‘trans’ status but I can’t recall which thread - can anyone post that questionnaire again?

Cass increasingly argues that the trial must go ahead on the basis that children are self-medicating using unregulated providers and that long waiting lists have left children vulnerable to online misinformation.

I wonder what efforts have been made by the govt to counter this misinformation presenting such a serious risk to children's safeguarding?

Since it's such a high priority that permanently destroying the lives of some children on the way to possibly helping others seems a rational and responsible way forward? How many children exactly I wonder? How many is acceptable collateral damage to a group of happy kids? (Who could easily have waited, with MH support, until they were old enough to understand, make informed decisions, and have safer outcomes?)

Genspect have an interesting essay about the change from the caution of the Cass report to the zeal of Cass’s parliamentary briefing.

A sample:

1) From uncertainty to advocacy: As previously discussed, one strength of the Review is its disciplined use of uncertainty regarding the treatment of children with GD. The briefing contains much stronger language such as: “more children will be harmed if we do not do the study than if we do.” That is an extraordinary assertion with no new peer-reviewed evidence to support it.
2) From evidence generation to harm reduction: Cass increasingly argues that the trial must go ahead on the basis that children are self-medicating using unregulated providers and that long waiting lists have left children vulnerable to online misinformation. Yet PATHWAYS is not designed to answer whether offering puberty blockers reduces those harms. The primary endpoint is a self-reported quality-of-life questionnaire (KIDSCREEN-10). There appears to be a mismatch between the rationale being advanced by Cass in the Briefing and the questions the study is actually designed to answer.
3) From addressing the upstream root causes to managing downstream consequences: many of the Review’s recommendations are aimed at changing the environment and bringing gender medicine back towards mainstream evidence-based care rather than its current exceptionalism, e.g.:

• reducing misinformation (§100; recommendation 16)
• investigating and improving psychosocial care (§ 66 §88 recommendations 3, 6)
• regulating overseas prescribing (§156 §158 recommendation 27)
• improving data collection (a lot! E.g. recommendations 5, 6, 17, 18, 20, 30)

There also a nice table comparing the wording of the report and the briefing wrt the same issues.

https://genspect.org/how-cass-moved-from-equipoise-to-advocacy/

Awful.

I saw a very astute comment yesterday that this is like the bit in Jurassic Park where John Hammond has a room of experts he's collected, all of whom are saying this science is unexplored, untested, not thought through, the risks and possible consequences are awful, and only the money man is saying yes because he just wants the profit. But Hammond is the one with the power, he's not listening, and he smilingly insists that it'll all work out, it'll be fine.

These children will be entitled to very, very large payouts when all these adults have finished using them for their own passions and agendas, all of whom are in positions of trust. But it won't ever be able to repair the entirely foreseeable harms done. It is wicked.

.

Sad news but they will look at other avenues

https://x.com/i/status/2084585425700593667

I'd also add to your list of reasons autistic children may be more likely to suffer dysphoria (general, not gender-related) as - family breakdown, social isolation - with attendant greater reliance on social media - and anxiety/depression.

Thank you @BonfireLady .

Yes, and I think I read somewhere that those diagnosed were moderate- to-severely autistic, not even what used to be referred to as having Aspergers/

I completely agree with your last paragraph. And I don't think that the general public have any awareness how many 'trans' people are autistic

They have appointed an expert in autism to lead a trial that we surmise will include a lot of autistic children. I don't know what to make of it.

Autistic children are definitely allowed in. Not sure about the other two diagnoses but hopefully someone else will know.

Yes, between 2010 and 2019, over one third of all referrals to GIDS had autism diagnoses. According to two GIDS clinicians, if you also include those with autistic traits but no diagnosis, this figure is 48%.

Anecdotally, I have found that every single trans-identifying child that I know of (it's a lot now) except one is autistic. I really wouldn't be surprised if today's cohort is much higher than the 2019 proportion.

There seems to be no NHS-led interest in looking at whether autistic children are prone to believing that autism-related puberty distress, such as sensory issues or general distress at their changing bodies, is actually evidence of a gender identity that differs from their sex.

Right, I have a question and wonder if anyone can answer it without having to do any looking up (because I could do that if I could be arsed)

The trial leader Emily Simonoff has a particular interest in

• Autism
• ADHD
• Intellectual Disability

Will the trial exclude or include kids with these diagnoses? We now a large proportion, somewhere around 50% of kids referred to GIDS were on the autism spectrum.

Anyone who does not understand the key role statisticians play in clinical trials has no place commenting on them. The includes clinicians.

Ditto anyone who doesn’t understand that a PhD is a training in research and that training can then be applied to different fields.

Helen Joyce: "I've got a PhD in mathematics and used to work for the Royal Statistical Society and wrote a lot about medical trials".

Compare and contrast with a comment below that : "she knows nothing about trans kids" 😆

@MarieDeGournay The phrase used in Court was 'gender dysphoric or gender incongruent', which are IMO two different things - one is distress (and about what exactly?); one is not adhering to gender norms.
Nonetheless the phrase 'trans child' hung in the air like a bad smell

Transsexual children. What sort of person would come up with such an absurd concept? And why?

'There's no such thing as a trans child' isn't as controversial as you seem to think it is.

You may not have noticed, but the phrase 'trans child' isn't used much these days, even by trans rights campaigners.

I think even they accepted that children don't have the capacity to come to a settled, binding decision about something as profound as denying their biological sex.

And there's no legal route for a child to 'transition' officially, so there really is no such thing as a 'trans child', literally.

Phrases such as 'Gender questioning' are more often used these days.

Helen Joyce briefly discusses the trial design shortcomings:

https://nitter.net/SexMattersOrg/status/2083898904676884501?s=20

Well at least you are spelling 'ideologists' correctly now, so we have made some progress.

I’d like to know what the evidence is, too.

What evidence? Children responding to ideological indoctrination is not evidence of trans child anymore than it is evidence that Santa Claus really exists.

Yes there is, evidence proves otherwise. No matter how transphobic ideologists like yourself claim.

I hope Cass sees the irony that these are the types of studies and trials that she described as being of low quality in her report.