AIBU to think puberty blocker trial is child abuse?

[F1rstDoNoHarm]

Have we not learnt from Tavistock closure?

You are absolutely correct. No other way to describe it.

YANBU.

There is very little chance this will be an objective trial - there is so much ideological pressure to prove women wrong and to prove the Frankenstein doctors to be correct.

Some kids will really benefit from
puberty blockers. How else will you ensure it is safe for use without tests?

Note: Not all families think like you, and they deserve to make the right choice for their family.

Who's insuring them?

I had precocious puberty so had puberty blockers 🤷‍♀️

I can't imagine why any parent would offer their child up to take part in this. It's horrifying

For how long? did the PB completely block your puberty?

Years - i think so, i stopped when I was maybe 11/12/13 - can't fully remember when I stopped

There are proven benefits of taking puberty blockers for precocious puberty. In the case of gender related distress, the prescription of puberty blockers is off-label, and not evidence based.

No, they don’t. Some families think physical punishment is right for their children, but as a society we do not and we step in to protect the children. Same goes here.

A good first step to understand the long-term consequences would be to follow-up on the hundreds (thousands?) of kids who already took them.

You presumably still went through puberty, just at a more appropriate age.

There is a massive difference between using puberty blockers to delay puberty and using them to prevent puberty. Puberty is not just about physical changes to our bodies, there are also many cognitive changes. Preventing puberty will have an impact on cognitive maturing and we have no idea of the long terms harms that could cause.

Without getting into the wider debate, everyone will go through puberty and the use in kids who are questioning their gender is to delay puberty while further investigation into whether they will start on cross-gender hormones is done. It’s not about putting off puberty forever.

Indeed @F1rstDoNoHarm

Problem is, that various happy prescribers either have NO follow up records, or have refused to release them to researchers.

Professor Cass asked; the Tavistock & others refused.

So much for care and "science-led" medicine.

This is the theory.

But as Hannah Barnes and Jesse Singal have shown - in their very detailed and evidence-based journalism - it is rarely the practice. Most children in the UK put on puberty blockers to medicate their "gender questioning" go straight onto artificial cross-sex hormones at 18.

It's abuse.

That‘s a great idea 😊

That is why they are running tests, rather than allowing them for use.

Thereby preventing them from growing out of their dysphoria, not having the appropriate brain development at the correct time, and probably condemning them to a life of cross sex hormones amd surgeries. All on healthy young bodies.
The blockers also have some gravely serious side effects.
It is utterly unethical and abusive.

The vast, vast majority of children placed on these drugs will continue to cross sex hormones. PBs block the brain maturation that happens at puberty and which generally resolves a child's distress around their sex. They don't provide a pause or time to think, they place children on a pathway towards being a lifelong medical patient.

These children will not go through puberty. The effects of cross sex hormones are not puberty. These children will never develop mature gametes. They will never develop a normal adult sexual response. They will be permanently sterilised and anorgasmic.

We're about to do this to ~200 more children, in addition to the thousands already harmed.

Running tests by giving them to children who cannot meaningfully consent.

I didn’t say anything about what would happen later. Purely that the poster I quoted implied that people would stay on blockers forever and as you’ve rightly noted, that is not the case.

Any medication for under 18s will have to be tested on under 18s, surely? What else are they to do?

From an ethics POV I’m not sure what other trails would be acceptable where it’s known at least some in a group of young people will be harmed.

@justpassmethemouse
Follow up on those who already took them? Didn’t you just say that’s a great idea?

Decide that it’s better not to experiment with puberty blockers at all.