HRA/GIDS admit purpose of blockers is to progress to cross-sex hormones

[Fallingirl]

Just seen this from Michael Biggs and TransgenderTrend.

www.transgendertrend.com/health-research-authority-puberty-blockers-commit-children-permanent-physical-transition/

I find articles by TT very worrying

Yes, I'm sure you do.

Thanks tea.
To let kids of 16 make these life changing decisions is beyond all belief.
The whole thing has caused huge problems in the family. How can a parent support the mutilation of their child?

Mrskeats -

don’t really do justice my feelings for your family, I want to scoop you up and stroke your head - but that’d be a bit forward.

Can I ask if your step-daughter was on blockers before she went on to testosterone?

Hypatia - Do what Lang said and read the HRA investigation report. This is their recommendation to GIDS:

Researchers and clinical staff working in gender identity development should consider carefully the terms that they use in describing treatments e.g. avoid referring to puberty suppression as providing a ‘breathing space’, to avoid risk of misunderstanding.

It’s there for all to see now - puberty blockers were never given ‘as a breathing space’.

Unfortunately as far as parents (and others) were concerned they thought they were being given as a breathing space - a huge destructive lie and has damaged thousands of lives. The HRA report even says puberty blockers makes dysphoria worse.

They don’t say blockers make dysphoria worse, they say that in the cohort selected for the trial it’s expected their mental health will deteriorate as their bodies don’t develop as they expect them to.

It is important to note that the treatment was not intended of itself to prevent gender dysphoria. The purpose of puberty suppression was to prevent further development of puberty in the natal gender.

Without proper research, even though anxiety is a noted side effect of blockers, it’s not possible to say they increase anxiety around dysphoria. It seems obvious to an outsider though that the two could be linked.

There’s evidence that anti-depressants increase suicidal thoughts in children and young teens. They are prescribed with immense caution, and only prescribed by psychiatrists before the age of 17. I find it baffling that the raised anxiety in the cohort doesn’t warrant further study given it’s a known side effect of the blockers.

If the Nazis had done this 80 years ago people would rightly be calling it out for the despicable practice it is, but because it’s all in the name of transgenderism it’s not only allowed to continue, it’s being lorded by the likes of the BBC.

The Nazis were by no means the only group who supported the 20th century version of eugenics. Lots of individuals who might otherwise be considered 'progressive' for their era were supports. John Maynard Keynes was director of the (British) Eugenics Society from 1937-44 for example.

It is not that surprising to see history repeating itself. The 1930s are very popular in other ways at the present after all.

Aww thanks non
Yes blockers then straight onto testosterone without any questions asked.
Now it’s ‘I’m a gay man in a woman’s body a that needs correcting’
Say what now?

It is not that surprising to see history repeating itself.

Yes. Let's not forget that eugenics started as a "progressive" ideology.

All these so-called progressive movements are classist to the core. It's about posh people "improving" the lessers.

Now it’s ‘I’m a gay man in a woman’s body a that needs correcting

Unfortunately most gay men will disagree, and them being men this is ok and not a hate crime

I'm still reeling that Hypatia can come onto this thread and repeat the lie about a harmless pause.

1. GIDS begins a study into puberty blockers and tells patients and their parents in the study, the media, and the entire wider world that puberty blockers are a pause while children decide on which path they will take.

2. Several parties, including whistleblowers from the GIDS service itself voice concerns about the study in particular and the use of puberty blockers generally.

3. GIDS and extremist genderist groups continue to assert the pause argument.

4. Eventually, concerns raise to the point that the Health Research Authority investigates. The HRA states that the GIDS study is not using puberty blockers as a pause but as a method to lock in transition in children they have already deemed to be persistent as a means of ensuring passability in adulthood. The HRA tells GIDS to stop using the pause argument.

5. Transgender Trend reports the HRA findings and recommendations, including its criticism of GIDS deceptions of the false pause descriptions about its study.

6. Extremist genderists come on to FWR to reassert the pause descriptions and attribute the HRA findings to TT.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Not only is the "pause" argument false with regards to the children in the GIDS treated with PBs, but the HRA is approving of NHS bodies treating children with PBs so that they pass better when they are adults.

How much worse can it get?

Mrskeats I’ve DMed you!

Lang not only all of that, but the HRA are saying it’s okay to prescribe blockers because of external pressure groups, parents going abroad for treatment and because other countries have read the research and do it.

As my mum used to say - just because Janet’s mum says you can do it, it doesn’t mean I say you can. If Janet’s mum told you it’s okay to jump off a cliff - would you do it.

And as we know, it's only MtF trans people who this allows to "pass better", not FtM. But, inkeeping with the rest of medicine which ignores the fact that female bodies are different to male bodies, they just plunder on regardless and ruin female bodies for life.

The worst bit is that no one is planning on stopping this fucking train.

Everything Lang said. With no one in authority doing anything other than SUGGESTING that prescribers stop using the 'pause button' line.

That's it.

But people will still argue that calling this out is somehow 'phobic'

Fuck that noise.

Just bumping for the evening crowd

I find this the worst bit:

If you suppress puberty for three years the bones do not get any stronger at a time when they should be, and we really don’t know what suppressing puberty does to your brain development. We are dealing with unknowns.

Not only is there no clear benefit, and a lot of nebulous (but, it seems, strongly suppressed) harms (suppressed thanks to conflicts of interest, avoidance of oversight and rewriting of research aims), there's a major harm here. How long will these poor kids actually be able to enjoy their bodies? When will osteoporosis and ill health hit? In their 50s, 40s, 30s? If no-one knows (and I don't know why it's ethical to be running such an experiment to find out), don't bloody do it! These changes just seem such reckless experimentation and such a massive overreaction to unhappiness which could have many causes.

I’ve just read the whole report by HRA and it’s pretty awful. I’ll be looking at this more tomorrow but need sleep now!

Well Hypatia415, are you going to read the article and links properly, then come back and admit you are wrong. Why are you so concerned that people are finally trying to protect these vulnerable children and teens, instead of fast trekking them into dangerous drugs? Why would you be concerned about that?

Shows how utterly unfit for office our politicians are. This should not have been allowed to happen, and when MPs' attention was drawn to it, they were too craven and lazy to do anything except pay lipservice. The whole shower should resign over the ridiculous shenanigans of the last 3 years anyway but I hope .... oh well, my anger and disgust at our so-called leaders is beyond expression.

I just want to add something to all the other great comments and to LangCleg's succinct summary and answer her question

How much worse can it get?

The HRA states that the GIDS study is not using puberty blockers as a pause but as a method to lock in transition in children they have already deemed to be persistent as a means of ensuring passability in adulthood. [my emphasis]

I read all of the the available studies on persistence and desistance that attempted to figure out which of the children would desist and which would persist into adulthood. The hypothesis was, that the most dysphoric would persist and the least dysphoric desist. So, "the worse your GD, the more likely you are to persist" was the theory.

However, the data showed that severity of GD was not a good indicator of persistence.

And that was fine, because these children were treated in line with the watchful waiting approach. No medical interventions until long after puberty set in, which they found was the mechanism that separated those who would persist into adulthood from those who would reconcile with their bodies and desist.

So, I'd love to know how GIDS is determining which children are going to persist. Especially since we have tentative first results that show if you block puberty, you prevent desistance, and an astonishing 98% to 100% go on to cross-sex hormones. IOW, GIDS is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We also have no data on the ROGD cohort in girls, who present atypically for gender dysphoria. That is, they only start identifying as trans when they are post-pubescent (for girls that's around 14 years of age).

We don't know what their desistance rate would be without medical interventions. No data exists. But we are giving them irreversible, life-limiting treatments anyway.

Such an important point CharlieParley

This is going to be the lobotomy/thalidomide/sterilization of the "mentally unfit" scandal of our generation.

GIDS told parents that blockers were intended as a "pause button" to give children the chance to think about future treatment.

While knowing all along that in fact the "pause button" was no such thing, and that puberty blockers would pretty much guarantee that such children went on to transition - and knowing that they did not know the impact physiologically (bone density), neurologically (possible loss of cognitive function through not going through puberty) and psychologically (increased anxiety in a sub population already at much higher risk of mental health issues than the population at large).

All in the name of "passing" as adults.

In short, GIDS lied knowingly and deliberately about a massive medical experiment with huge medical contraindications for the patients, up to and including life-long sterility and enhanced risk of osteoporosis.

charley - and that’s one of the reasons the first ethics committee said no to the study.

The committee noted evidence that 80% of teenagers with gender identify disorder do not suffer with the disorder on reaching adulthood. The committee does not appear to have noted that the study population was a specific sub-group of teenagers with persistent gender identity disorder who had reached a specific stage of puberty; the 80% figure would not apply to the population that the researchers intended to recruit for the study being considered here.

There’s absolutely noway of knowing if the people selected for the trial were in the 80% or not. What evidence does the HRA have to support this claim?

langcleg how much worse can it get?

"Data for this study disclosed to the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust at a board meeting on 23 June 2015 suggested that: natal girls had an increase in behavioural and emotional problems after treatment for one year compared with baseline; a significant increase was found in reported self-harm; no significant changes in gender dysphoria were seen"

Bolding mine.

They were willing to knowingly make girls' mental health worse, that's how much worse it can get.

Attempts to archive the report directly fail: the HRA website appears to set up to stop archive.is and the Wayback Machine from accessing it it's almost like they don't want independently-hosted copies of this report kicking around.

Luckily, I have archived the Google Cache copy at archive.is/AYxJU