Shocking Times article "For the past four years I've been stuck as a child"

[MrsSnippyPants]

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www.thetimes.co.uk/article/transgender-children-puberty-blocking-drugs-for-the-past-four-years-i-ve-been-stuck-as-a-child-5s6tkh7z2

This is utterly depressing.

Because he is 12 already, the form stated he was old enough to give consent to the data collection and privacy policy and did not need parental permission.

I am officially confused.

I work in library services, in Scotland. Since the dawn of time we have moved children from Junior to Adult categories in terms of the books they can borrow on their 12th birthday (12-16 are categorised as Teenagers so they don't pay fines but can borrow any adult book).

Last year when GDPR was introduced we were told to move the boundary to 13 because 12 year olds were too young to take responsibility for freaking library books under the new regulations.

And now you tell me any old 12 year old is considered old enough to consent to/refuse medical treatment?

What in the hell is going on?

Pay attention, NSPCC.

The GIDS explanation for those girls declining to speak in sessions was that they didn't want to speak with a female voice and therefore this was evidence they must be transgender.

I wouldn't accept GIDS explanation for anything at present. However, if this is a genuine concern there is readily available accessible communication technology. The girls could type what they wanted to say and it could be spoken aloud in a male voice.

Many years ago and I kick myself that I've never been able to recover the news item since, there was a report of a defence lawyer trying to get the complainant's augmented communication aid removed from her or altered. Why?

Because:
i) the young woman device meant that no matter how much he tried to provoke or flummox her, her verbal output was always clear, authoritative, and measured;
ii) the young woman chose Perfect Paul as her voice (out of the options - the women's ones at the time were pretty dreadful) and it carried gravitas and elicited respect from listeners.

The lawyer didn't succeed. I'm always so sorry that I didn't know the outcome of that case because, other issues aside, iirc, she was complaining about abuse in an institutional setting (she was a resident who had a profound neurological disorder).

From the article:

Mermaids, the transgender lobby group, claims that puberty blockers are safe and “completely reversible” and that not giving them to youngsters who request the can be more damaging than prescribing them.

And Mermaids' response, especially after Jacob's account of four bone breakages as a result of four quite minor accidents during a crucial stage of Jacob's teenage development when bone density should have been building up as a protection against osteoarthritis in later life?

Asked whether it was misleading to promote puberty blockers as a “pause button”, a spokesman for Mermaids said: “Mermaids cannot comment on clinical cases as we are not involved in any individuals’ medical pathways."

Isn't that a classic case of washing one's hands? How many times will they get away with this?

From a psychological perspective, the main dilemma is to understand whether buying time at such a precocious age truly enables children to explore deep personal meanings, or whether it freezes youngsters in a prolonged childhood, secluding them from certain aspects of reality and isolating them from peer groups.

It's difficult to believe quite how they got away with the lack of logic.

It's not a pause to give time to reflect, because the child is no closer to understanding four years later, as they haven't changed in any way, including mental maturation.

The only thing they will have experience of is what it's like to be 'paused'.

But then to agree that during the 'pause', they won't get any talking therapy about underlying issues, because it's conversion, is quite unbelievable.

It's your ultimate example of setting someone up to fail, isn't it?

And then, to hold it up as an example of good practice and proof that trans children exist?

There was a parent who posted a while ago whose child had been prescribed puberty blockers by GIDS, then just sent away - no ongoing therapy, no support - except a suggestion to try CAMHS.

InsulatedCup

Yes. She got 6 appointments I think. That was the maximum allowed.

She had to go privately in the end, which was financially crippling as she was on her beam ends to start with.

The blockers do not change your child’s body, but they do pause puberty to give them time to explore their gender further without the adolescent physical changes that can bring great distress.

I imagine that a large number of women posting here have been on hormonal contraceptives at some point. We all know that things like this can influence your mental state. Yet puberty blockers are being given to young people to buy them time to think?

Also, why? What is the outcome here? If, after having not gone through puberty they decide that they want to continue to transition then what happens?

What I don't understand is how this level of experimentation has happened without ethics in place beforehand. As a uni researcher, we can't ask under 18s what ice cream flavour they like without a massive ethical review and DBS checks. It is beyond belief that this level of dangerous interference with children's bodies has been allowed. As has been pointed out many times if these boards, the NHS is in for a world of pain when the court cases begin.

What is the GIDS study looking at (regarding blockers)? What are the outcomes? Why isn’t it a RCT?

This is Professor Biggs' assessment of the study, Birds.

www.transgendertrend.com/tavistock-experiment-puberty-blockers/

Really worth reading it.

There are many unanswered questions.

I cannot understand why all the normal rules of consent no longer apply in this particular setting.
What happened to informed consent for clinical research, unlicensed drugs, Gillick competence?
If it is so easy to shift the age of consent goal posts for puberty blockers etc, one has to consider what else the age of consent can be lowered for, and I think we all know where this is heading.

Clinical trials have very strict requirements for adverse event reporting. Normally there would be monitoring in place from the pharmaceutical company, a research company and ethics committee.
A single fracture due to osteoporosis would be enough of an adverse event to stop the trial temporarily or remove the subject from the programme while investigations were made.

It is really strange.

Who regulates clinical trials and prosecutes where regulations are not met? It seems like there has been a huge failure here. I know it is possible for clinicians not to understand the requirements of carrying out clinical trials and illegally ‘do their own thing’ but surely this is public enough for it to have been spotted?!!

A single fracture due to osteoporosis would be enough of an adverse event to stop the trial temporarily or remove the subject from the programme while investigations were made

Obviously this would depend on the trial (eg may look at reduction in fracture) but what must not happen is for the subject to be removed from the dataset. That reminds be of one trial TRAs love quoting about improvements in wellbeing following transition that excludes (amongst others for dubious reasons) a patient that died as a result of treatment.

I didnt mean remove from the data set, but taken off the protocol, i.e. the experimental drug.
All staff running trials have to attend mandatory training that includes all the legislation. Monitoring is usually really tight. Principal investigators can get prison sentences for not following the rules.
Random inspections are frequent.
I admit I am very rusty but at one time I ran international studies, wrote protocols and trained people.
There seems to be so much wrong with this study.

Professor Biggs' assessment raises loads of red flags. It appears that large numbers of participants were removed from the data set while remaining on the drugs. That is a massive breach of the rules.
Also it is clear that bone density is a study endpoint, so any fracture would be a SAE.
The whole thing is very suspicious.

Mermaids are a disgusting organisation and I hope in years to come their victims will sue the shit out of them

But when trans activists are saying things like this, it's hard to know whether it'll ever be possible to convince people about the risks

twitter.com/transscribe/status/1155080407970459648

And when idiots say this in reply "People are easily confused.
It's true that vaccines have caused more autistic adults. Because vaccines prevent a lot of deaths in childhood! There are more allistic adults, too! The proportion is unchanged.
Similarly with providing mental health to children."

🙄

Jacob would be wise to keep their real world identity hidden:

twitter.com/KevinYa13099403/status/1155191057749041153

I’m always reading these threads and attempting to learn/keep up. This article is a bit puzzling, surely initially his parents supported this choice? Was he given counselling? Could he not have stopped taking them?
‘I was upset to be in the room with my taller brother’ this comment alone to me demonstrates the immaturity of Jacob, yet this was allowed to carry on. Do a lot of kids not have these thoughts/feelings but it surely doesn’t mean head them down the road of a different gender?
Hopefully my questions aren’t too dim but I’m struggling to figure it out 🙄

Was he given counselling?

No, this is the problem, Gender dysphoria is no longer a mental illness, and if the new proposed "Conversion therapy" guidelines go through anything other than constant affirmation will be illegal.

Do a lot of kids not have these thoughts/feelings but it surely doesn’t mean head them down the road of a different gender?

Yes, It's a forced path for normal feelings.

What a brave article to write. And what an absolutely frightening experience of ‘treatment’ (in the short term and in future/long term) of ‘treatment’ that this young person has had and those awful effects they have had to live with. Why weren’t they offered intensive specialist psychological support? Why with that catalogue of horrendous side effects are any other kids being given this treatment? Yet we know NHS GIDS clinics are expanding in the NHS and who knows how many private doctors are also getting in on this lucrative act. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

While it’s welcome that doctors are beginning to ask each other questions about this, and I think it’s the absolute least the medical profession can do, for the Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health to start to enquire into the ethics of this, this isn’t enough.

It’s not doubting their good faith to say that doctors (or any profession when investigating itself) even with the best will in the world, can’t always be impartial about each other.

So we also need to write to our MPs to ask for an enquiry not conducted by peers of the medics offering these treatments. We need MPs to look into this. They have sufficient clout to recommend to change the law so that these treatments can only be given within a new, much stricter legal framework and ideally within a strict independent licensing regime. Or, only offered as part of research. Whatever the current evidence suggests, you can be sure we can’t continue with the basis for prescribing that Jacob describes.

We urgently need a House of Commons Health and Social Care select committee inquiry- so MPs can hear evidence from all sides impartially and then - I would hope- will recommend to their peers that the law is tightened up massively around this in whatever way will best protect children and young people and will actually help to relieve their distress and confusion and will not add new, avoidable, additional burdens to that distress.

If what Jacob describes in the Times article had been given to Jacob as a participant in actual properly-conducted research trial, then given that list of awful side effects any properly run research trial would have been stopped because it would no longer be ethical to continue.

How is this level of harm ethical and legal to continue with as prescribed medical care?- especially for kids who have no proper understanding of the risks, and of the relative lack of benefits- and the certainty of harms. How can doctors be allowed to continue to offer this to their patients given such little evidence of benefit and so much evidence of harm?

Also the points upthread are well made about the imbalance of burdens of benefits and side effects and harms of these treatments between the sexes- this is needing to be explored. The RCPCH enquiry should specifically dedicate part of their work to investigating this.

According to the article, Jacob was told this about puberty blockers:

“They promise you that your breasts will disappear, that your voice will be deeper, that I would look and sound more like a boy.

And this:

He claims: “My Tavistock worker was saying to me, ‘once you have the testosterone, you’ll be a boy’.

Whoever told those lies to a vulnerable child is not fit to practice medicine. Are the doctors at the Tavistock really telling children that they can change sex?

I doubt they used those terms. I imagine that’s a child’s memory of bits of a longer explanation. After all, half the stuff we try to teach children in school whooshes straight part their heads.