AIBU to think puberty blocker trial is child abuse?

[F1rstDoNoHarm]

Have we not learnt from Tavistock closure?

As I understand it, it wasn't set up to facilitate that at all. It was a specialist clinic set up in the late 1980s for a tiny number of children and teenagers in England and Wales (about two thirds boys, one third girls) who were experiencing extreme distress related to their gender, i.e. feeling that somehow in spite of having a perfectly healthy male or female boy there was something about their personality that made them feel they couldn't actually be male or female. They felt more like the opposite sex. This makes no sense at all unless you think that there is only one valid way to be a boy/man or a girl/woman, which is obviously nonsense, given how different gender stereotypes are from one society to another and from one historical period to another.

At the time the standard treatment for gender dysphoria in children was watchful waiting. The child and parents/guardians would have many appointments. A detailed medical and developmental history would be taken. The psychiatrists and other clinicians would diagnose any other conditions that might be affecting the child, e.g. depression, anxiety, eating disorder. They would look for signs of neurodevelopmental disorders, e.g. autism, ADHD. They would ask about things that might have affected the child, e.g. medical problems, family break up, bereavement, witnessing domestic violence, experiencing abuse or bullying. There would be a lot of talking. It was important to talk to the adults as well as the children to try to get it across to them that if their little boy was a sensitive, quiet child who liked dressing up and playing with dolls that didn't mean he wasn't a real boy. How were they responding to his developing personality?

The rationale behind watchful waiting was that research showed that virtually all children and teenagers feeling like this became reconciled to their sex once they were through puberty. Only a tiny minority went to the adult gender clinics to ask for medical intervention to make their bodies look more like the opposite sex.

Unfortunately, however, a Dutch gender clinic decided to try a new approach, prescribing puberty blockers and then if the child and parents wanted it to put the child on cross-sex hormones. This was supposed to happen only in a tiny number of cases after exhaustive assessment. It didn't. The US medical industry spotted a huge moneymaking opportunity and very soon the standard treatment across all wealthy countries (oddly, gender dysphoria is not a big thing in poor countries, go figure) was to rush kids onto puberty blockers more or less on request.

Look at the numbers of children seen at GIDS many years ago. Look how fast they were going up and how quickly the balance swung from mostly boys to mostly girls. The clinicians who just accepted this without wanting to know why have failed in their responsibility. They really ought to be held to acccount.

Very disturbing, wtf are we doing to our kids.
They need our protection.

No I didn't imply that. I said there is a massive difference between using them to delay and to prevent puberty. Those who go on to cross-sex hormones are using them as a way of preventing puberty.

Additionally, it is not clear whether those who use them up delay puberty beyond the normal timeline will go through the normal cognitive development associated with puberty if they come off them. They will have the physical changes though.

I agree that drugs should be trialled. I also think it's entirely reasonable to assume that gender clinics operate under the same principles as any other area of medicine. Sadly this is not the case. What is actually happening in gender clinics is a medical scandal. The puberty blocker trial isn't like any other medical trial - and this is precisely the problem. It is catastrophically flawed.

If you are interested in the details, you can read more about it in the Open Letter to Wes Streeting from Marcus and Susan Evans, reported by Nick Wallis, an investigative journalist, who is well known for his work and books on Post Office scandal.

Tavistock whistleblowers call for immediate halt to puberty blocker trial – Gender Blog

No it isnt a trial as they are giving them to all the kids, and we know what happens with these drugs already.

Not sure any condition even exists where the treatment is to literally stop kids from progressing down the path of growing up into adults. It is absolutely mental.

I've been banging on about this for about a decade, I think. The thing that leapt out at me right from the start was that if a child is put on puberty blockers their brain isn't going to mature and they will be stuck with a child's brain. That is a very tough thing for a child to cope with while their peers are going through normal puberty and starting to grow up. But they are then asked to make one of the biggest decisions of their lives, i.e. whether to go onto cross-sex hormones, without the necessary maturity to even understand what they're being asked. Think back to childhood. Did any of us understand what sex was about before puberty? Did we have any grasp of what an orgasm might be like, of what it might be to have sexual attraction to another person? Not really, I'd say. What about having children? So many kids are quite determined they will never want to have children of their own, but the majority will come round to the idea in adult life. How can anybody think that a child who hasn't gone through puberty can make the decision to give up an ordinary sexual response and to become infertile? Of course they can't.

There is a difference in blocking puberty for precocious puberty and letting puberty then start and finish and not allowing puberty to finish fully because the treatment is then switched to the sex hormones in quantities for the opposite sex.

It seems dishonest to use precocious puberty comparative to the other usage.

It's absolutely horrifying that any parent would go along with a child asking for this.

This.

It's abuse of vulnerable children.

What clinical trial evidence is already available for the use of puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria? A trial will only be ethical if it adds significantly to current knowledge of how best to treat these children.

I believe the Cass review suggested that a carefully performed clinical trial would be necessary to test the idea that puberty blockers were effective.

No. That’s not the first step in ethical research. The first step is to consider the subject group.

Listing the vulnerabilities:

Children (massive ethical risk)
Mentally unwell (they are, and that’s not a pejorative judgement, it’s simply true)
If the stats from the Tavistock are to be believed, a high proportion have abusive parents
High proportion are neurodivergent

With all those vulnerabilities, then you have to prove that your trial is likely to improve the life of THAT child. Not other children, not adding to current knowledge. It has to benefit the child in the trial.

AND consider known side effects. Removing natural development, the ability to have children, orgasms, normal brain development including costing IQ points?

The only way this would be ethical is on terminal patients who will die without it. And we all know the rhetoric around that. Not statistically more likely to die. Actually, this patient will die without intervention. And therefore the ethics are borderline acceptable.

I’m stunned this made it through an ethics review. I cannot fathom how.

"How else will you ensure it is safe for use without tests?"

How about not experimenting on children?

Maybe we should be testing on animals first (if at all).

The long term effects on gender confused children who have taken puberty blockers have already been discovered to be detrimental. Lowered cognitive function and IQ, loss of sexual function and no ability to orgasm in later life, early menopause and osteoporosis for the girls, increased likely hood of some cancers, and I'm sure there are others that I'm not thinking of right now but that's more than enough to be getting on with to say that we absolutely should not be doing this to children, it obviously isn't safe!

Added to that, the children cannot consent to this. Legally, but also because they are not able to understand the consequences even if they are explained to them.

This is medical experimentation on children, no one should be supporting this!

Did ye aye?

And I’ll wager it was time-limited, medically monitored, and you didn’t move on to cross-sex hormones.

No.

Before one even designs a treatment one has to decide what the 'diagnosis' is.

A bunch of men who would have passed better as the opposite sex if they hadn't progressed through puberty, who made up a condition that never existed, isnt a reason to put kids who play with the 'wrong' toys on drugs that are used to castrate paedophiles and sex offenders by stunting their growth and keeping them in a permanent childlike state.

If someone had written this as a horror story it would be called 'Frankenchild'. And yet here we are in 2025 having to defend kids being allowed to grow up. And being called nazis and bigots for it.

😄 yes kevin bridges i did

It was for maybe the best part of a decade I think, but can't say exactly how long as I'm in my 30s now

Gender distress in children is a psychological issue, very often with unexplored underlying reasons for it such as autism, homosexuality, or sexual abuse.

I seriously question anyone who is advocating for "medication" which is known to be damaging to healthy young bodies and brains, when the majority of these children's gender distress is proven to resolve through puberty, and the others can be helped with proven care such as talking therapy.

You were on them for a decade? So you showed signs of puberty age 1 or 2? Are you quite sure about that?

The PB trial starts with the premise that humans can change sex. That's a problem.

That's a whole lot of pain stored up for these children when reality hits. It's really not fair to lie to them and expect them to deal with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

I was on them for a long time, as I definitely did show signs from about 3 or 4, very scarily young, for my poor mum. I cant remember the dates obvs but i'd say closer to a decade than not.

You must be referring to Helen Webberley, she's been on a tour recently giving interviews on TV and radio, probably as a marketing effort linked to opening a US-based service. She is not a GP, but runs a 'GenderGP' company registered in Singapore which supplies unregulated drugs from abroad to UK pharmacies. Whilst she 'identifies' as a doctor, she doesn't have an active license, so isn't a doctor in my books.

I've not heard any credible medical professional talking about the benefits of so-called 'gender-affirming care' for years. The last person trying to defend the premise was Polly Carmichael who ran Tavistock and that was years ago.

I might have missed this mentioned in the comments but...bps don't delay puberty, because puberty isn't something you can just put off.

If you delay puberty by, say two years, then you have missed that part of it. You don't 'catch up'. You've missed that part of the process. If you spend all your teen years on pb, then you miss it entirely. Coming off at 18/19 will not fix what you have missed.

It's a hugly complicated process that involves more then just the hormones in the drugs, so your body is surging, sending all the signals to start growing up, learning etc to start this process but...it's blocked, once that body surge ends, that's it. Opportunity gone. You are stuck physically and mentally roughly where you were when you started them, but now, you're legally an adult...

Exactly. PBs are only licensed to suppress puberty until the appropriate age is reached which would be about 11/12, not 18+

All drugs?

Even ones that fail initial safety assessments?

Ones being proposed on a purely speculative basis?

Irrespective of known risks and harms?

That's just not how ethical and effective clinical trials work. Of course clinical trials have a place, but they are not there to just road test any old hypothesis.

Should all drugs be tested on pregnant women to ensure we have accurate data about precisely which birth defects they cause and the miscarriage and stillbirth rates? We don't currently because it is considered unethical.

Secondly, we don't do drug trials on children or other vulnerable groups. Ever wondered why you can barely take any medications when you are pregnant? It's not because they've been tested on expecting women, it's because they CAN'T be tested on expecting women, no trial would get past ethics to test on pregnant women and unborn children. This is (usually) the same with kids.

The very few exceptions to this is in highly highly dangerous conditions where the alternative to experimental treatment is death such as childhood cancers, or other incredibly serious outcomes.

Puberty blockers CAUSE so many serious life changing side effects. Teeth and bones crumbling like octogenarians, lack/loss of sexual function, urinary problems, shortened stature, lack of mental maturity/IQ reduction, infertility.

We need to be looking at very very compelling reasons to take these drugs to make all these side effects worth it. Any decent studies show no improvement to happiness or mental health on average. The original results of the danish study that the whole edifice was build on, have NEVER BEEN REPLICATED despite several attempts.

Please tell me a compelling reason why anyone should be on these, what is the outcome we are seeking here? Because you can't change sex. Puberty blockers will only ever break the healthy bodies of a group of people who are already struggling. They will never get what they want, not really.

The reasons need to more then 'they wanted it'

Ah so, I’m non-binary and I’m currently considering the dysphoria I will feel when I’m pregnant - which will be even worse than I experience now. Seems very real and without any kind of pathologising. Isn’t this the same kind of thing?