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

The case did not “fail” three times. It went through the normal process. The Supreme Courts in the FWS applied a statutory interpretation to the EQA.

“Fully paid for ruling” my arse.

What you mean is the Courts are corrupt when they don't agree with you.

I don’t like the outcome of this case at all. I do not however think the judgement was mostly wrong, save on the issue of the meaning of what benefit is appropriate for children, and the arguments therein.

That is probably the only point open to appeal. Having said that the standing of the claimants is also problematic, for the claimants. So it may well be the end of the case.

It is not a victory for trans rights at all, as it is simply an experiment, or a trial. And is not open to all and sundry. And may show little to no benefit for the selected cohort, nobody seems to know yet.

Shocking right that you can’t always throw tonnes of money at a court and have it your way?

They said in court they are not going to appeal

If it is, it's not a consensus I subscribe to. One thing we do have in the country (among many things we don't) is a fair legal process. It's not infallible but when it gets things wrong it's not because someone bought the judge.

I thought they were not going to apply for an urgent appeal to stop the recruitment of subjects, but that if they did appeal the right to a judicial review they would do so within the normal 7 day period.

They could still appeal the decision on the JR application within seven days: it's only the application for interim relief they've rowed back on.

Snap! @TwoLoonsAndASprout

James Esses has said on X that he's consulting with lawyers re appealling.

I think you have got it ‘other side up’. The win today was for experimentation on children to go ahead. Now, what movement is famous for experimentation on people, including children?

As children cannot consent, or even have any concept of the future consequences and loss, it is even more troublesome that the state services are motoring happily onwards.

Like many posters I am disappointed but not surprised.

There are a number questions I would like to ask the MHRA, NHS, Ministers etc. leading this work:

• Are you happy to be personally held accountable and responsible for any irreparable harm that the children participating in the trial may suffer?
• What budget has been put aside by the NHS to fund treatments for the lifelong side effects of the PB that the children participating in the trial may experience?
• Are the children participating in the trial able to sue the MHRA/NHS if the outcome is not what they expected and they are left with longterm side effects caused by the PB the trial prescribed?
• Will the children participating in the trial be permitted to take cross sex hormones which may impact the accurate assessment of the long term impact of PB on their physical and psychological health?

@DrBlackbird

I'm afraid that gender affirming care will not go the way of full frontal lobotomies and other unsuccessful treatments, partly because the right data has not, and will not, be collected, and partly because GAC alters its subjects in ways that make success difficult to quantify.

How many subjects have their gender incongruence reinforced by GAC, when it would otherwise have abated? We just don't know.

In any case, the best arguments against GAC proceed, not from data, but from first principles. No child understands the significance of reproductive and sexual function, or knows for sure whether they will want children, so they cannot give meaningful consent.

Keira Bell should have won her previous case 😔.

I am not optimistic, and it's adding insult to injury to be accused (not by you) of hating these poor children when their welfare is the whole point.

Unfortunately I think this trial is just the wedge to restart child medicalisation in earnest by circumventing the bans on PB and CSH under the cloak of a trial.

They have said right from the beginning 226 was the minimum number of participants and there’s no upper limit, they posited the idea that participants who were under 16 when the trial ended may want to stay on PBs (even though they are banned and the children would no longer be participating in a trial). In court this week one of the defendants barristers suggested that there would also be a “carve out” for administering CSH to those coming out of the trial even if they are not yet 18 (NHSE has recently run a consultation on its decision to ban CSH for u-18s.)

Boom, in one move all those hard won safeguards are gone. The same has happened in Sweden apparently. There are now more kids on PB than before they were banned except as part of a clinical trial

😢

Sursum corda, Badger

I'm disappointed too, but not surprised - cases sometimes hinge on definitions, or very precise points in a previous ruling, or on procedures being followed to the letter.

There will be cases which are disappointing because the outcome seems inexplicable - we've had a couple of tribunals like that🙄but there will also be cases which are disappointing because they didn't ask the questions we would have liked them to ask

In this case:
how can it be justified to experiment on children using drugs which may or may not cause them hard, to treat a condition which may or may not exist, and which, if it does exist, it is most likely they would grow out of anyway?

Undeterred - a word suggested by a poster yesterday which I've taken as my GC motto.

Sorry all! I was even in Court, heard there was no appeal, had to leave straight afterwards. So much for eyewitness testimony....
Have also had a 5 day headache

Cantunseeit · Today 16:31
"Unfortunately I think this trial is just the wedge to restart child medicalisation in earnest by circumventing the bans on PB and CSH under the cloak of a trial"

Totally agree

It always was the way to get it all going again. I believe the numbers are just indicative and not fixed.

I am not totally surprised from the bits of TT I dipped into. It didn’t seem well argued as relied on disagreeing with an ideological
position that the judge seemed unable/unwilling to identify as being ideological, rather than the ethics of a trial that could not answer questions it purported to be designed to answer and would cause children significant harm in doing so. I felt they needed a clinical trial expert with them.

there’s no such thing as trans kids.

Mate, you have zero clue about anything at all.

Amnesty International’s crappy, unconvincing legal argument was written by a trans person.

And that's not how courts work in this country.

I’d like to say that at least the drugs would never be licensed for these purposes, but I was also convinced that this trial wouldn’t get ethics approval and was proved wrong.

So interesting that drug companies have pulled trials of new cox-2 inhibitors, but are prepared to trial puberty blockers on physically healthy children. It’s a smaller population, but the lawsuits are still going to be ginormous.

ETA in reply to cantunseeit

I think the judge was relying strongly on the chain of trust that exists in medicine. Everyone involved in treating patients has to rely on the chain of trust i.e. that all the practitioners involved in treatment have done their due diligence and that pharmaceutical companies and medical researchers have carried out ethical and effective research.

The chain of trust has been used by WPATH et al to encourage doctors to follow their guidelines, and the doctors assume that WPATH has carried out effective research and can be relied upon.

So, whilst it looks from the outside like sober and ethical research, and medical treatment, is taking place, in reality the treatment these children receive is built on citation laundering, inadequately designed research projects, the professional suppositions of people like de Vries and Olsen-Kennedy, and anecdata from families (as mentioned by Cass during the hearing).

Indeed @UtopiaPlanitia

I see...so the judge arguably in a difficult position as legally this kind of trial can go ahead provided there's sufficient justification?

Or was there any way he could have feasibly ruled differently? I wish he had.

That is sort of what I meant - they were arguing around information that to a medically lay person (the judge) seemed well backed up by ‘experts’ - they did not have the time or ability to dismantle that house of cards. Hence bringing the focus to the trial itself and its inability to answer the questions that the children were being placed at risk to answer - by narrowing down the focus to the issues with the trial they may have had better chance or convincing the judge it was unethical.