AIBU to think puberty blocker trial is child abuse?

[F1rstDoNoHarm]

Have we not learnt from Tavistock closure?

Then isn’t it always a risk to use?

The remedy for psychological distress is psychological support.

Whereas if we applied your logic to the situation you now describe, presumably the remedy would be to sterilise you so that you cannot experience pregnancy and any related distress.

Or to provide Mounjaro or similar to someone with anorexia.

Probably. Except you have the choice not to become pregnant. A choice which you have full capacity to make and which will not harm your health. Children do not have the choice not to go through puberty, because doing that does harm their health, and because they do not have the capacity to understand the consequences.

I’m puzzled why you would choose to become pregnant, anyway. Why would you choose to do something quintessentially womanly, that only women can do, when considering yourself to be a woman is apparently so distressing that you reject yourself as a woman?

Indeed. That’s why the burden of proof is to show that it would be very serious not to take the drug. There is no such evidence for puberty blockers and gender dysphoria. In fact, the studies show that without gender-affirming treatment almost every gender-questioning child or teenager grows out of it and goes on to live happy and healthy adult lives. But taking the treatment almost always leads on to cross gender hormones, with serious and proven physical and mental health consequences.

Again, I meant all medication. But it would be great to see those studies if you still had the links. If not, don’t worry.

Because my DH and I would like kids and he can’t do the production side of things, so I will have to deal.

Ok so you're a female person who "identifies" as non-binary (you identify as neither sex), is married to a male, and you are pregnant on purpose. One of the most quintessentially female experiences there is.

And yet here you are advocating for harmful drugs to be handed out like sweeties to pre-pubescent children, which will most likely ensure that they will be unable to have children of their own?

Fucking hell!

I am not accepting that comment, as nothing I have said either implies or states I want drugs “handed out like sweeties”.

That's what it will be like though. These drugs are presented to the children as a good thing. Great, even. They will make them very happy and let them magically change sex when they're ready to. If not, they can stop taking the sweeties and go back completely to normal.

Except it won't be normal will it. They will not have grown at the same rate as their peers. Their brains will not have developed at the optimum time and may never achieve full maturity. Their peers will have moved on, grown up and these poor children will never catch up fully.

I find it really upsetting that my 8 year old will have to wait an estimated 4 years locally for autism and ADHD assessment. Even longer if they want any form of psychological support or medication. Yet it seems to be far far faster to get treatment for gender dysphoria.

There's a total lack of logic there as gender dysphoria is often linked to unsupported ND. I'd much rather see money being spent on the basics of ND and mental health care.

Ignore them, OP. It's the usual sealioning so they can get back to squealing in their own echo chamber. I wouldn't waste your breath on replying further - about a trial their own precious Cass Review recommended about drugs that have been used in children for decades.

I hope that you get appropriate psychological support for your distress - ideally before you get pregnant. Parenting is amazing, but it's also hard work, so it's important to be physically and mentally in your top form. If you ever prepared for exams and hadn't slept as a result, imagine not sleeping day after day, week after week. Imagine being grateful for having time to have a shower. Imagine also someone who is admiring everything about you, and who is dependent on you being healthy and well, for survival. That's what parenting is like - it's wonderful and exhausting at the same time. You really have to be in your top form to be a good parent - and I hope that you will get better!

Normal puberty doesn't just start up when a child stops taking puberty blockers, unless they have precocious puberty. If normal puberty is delayed, certain biological changes and stages have been missed, and won't restart. A boy's penis won't grow normally, for example. Children who were stopped at Tanner stage 2 will be inorgasmic and possibly infertile.
This study is unethical and misguided. In any case - why didn't they follow up on all the kids who have already been on puberty blockers? That was pretty much the basis on which the Tavistock were allowed to prescribe them in the first place. Then it emerged that they had just handed them out and had done virtually no research.
Anyone who thinks it ok to keep kids in a pre-pubescent state... there's a word for that.

It is a proven treatment for that though. And presumably you then developed and went through puberty normally? Hardly the same as giving them to children with no clinical requirement and which is widely seen as a pre cursor to cross sex hormones

As for PP who said people have the right to choose what’s right for their family not where that can cause untold harm to another person’s body for no good reason they don’t

Agree 100%

Used in children as a treatment for precocious puberty, with puberty taking place at a typical age.

That is very different to the experimental and untested use of puberty blockers to prevent puberty taking place at a typical age.

Check out Helen Joyce’s book, Trans.

Also, it’s not unethical to do medical studies on adults who give consent. Most medication is only ever trialled on male adults. Go figure.

And Hannah Barnes

That’s why there is a trial.

They go from puberty blockers to cross-sexhormones so they don't go through puberty

It isnt a 'trial'.

It is stopping a load of kids from growing up, for spurious reasons, and they haven't even got a definition of what 'gender incongruence' means, let alone what 'gender' means. The terms used change as each one gets undefined into oblivion and outed as utter nonsense.

Girls can play with trucks. And boys can play with dolls. This doesn't mean we should stop them growing up in some sort of nightmarish 'trial'. And that's before they get the wrong sex hormones to get them to mimic the opposite sex characteristics. Utterly demented.

I think you may be misremembering. For precocious puberty you would normally stop taking PBs at around 12 to let you go through puberty at a normal age. To have been on them for a decade you'd have been put on them at 2

I feel strongly about this and wrote to the Secretary of State

Dear Mr Streeting

I write to express my concerns about the proposed Pathways trial involving the administration of puberty blockers to children. I am surprised that this gained ethical approval given that it consists of live experimentation administering powerful drugs to minors who can have no clear understanding of the possible consequences of the impact of these drugs on their future fertility, sexual function or sexual pleasure.

Cass recommended further research but surely the place to start is with those who have already been given the drugs. I understand that follow up data is incomplete but surely it would be a useful first step.

The trial seems far too short lived to produce proper results. By the end of it the children will still be, well, children, with a child’s perspective on life. How can the long term impacts be gauged? Most of us past the age of about 25 know that our understanding of ourselves, others and the world once we are properly adult is very different from that of our younger selves. We see happiness and unhappiness in a very different light. Indeed, recent research indicates that the period of “adolescence” in the human brain extends far further into our lives than was previously thought. We need time to grow up as fully realised adults. Interfering in this important process is surely very unwise (and I know that you have concerns about it). Moreover, the psychological tools proposed to measure the effects of the medication seem crude and unsuitable for children, to say the least.

We know that in many cases in the past children have been manipulated by parents and professionals into thinking that these treatments will solve their problems. There do not seem to be proper safeguards against this. In many cases at GIDS, according to Hannah Barnes, parents preferred a trans child over a homosexual child. There were even in-jokes about there soon being no gay children left. The professionals involved in the Pathways trial include some who have long worked in this field and are strong proponents of the discredited “affirmation” approach.

I am not generally a Labour supporter, Mr Streeting (I have no particular political affiliation) but I have a personal regard for you as a fair and intelligent person and politician whose motives are to do the best for the country and its people. As a retired teacher who has seen many young people come through a turbulent and unhappy adolescence to become secure, happy and productive adults, and as a mother and grandmother who has seen the devastating effects of the transgender phenomenon at first hand, I implore you to think twice before proceeding with this particular experiment.

Sincerely