Am I unreasonable to be pleased that Puberty Blockers have been banned by the executive in Northern Ireland with unanimous cross-party support

[MrBungle]

Children are finally being protected and medical evidence listened to rather than noise loud activists.

Everyone deserves quality, evidence lead healthcare, especially children, that gender questioning youths have been so badly let down the last 20 years is a stain on the UK's history as bad as infected blood.

Now we need comprehensive, holistic mental health support for these desperate children.

https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/executive-unanimously-backs-health-ministers-plan-to-ban-puberty-blockers-in-northern-ireland-4902683

Obvs 🫠

You honestly don't care about vulnerable children? Children who are often autistic, gay or have experienced childhood sexual abuse?

Do you not care about other groups affected by medical scandals? The Thalidomide children? Those given infected blood? Do you not care about them either?

I wouldn't be fucking bragging about that if I were you. It speaks to a shameful lack of empathy and understanding.

One of the biggest issues with giving puberty blockers to gender confused children is that in many cases they've then progressed to taking cross-hormones and never had the normal puberty for their sex. This doesn't happen with children who go through precocious puberty. Their puberty is delayed from the very early age it would have happened without medication but when they come off blockers their body resumes the normal changes of puberty. The two cases are therefore not comparable.

This is good news from NI.

Excellent news.

I don't care whether the parties that voted for a ban did so because they have woken up to the irreversible harms caused by puberty blockers or whether it's because they decided that sterilising unhappy, confused children isn't a vote winner.

I just care about the result.

Every single person who ever consults a doctor or other healthcare professional should be concerned when it becomes clear that a fashionable treatment is not actually doing what the professionals claim and when it turns out that there either hasn't been any rigorous research or the results have been suppressed or misinterpreted. We all need good quality health care. We should all be supporting total honesty and transparency around research. We should all be expecting ethics committees to ask extremely searching questions so that they are in with a chance of stopping poor quality research going ahead, especially when it's on particularly vulnerable groups like children who need others to advocate for them.

🙄

Agreed. Doing the right thing is the importance bit. If they've realised it's a vote loser, at least they're listening to the population.

As long as they are still available for precocious puberty, the very condition that they were developed for. Can happen spontaneously but it is also connected to certain chromosomal and genetic conditions. Puberty before age 8 in particular.

I'm very concerned that due to the furore over prescribing for otherwise healthy youngsters, those who need them will not have access

Exactly. What happened to people's moral compasses to lead them to abandon all this?

It’s an open board for people to share their views. Why are you policing responses?

I equally do not want children to be harmed which is why I prefer to leave it to their parents and experts.

So did you read the Cass review?

Yes - hence my comment.

Banning PB is great news, but it’s dealing with the symptom of the real issue, not the crux of it. Until it is medically realised that gender dysphoria often stems from ND children struggling with the teenage years and natural changes that brings, the social difficulties that becomes more apparent (and distressing) during these years and mental health support in general - it will never truly go away. This is on top of needing to seriously crack down on young people and social media use, especially forums that are used for gender grooming.

So the expert advice is being implemented, yes.

Certainly Wes Streeting has said that their use for their original intended use (precocious puberty) is not being impacted by these changes.

I take it you're one of those be kind people 🙄

I prefer to leave it to their parents and experts.

Most parents have their children's best interests at heart. Not all. Many parents are not equipped to judge whether they are being well advised. Dotted around the globe some HCPs, motivated by greed and/or ideology, have pushed for novel treatments to be used without any reall evidence that they are going to do any good and that they're safe. They have done their level best to suppress all critisicm, including from patients aghast at what's been done to their bodies.

I therefore don't prefer to leave it to their parents and experts who've not been objective and practised in an ethical way.

No, using them for an actual medical condition is one thing. Experimenting on confused kids is quite a different ball game

The medical profession have made significant errors over the years. The idea that they don't need a degree of societal oversight is shocking

You still went through puberty. If a child is put on puberty blockers and then cross sex hormones they never go through puberty which is a vital developmental stage. This can affect fertility, development of sexual organs, brain development and bone density. It's tragic that these drugs were implemented for gender questioning children. I'm very glad that you were left with no ill effects from taking them.

I'm very concerned that due to the furore over prescribing for otherwise healthy youngsters, those who need them will not have access

You need not be concerned, as Wes Streeting has specifically said that such medication will be available for cases of precocious puberty.

Mr Streeting said clinicians can prescribe blockers to children who begin puberty too early because this has been “extensively tested”, and added: “This is different to stopping the normal surge of hormones that occur in puberty. This affects children’s psychological and brain development.
“We don’t yet know the risks of stopping pubertal hormones at this critical life stage.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/wes-streeting-puberty-blockers-ban-transgender-b2579918.html

Nobody is querying the use of delaying a puberty with precocious onset and then allowing puberty to continue at the appropriate age and stage.

Whilst there are still risks associated with their use in these cases, those risks are lesser than the health risks of allowing a precocious puberty to continue in a 6 year old for example. Ie the side effects of the medication are less harmful than a puberty that happens years too early.

Those of you saying that we should leave it up to the doctors clearly aren't aware that some of the doctors involved in gender medicine clearly have a bias that prevents them from being objective.

www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/science/puberty-blockers-olson-kennedy.html

Even to the extent of suppressing studies that show what they are doing is harmful.

@GargoylesofBeelzebub I suspect many of the people on this thread have yet to scratch the surface of the horrors of what has been done to children and young adults in the name of "gender affirming care".

You said you don't care. So - why comment at all?