To think 11 year old girls should NOT be eligible for the newly restarted puberty blockers trial?

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/174c8f4252fcd5a5

We know puberty blockers cause permanent harm at any age. 11 is at least 5 years too young. How can the government sanction permanent damage to a child? Hundreds of children, IQ damaged, infertility and sexual function risks, bone density damage, not to mention not addressing that poor child’s underlying mental health issues which should be helped and addressed in the most supportive and humane manner.

I am disgusted Labour can let this horror show go ahead.

Exactly. It’s adults using a damaging term and ideology based on what? Gender is just stereotypes.

I think anyone who thinks an 11yo is old enough to make a decision of this sort is complicit in child abuse.

Scary stuff. I have a much younger cousin who refused to wear anything ‘girly’ from the age of 3. She played male characters in any game she played- mummies and daddies, computer games where she made avatars for herself etc. she said she wished she was a boy. She even tried to wee standing up on occasion! At 11, she was still refusing skirts and had her hair very short. Her mum always encouraged her to dress how she liked, play how she liked and reiterate that girls can do anything boys can do (on the whole) etc. we still thought there might be a day that she would turn around and demand we call her Jim or something.

she’s now 14. Something switched during puberty. She still loves rugby, beating the boys in arm wrestles and football. But she also has discovered make up, hairstyles and clothes and is loving experimenting. She is really exploring her feminine side and it’s scary she would not have had that chance if she was given puberty blockers and told she was a boy.

Okay fine, not 'a good thing'. But a relatively small number of people demonstrating non-beneficial results of puberty blockers in a trial would prevent them being embedded as accepted therapy in practice, if that's what the results show.

How many permanently damaged children would be acceptable?
It is like asking how many women being raped in prison would be acceptable in order to prove that locking them up with men is not a good thing.

Absolutely.

I can’t see one reason for giving this to kids who are confused about their bodies.

If evidence of harm becomes obvious during the trial it will be stopped early, so as few as possible. A sample size calculation will have been performed to show how many participants they require to demonstrate statistical benefit. Stop being sensationalist.

The effects may not be truly felt until years later though, especially when it comes to thinks like bone density.

How is it possible to be sensationalist about this? It's one of the worst medical scandals I've ever heard of. Experimental treatment was started with a tiny group of children in the Netherlands in the 1990s. That first cohort may have been intensely studied but most of the children in other wealthy countries who've been treated subsequently have not been tracked at all. We know from the accounts of detransitioners that a great many children have had no psychological therapy before being prescribed puberty blockers. The assessment of their general mental state and background was usually completely inadequate. This has been particularly prevalent in the US where it was clearly a moneyspinner for their grossly profit-seeking healthcare system.

This new trial is not needed. What is needed is a total ban on prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors for gender incongruence. I don't know that there's any point in spending millions on a public enquiry to find out how we got here. Would lessons be learned? Would the people responsible be brought to book? I doubt it.

Are you a parent? Would you be happy to place your child in this trial? Given all the harms we already know about? The court cases, the detransitioner testaments?
As far as I know, we don't know who was on the ethics committee.

Yes, let's go back to the beginning and examine why anyone thought it would be a good idea to medicate children in this way in the first place.

It was noted by some Dutch researchers, back in the 1980s and 90s that transsexuals often had poor mental health. This seemed to be due to the fact that males couldn't successfully 'pass' as women due to the irreversible effects of testosterone on their bodies at puberty. They decided to experiment on some children who wanted to be the opposite sex to see if they would have better outcomes as adult transsexuals.

There are a number of problems with this approach. The most obvious one is that most children (80% or more) with gender dysphoria in childhood grow out of it, so the best 'cure' for the dysphoria is to not medicate them. Another one is that the irreversible effects in males are due to testosterone (deeper voice, facial hair etc). There are no similar irreversible effects in females, so this so-called 'treatment' should never have been used on girls, even with this aim in mind.

These powerful drugs are given to children with the sole aim of creating an adult male who can successfully convince people that he is a woman. The girls included in the trial (who now make up about 75% of children referred for gender dysphoria) are just collateral damage, there to convince the public that this isn't really some sort of Frankensteinian experiment on children.

Hell, I'm a trans person who was a so-called trans kid, and I wouldn't put my own 11yo self in this trial! I know - I know - that if I went through a trial like this, if I got put on puberty blockers, then cross-sex hormones, then had the surgeries as a teen still, I would then inevitably come to a point in my life where I would start to forever wonder, for the rest of my life, if I would have chosen that path had I been left alone to make my own decisions as an adult.

That's just the way I am: I mull over what i could have done differently, including as a child. I weigh the expectations and demands that were put on me, and the consequences they had. So yeah, I would wonder. And never being able to know if messing with my endocrine system, with my puberty, and having my breasts removed, was something I would have chosen to do had I been left to decide about it on my own time - that would eat at me until I died.

I'm damn glad I was spared that.

It was Professor George from the MHRA who was recused.

I hope the Labour Secretaries of State letting this happen rot in a hell of litigation, shame and guilt one day for allowing this. Lisa Nandy, Louise Haigh, James Murray, David Lammy, Bridget Phillipson, Yvette Cooper. The utter bastards.

And how dare the others not stop them.

And now ... Burnham. If he doesn't stop this then he's as bad as or worse than Starmer. 👀

Clearly, you did not read what I wrote and it took me ages

We have clear evidence of harm. We know these drugs are harmful and have long-term permanent issues.

We also have no clear description of what good looks like because as I said the only good outcome is in fact someone who no longer has a gender dysphoria and this cannot ever do that

Please read the longer answers above again.

the only good outcome is in fact someone who no longer has a gender dysphoria and this cannot ever do that

Indeed. That's a huge point that I don't think many pro-trial people realise: gender dysphoria can never be eliminated in a person. We will always experience some degree of gender dysphoria:

• when we are clocked
• when we consider how our body is still different from what we want it to be
• when we have to deal with the consequences of the medical actions we undertook to modify it
• when we lose romantic or sexual prospects because they don't want to date a trans person
• and so on.

So the point of this trial would not be to eliminate gender dysphoria: it would only be to reduce it. Which brings at least two questions to mind:

1. How do we measure dysphoria at all? We need to be able to measure it if we are to determine whether it has been reduced or not.
2. What target are we aiming for in dysphoria reduction? How much would be worth the negative consequences really or potentially inflicted on these children? 10%, 25%, 75%?

Those are in my opinion fundamental questions to answer before even considering putting together a trial at all.

As there are a lot of young people who have already been given these drugs, the research material is already there . No need for further experimentation and these trials should be halted.

Hmm, I realise I possibly implied something I very much don't mean in my above post. So I'd like to clarify:

Gender dysphoria can never be artificially eliminated. However, it can and very often does disappear on its own, naturally, in a whole lot of so-called trans children.

How can an 11 year old possibly comprehend the fertility issues that accompany puberty blockers?!?!

The cognitive dissonance from a government that thinks under 16s can’t consent to YouTube but can consent to sterilisation, loss of bone density, permanent cognitive impairment, incontience and annorgasmia (in women) and greater risk of heart disease and some cancers.

absolute bastards.

And I never considered this point, thank you Seethlaw.

The what-ifs are too great, the damage too big, the outcomes unmeasurable (what is happy, what is passing, how do you measure dysphoria), to ever make this trial objective and trustworthy. Probably because this is not a medical problem, so a medical trial just doesn't work.

I did read what you wrote. I just think you're full of shit, and state your opinions as though they're fact so I'm not going to continue trying to debate with you. We do not have clear evidence of harm, the risks and/or benefits are unclear overall. Technically you could argue any drug is harmful, if you look at the recorded side effects. But in reality, they're generally accepted risks. And you can't just decide what would be a valid outcome measure! You may not agree that the results mean anything either way, fine, but that is your opinion. It's not a fact.

Purpose of clinical trial:
To evaluate benefits and risks of using gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues (GnRHa) for puberty suppression in children and young people (CYP) with gender incongruence.

Primary Objective:
To determine the short/medium-term benefits and risks of GnRHa for puberty suppression in CYP with gender incongruence. This will take a comprehensive approach to domains of possible benefit and risk, including quality of life, mental health, gender identity/dysphoria and body satisfaction, impact on cognition and brain development and physical effects including bone mineral density.

Secondary Objective(s):
To understand which potential outcomes (e.g.,
domains of quality of life, mental health, gender and body distress, cognition, physical health) are the priority goals for CYP receiving GnRHa.
To allow for future safety, efficacy, and effectiveness data, including rarer adverse effects and long-term effects, pending further funding.

So far your arguments seem to be 1. There's not enough evidence of potential benefit already, and 2. What are they trying to show? So hopefully the above quotes will help with 2, and as for 1 - you get evidence through research. And not all research is to prove the benefit of an intervention. Sometimes it is to investigate whether standard practice is effective. Research doesn't have to be a randomised controlled trial to be valid.

It depends. Probably not, as it is potentially risky and I don't personally believe in the potential benefits. But if I had a child where the alternative was they were incredibly unhappy and potentially suicidal, then perhaps. I don't think any of us know what we might do in worse case scenarios.

It has never been demonstrated that gender dysphoria makes people (edit: incredibly) unhappy or suicidal. What has been shown over and over again, however, is that unhappy or suicidal people latch onto the promise that transitioning will magically make their life better. Needless to say, it doesn't, and their lot doesn't get any better, quite the contrary.

Edit: missed an important word.