Newsnight tonight: Britain's Experimented with Puberty blockers

[Campervan69]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49036145

From Heather B-E:

"Britain's experiment with puberty blockers is set to be exposed tonight on Newsnight BBC 2 at 10.30 pm. Michael Biggs chapter in our latest book broke the story! t.co/FV5FLye1oX"

This should be interesting....

it seems very clear to me that this was a major motivation for coming up with the idea of puberty blockers in the first place

Assuming the primary motivation for PB was to benefit males mainly it's even more concerning that the majority of children currently given them are probably female.

We know that PB will stunt the height of a male child (an alleged desirable outcome) but how does this work out for female children? Will they end up as unusually small transmen or does testosterone administered later on boost height?

If it doesn't then surely that's a huge negative outcome (for someone who wishes to present as male) and all the PB will have achieved is preventing breast development and prevention of menses?

Trying to look at it from pro-treatment model, breasts and periods can be dealt with via other interventions but height is fixed by a certain point.

Does anyone have any idea about PB and adult height in females?

I can't see if this has been linked or not but is very pertinent.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0006zt4

2.30 ish

Marcus Evans who resigned from the service on the newsnight piece on r4 today

*"This has been penetrated by political force there's a sort of idea that there's only one answer to this problem and that's transition... the tryst don't answer the fact that staff are anonymously going to the papers and the trust is just not listening and are peddling the same old story. That's why I resigned."

"There needs to be an external body who can over see what we're doing with children in this area... political forces are infiltrating what is basically a clinical system; a sort of barrier in a way needs to be created so that we can do a thorough, proper job of thinking about these kids and what's in their long term interests."*

Does anyone have any idea about PB and adult height in females?

This is one of the publications listed by GIDS as part of their output from their early intervention study.

abstracts.eurospe.org/hrp/0089/hrp0089P1-P211

This showed that only 14 of the cohort of 44 in the study had reached final adult height at time of data collection. Data were therefore insufficient to comment on impact of GnRHa on final height.

I think the answer is, they don't know.

Puberty blockers were originally used to help deal with precocious puberty I believe, so helped attain higher height. But brought added issues.

See Lupron link above.

But that's in precocious puberty so a different thing.

Thanks Old Crone

I don't know if it's Lupron that's used but:

Women who used Lupron a decade or more ago to delay puberty or grow taller described the short-term side effects listed on the pediatric label: pain at the injection site, mood swings, and headaches. Yet they also described conditions that usually affect people much later in life. A 20-year-old from South Carolina was diagnosed with osteopenia, a thinning of the bones, while a 25-year-old from Pennsylvania has osteoporosis and a cracked spine. A 26-year-old in Massachusetts needed a total hip replacement. A 25-year-old in Wisconsin, like Derricott, has chronic pain and degenerative disc disease.
“It just feels like I’m being punished for basically being experimented on when I was a child,” said Derricott, of Lawton, Okla. “I’d hate for a child to be put on Lupron, get to my age and go through the things I have been through.”
In the interviews with women who took Lupron to delay puberty or grow taller, most described depression and anxiety. Several recounted their struggles, or a daughter’s, with suicidal urges. One mother of a Lupron patient described seizures.

Wiki is telling me it's Lupron that's mostly used.

Link again:

www.statnews.com/2017/02/02/lupron-puberty-children-health-problems/

The conclusion from the GIDS research I linked to.

Transboys did not show significant growth on GnRHa or CSH, but they were were older at presentationand all post-pubertal at start. Transgirls grew extensively on GnRHa and then unexpectedly only had modest growth when female puberty was induced with oestradiol. This may have arisen from the extension of the pre-pubertal growth phase leaving little growth potential. In some cases, this might challenge gender preferences as a taller final adult height could interfere more with “passing” in their preferred female gender. These are preliminary conclusions and further study is required.

So it's possible that the result is very tall 'transgirls' and very short 'transboys'.

So it's possible that the result is very tall 'transgirls' and very short 'transboys'.

So not really a desirable outcome for anyone then and potentially if the transboys in the study had been younger when starting on PB they may well have ended up very short in stature (and with poor bone density).

*Perils of off-label use
Brooklyn Harbin said she received Lupron after she started her menstrual cycle at age 10. The chance to slow her puberty had passed but she hoped to add a few inches to her 4-foot 9-inch frame before her body matured any further.

According to medical research, doctors prescribe the puberty blocking drug to short kids to essentially give them more time to get taller, since puberty culminates with the body’s long bone growth ending.

Medical researchers have repeatedly warned against such off-label usage. A 2003 study in the New England Journal of Medicinee_ concluded that some kids on drugs like Lupron developed osteopenia and lost too much bone density during a three-year course of treatment to justify the therapy. In other words, the lifetime risk of breaking a bone outweighed the reward of growing a bit taller.
Still, Harbin said she began getting shots of Lupron in 2006. Soon afterward, she said her physical problems began.

At 10, after her 10th shot of Lupron, she said she collapsed during a Wal-Mart shopping trip with family. She could feel nothing from the knee down. Harbin said she spent six months in a wheelchair before she regained her strength and could walk again. She had to give up cheerleading, basketball, gymnastics and karate because of her low bone density.

By seventh grade, she said she spent a month at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota learning to cope with chronic pain.

FDA records obtained via a public records request show that her pediatric specialist reported that a pharmacy erroneously gave her grandmother an extended-release, 3-month formula of the medication, instead of a monthly dose at the same strength. It remains unclear whether the dosing error impacted her health.

Harbin said she was diagnosed at 11 with osteopenia, a thinning of the bones milder than osteoporosis. Although her bone density returned to a normal range at 16, her chronic pain has forced her to reconcile her dreams with her physical limitations.

“I felt like little pieces of my life were just taken away from me and no one wanted to own up to it,” said Harbin, who is now 20 and lives in South Carolina. “Suicide became very, very real for me.”

One thing ive been very curious about over this whole infiltration and activism is how many of the peope who have spoken to these clinics, and all the prominent activists who say how harmless it all is, well how many of them went down the blocker route?

Publically we know of the 2 big cases both of which broadcasted the surgery issue as a result of the blockers.

But how many peope pushing it onto kids on you tube and in.schools and even contacting these clinics.

How many of them have the relevant experience to be able to say how harmless and reversible it is

One thing that shocked me recently was a prominent American trans man YouTuber talking about now going on blockers on top of everything else to stop breakthrough periods. zero mention of risks that I remember but I didn't watch it all.

The way it's all delivered on YouTube is very merrily and flashy and normalising.

(The way it's all delivered on YouTube is very merrily and flashy and normalising*

Yes they all seem far too happy. Not that they shouldnt be happy. Everyone should be. However given their happiness is dependent purely on others playing along it's not convincing.

In what other circumstances would a cause if action be advised or prescribed that would only possibly work on the willingness if complete strangers. People you know have been basically threatened with the police/law /exclusion/denial.of entry or usage to pretend along with you.

Makes no sense at all.

This issue has gained more mainstream discussion.

I am a member of prescribed harm communities, which mainly focus on antidepressant and benzo use, both in adults and children.

These are people who have campaigned about antideressant use in adolescence for a while, and are shocked at what is going on here.

There can be no calls of transphobia there since most know very little about trans issues, just concern over children being damaged.

@ArnoldWhatshisknickers

The pro ana sites have mostly been shut down now, with most platforms having robust policies for removing harmful content.

There was a huge furore recently on Instagram where there were loads of pages springing up. Public pressure forced them to act.

Other than a pause, are there any benefits for taking puberty blockers, at any age, let alone children?

They are sometimes used in the very short term
when treating almost-pubertal girls for cancer - the idea being that the ovaries are kept dormant until after chemotherapy is complete. This is because post pubertal oncology girls have more ‘late term side effects’ than prepubertal girls.

This is, of course, entirely different to giving puberty blocking drugs to children with healthy bodies.

I don’t know if there is an equivalent for boys (but my little bit of knowledge is due to being an oncology mum, not a medical professional).

I'd read that too DuMondeB.

Blockers are still off licence for precocious puberty and as part of a cancer treatment pathway.

However a key difference is that it is not used as a long term solution.

The plan is always that these children will, at the soonest appropriate time, stop the blockers and enter puberty.

As far as I'm aware there are no reputable studies into the long term side effects for even transient usage of these drugs.

In the case of GD the impact is greater in so far that nearly all children who take them move on to taking cross sex hormones and thus never go through a natural puberty at all.

Therefore there is a double whammy at play here. The lack of knowledge wrt the side effects these drugs have in and of themselves plus the impact of puberty denial.

Saying these drugs represent a "safe" and "reversible" pause button is highly disingenuous.

We simply don't know what the long term consequences are - other than the fact that those who take blockers almost always go on to transition using CSH's whilst the reverse is true for those who don't.

That fact alone should be a red flag about their use when treating GD.

what they can't say, because it's so fucking awful, is that puberty blockers are about the aesthetic result that can be achieved for males

Bernard has it exactly right.

This is the reason for pushing the bullshit suicide stats, to obscure this. Bowl pointed out some time ago that without the bullshit suicide stats, the weight of medical ethics would NEVER fall on the side of using blockers. Only threat of mortality provides any kind of justification for this kind of experimental use of drugs on children. But anyone who’s looked, and anyone specializing in this field should have looked,, knows the suicide stats hold no validity.

Isn't height in women associated with a higher risk of cancers. I think it's height above a certain amount above the average but it increases risk.

To pause puberty in these cases, is to get started on puberty blockers before the onset of puberty.

How is it possible to preempt puberty when you can't be sure exactly when it is likely to start.

Asking what age the parents start puberty?
Basically the age could be between 9 and 14 years old and wider to include outliers.

So it's just guesswork then,
on healthy, prepubescent children.

I am reminded of the 'pro-ana' sites that caused a furore about five minutes ago. There was much talk of how to combat them at the time but I don't recall what, if anything, happened beyond hand wringing.

I was a user of those sites from the age of about 17-18/19. If I remember correctly they changed the sites and made them harder to access and changed rules about what you could post about, I think a few of them closed down. The remaining ones became more about recovery. It's about 12 years since I used them so my memory is a bit blurry but it was a big part of my life for some time. I see a real similarity between them and the online trans community of today.

I often wonder about PIE and how that ended. I have read about it a lot but can't see how it came crashing down...conspiracy part of me thinks that the same kind of people who were involved in PIE have infiltrated the gender movement and help push it forward.

Isn't height in women associated with a higher risk of cancers. I think it's height above a certain amount above the average but it increases risk.

Yeah it's a small increase for both tall women and tall men. There was a study reported at the tail end of last year about it.

From the BBC news report...

"The report, published by the Royal Society, says that for every 4in (10cm) increase in human height above the average used in the study of 5ft 7in for men and 5ft 3in for women, there is a 10% greater risk of that person getting cancer."

So yeah if these drugs they're putting girls onto causes them to grow taller than average then their cancer risk will increase. Also, hormones play a part in the development of certain cancers. Has the risk of this been looked into? Rhetorical question as I know the answer will be no as these are things that develop over a lifetime and the drugs haven't been used long enough to know these long term effects.

"Transgirls grew extensively on GnRHa and then unexpectedly only had modest growth when female puberty was induced with oestradiol". I had to read this a number of times to realise they are talking about males. How on earth are they having an induced female puberty?! Are these actual scientists?

I can't believe that anyone who had thought about this for more than a minute can believe this, although I do think that many in the wider public do think that blocking puberty and giving cross sex hormones creates someone with all the features of of the opposite sex.