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

Turns out “gender critters” aren’t that very knowledgeable in the field or suchmext they specialise in hating. The tides turning fast against anti trans ideology.

So... courts are corrupt? Or only the ones that produce judgments that you don't like? Clarity would be helpful.

Torbay (2023) wrote about a highly respected Scottish Canadian psychiatrist, Dr Ewan Cameron who conducted horrific experiments. Torbay wrote:

"Dr Cameron always believed in a strict scientific method (Academic, 2022). In his published work, he always stated his research question, clearly outlined the materials and methods, and explained the results. His earlier work in the 2020’s 1930s covered various topics in psychiatry, including epilepsy, depression, anxiety, emotion, and psychotropic drugs, but he took a particular interest in gender dysphoria schizophrenia. Cameron examined many potential treatments for gender dysphoria schizophrenia, as well as physiological differences between people with and without gender dysphoria schizophrenia. In 2027 1934, he published the paper ‘Puberty blocker effects in young children’ ‘Heat production and heat control in the schizophrenic reaction’…. This 2026 1934 study is a prime example of how ethics can be neglected when researchers are set on finding answers."

For the lurkers… I am NOT equating the psychological condition of schizophrenia with gender dysphoria. I AM noting that history is littered with tragic cases where medical researchers neglect ethics in searching for answers. Where the ethical implications are only acknowledged decades later. Often due to class action lawsuits.

Everyone is shocked. Lessons are learned. Apologies made. Then, unfortunately, the cycle starts anew for the next set of unfortunate ‘trial participants’.

Some might say that this could never happen now, but I don’t hold that view. Torbay concludes his 2023 paper: "While modern medicine shows that these experiments have little scientific value, much of Cameron’s logic was sound: his experiments showed a clear research question, methods, results and interpretation…. However, many scientists, including colleagues of Cameron, have done ethically controversial studies. Instead of the false dichotomy of the ‘good’ scientists versus the ‘bad’ scientists, we must be aware that we are all capable of such atrocities if we allow our desire for answers to come before our first duty: to do no harm."

At least you got to argue your false information. Trans people didn’t have a say in the one sided fully paid and bought for SC ruling. The ruling which failed three times until Joanne bailed them out.

But courts are corrupt; did JK just not pay enough money? Perhaps big pharma got to the judge. Oh, no, that's right. The judge preferred the legal argument from one side, that's all.

A massive win for trans rights today against the far right funded anti trans idealogy in stopping trans kids from receiving puberty blockers. There is some sanity left in the world. Bravo!

This is it, exactly.

I agree that the chances of success were not great. Though it has succeeded in bringing more sunlight to the murky world of gender-affirming care. I am so sorry for all the children caught up in this. Hopefully some of the clinicians involved have enough integrity to constantly ask questions of the data and to push for transparency on post-trial treatment and follow up of the children.

prof_curiosity1 posted this in May:

Across the twentieth century, child development was one of the most intensively studied domains in medicine and psychology. Researchers including Piaget, Kohlberg, Gesell, Montessori, Bowlby, Erikson, Winnicott, and many others observed hundreds of thousands of children across cultures, settings, and decades. They worked from incompatible theoretical traditions, competed to publish novel findings, and had strong professional incentives to identify new developmental categories.
None of them described a naturally occurring class of pre pubertal children who persistently asserted an innate cross sex identity, framed distress as being born in the wrong body, or required social or medical transition as a normative developmental pathway. The transgender child as currently described does not appear as a developmental category in this literature at all. If such children had been common, or even moderately prevalent, they would have been documented. Discovering a new category of child would have been a landmark finding. It did not occur.
This absence is not explained by social suppression, conceptual limitation, or theoretical blindness. The researchers who missed the transgender child also documented childhood sexuality, childhood grief, disorganised attachment, childhood psychosis, and many other phenomena that were socially uncomfortable or theoretically challenging. The argument from silence is not always strong. In this instance it is very strong indeed, because the conditions that would have suppressed documentation of other sensitive phenomena simply do not apply with the same force here.

Whole article is worth a read: https://x.com/prof_curiosity1/status/2060969521561600167

When people are in a position to look back, it will be clear that real attempts were made to ask fundamental questions about the situation and process, and who it was who tried to stop this.

This decision is sad but not very surprising, as others have said. I think there is some value in the attempt having been made, nevertheless. Imagine you're a child who is caught up in this and later you realise you've been harmed. The situation we're in, where some adults condoned the trial and let you into it, while others objected but were legally overruled, is better, I think, than the alternative in which nobody even tried to protect you. It is a pity that if you are a child you will need to come to terms with the fact that your parents or legal guardians were among those who let you down, though.

Children can be recruited for puberty blocker trial, High Court rules

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/255437e44638ebdb

The phrase "child participant" doesn't occur in the judgment - it looks as though the thing on X is a slight misquote of this from the judgment (p5):

(e) Because none of the grounds of challenge has a realistic prospect of success, the question of interim relief pending a substantive hearing does not arise. Even if I had granted permission on one or more of the grounds which could lead to the quashing of the authorisations, I would nonetheless have refused interim relief. The harm that would be done to the public interest and the interests of Trial participants in the scenario where interim relief is granted but the claim later fails firmly outweighs any harm that might accrue to Trial participants in the scenario where interim relief is refused but the claim later succeeds.

He's saying that the children in the trial will lose more if the trial is delayed by the litigation but then goes ahead, than if it goes ahead now but is halted later by the litigation.

I agree although there will be a vanishingly small cohort amongst these that have taken PBs and not then proceeded to CSHs.

As I understand it this proposed trial aims to focus on the PBs. Although what happens at the end is far from established. I suspect we’ll be back here again only it will be CSH and not PB that are being proposed. And as a piece of research it will tell us nothing in the long term.

Children will be assessed by specialist gender services

I am familiar with some of those services and say without a doubt that they are entirely onboard the gender train. They treat sterility as an, not quite but almost irrelevance that is secondary to soothing the gender distress. Only now we’re talking about 10 and 11 yr olds for the PB trial and not 18, 19 year olds.

In each case the clinicians had a reasonable prospect of benefitting from the trial.

I am also familiar with those who work in psychiatry and have always felt extremely cautious about anyone I know and love falling into their orbit. A few knowledgeable and experienced ones. Many questionable people in that field.

Downloadable judgment here:

https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/bayswater-support-group-and-others-v-health-research-authority-and-another/

I just find it bewildering that there is no attempt to follow up on children who have already been given puberty blockers over the last umpteen years, before starting with a new cohort.

Horrified by this decision. And the rejection of the Sex Matters strip search case, and PC Rachel Fletcher found guilty of gross misconduct. We've got such a long way to go to just get back to the status quo of the SC decision haven't we. And trying to do it case by case is just so exhausting (and expensive).

The problem is the concept of the transgender child has been embedded into society. Every challenge has to overcome the basic concept yet, by necessity, can only focus on the specific facts of each case. In this case the PB trial.

The courts cannot make a decision on whether the trial is any good or not, only whether the process of setting it up followed the law

The Tooth Fairy question is never asked of course as the case starts beyond that point

I don’t know how we overcome it.

That bit stood out to me too - I don't understand it because I don't see the difference between 'child participants' and 'trial participants' -

' any harm which might accrue to trial participants' = any ill-effects on the children given PBs?

in which case who are the ' child participants' whose interests 'firmly outweigh' those of the 'trial participants?

Am I missing something? Is the difference between 'child participants' and 'trial participants' clear to everyone except me?

The argument appears to be too complex to get across in media or there would be a bigger uproar

In 5/10/15 years when enough of the young people look back and sue because they have been left in a permanent state of harm following being given drugs that the adults were told would have serious impact but they went along with anyway.

Or when after that time period a good investigative journalist draws out all the stories of the young people harmed and exactly what the drugs have done to them.

It won’t be fast and assuming they force through this treatment based on a “successful” trial, numbers of those harmed will only increase.