No more puberty blockers for children from the NHS - reported in the Times!

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

This is massive - and long overdue

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/97ce2e81-2884-42f5-bb82-2a2778f2cc91?shareToken=9568e79f0683beea68ffe5e978b05a29

Which country did this happen in? According to this article by Michael Biggs, these drugs weren't prescribed to children on the NHS until 2011, and in 2005 guidelines still stated that these were not suitable for children.

Guidelines issued by the British Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and
Diabetes (BSPED) in 2005 still insisted that children had to reach full sexual development (known as Tanner Stage 5)—around the age of 15—before being prescribed GnRHa drugs

https://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/Biggs_ExperimentPubertyBlockers.pdf

In 2007, Susie Green had to take her child to the USA in order to get these drugs, as they weren't available here for children at all.

In the 90s it was only the Dutch who were giving these drugs to children, starting in 1994.

I can't say I approve of blackmailing desperate children into consenting to be part of clinical research trials in order to gain access to an existing treatment that's been in place worldwide for several generations already.

The earliest record of these drugs being given to a child for gender distress is 1994 (the early Dutch experiment). This is one generation ago, not several. But it wasn't an "existing treatment" then, it was a novel use of these drugs to arrest puberty in healthy adolescents. Something being used in one small European country as a novel, experimental treatment is not something that can be accurately described as being "in place worldwide".

In the UK these drugs were only prescribed on the NHS for children with gender dysphoria for the first time in 2011. 13 years is not several generations. It's not even one. If they had been available in the UK in 2007, Susie Green wouldn't have had to take her child to the USA to get them.

Still speculation at this stage ...

I’m sorry you find it upsetting, @ButterflyHatched

Do you think the generations of children before yours, who didn’t have puberty blockers, didn’t survive?

I think the kids will be alright, if given access to good, compassionate therapeutic care as they always should have been. The scandal is that shortage.

I am glad that your experience has been good enough for you to recommend it to others. Many would disagree. I support helping young people come to terms with all of life’s complexity, injustice and inconsistency in the same way we all have to, for a successful adult life. Rebelling against reality in any of its forms makes for a miserable existence.

The consistency of Butter’s narrative has been questioned before and not answered as far as I can tell. What we know from Butter’s posts is that Butter was approx 16-17 around the year 2000 and somehow got puberty blockers from someone. Who? Where? Which clinic? How many others? What follow up? Published evidence given its experimental nature? Who knows. Not Butters that’s for sure.

This was after spending the 1990s at the forefront of the discussion around trans rights on the internet and its forums.

Despite being late to (apparently) start PBs in the context of Tanner staging (based on age) Butter has described a multitude of health problems. This experience therefore

a) does not mimic those who have been puberty blocked at Tanner stage 2 and as young as 10/11 and
b) still isn’t a great advertisement for the process given Butter is now only around 40 and has a multitude of health problems already.

Why would anyone be prescribed PBs at age 17/18? What would the point be then? Surely at that point it’d be CSHs.

Speaking of those, someone mentioned recent studies on increased risk of cardiac complications for males taking oestrogen. Does anyone have links to the studies?

Why would anyone be prescribed PBs at age 17/18? What would the point be then? Surely at that point it’d be CSHs.

Males still require hormone blockers to block testosterone, until they have surgery. Just taking female hormones doesn't stop testosterone production.

The consistency of Butter’s narrative has been questioned before and not answered as far as I can tell. What we know from Butter’s posts is that Butter was approx 16-17 around the year 2000 and somehow got puberty blockers from someone. Who? Where? Which clinic? How many others? What follow up?

They could have been attending the adult clinic and have got these drugs from the age of 18 (possibly 17? I'm not sure what the age is for transfer to the adult clinic).

It's also possible that it's all just made up.

This was after spending the 1990s at the forefront of the discussion around trans rights on the internet and its forums.

When were there multiple forums avail on the internet?

I remember some in the 2000s. Internet didn't really exist much pre 1995

There was also a huge u turn in hrt for women in the mid 90s due to what they thought was increased cancer risk.

A Hyperbole alert is needed for that post.

It is so clear isn’t it, that this person should not be in the position they claim they are in of offering advice to any child or young person about gender concerns.

A mature adult would start providing a list of studies that showed the NHS decision, the same decision made in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and soon France to be wrong. A list of evidence that obviously the World Health Organisation, NICE, Dr Cass and In February, a German research team, have obviously missed in their search for evidence before advising the opposite to this posters.

Don’t anyone hold their breath waiting though. After years of experience now, not one shred of evidence will come. Because this poster has nothing but excessive hyperbole to offer. Never any self awareness. Never any evidence.

I appreciate the decision even more knowing that children will be safeguarded from poor information

I remember some in the 2000s. Internet didn't really exist much pre 1995

I remember the internet in the mid 90s. There were chatrooms like Foothills for example, but feck, it was sloooooow.

I remember posting on usenet newsgroups in the late 90s. Not exactly the same as Internet forums, but they functioned in a similar way.

But if Butter was only 16 or 17 in 2000, how could they have been at the forefront of the discussion around trans rights in the 90s when they were still a child?

Oh. Have we got some self awareness at last perhaps??

So then, you are (from memory) only therefore advocating treatment for male teenagers who have a medical condition causing slow male puberty to receive hormone treatment then? You are no longer leveraging all those other children and young people in your narrative?

Well, that is a start then!

Not great still, but better to read that you have stopped treating female people with trans identities as if they were just the same as male people. And better too, that you no longer treat male people without your specific medical condition as being the same as you too.

I do hope that the group who treats you as an ‘elder’ and allows you to advise children and young people might instead get along a medical professional who observes the ban on puberty blockers to give support to the people you used to. I do hope the group that allowed you to give such advice before now understands the harm that they allowed to happen.

OldCrone · Today 06:41

It does seem strange that someone could be prescribed a drug for a purpose, over a decade before it began to be prescribed for that purpose.

Thanks for the explanation @OldCrone and one assumes that would be on the basis that the person intended to have surgery.

Having just had a quick look at pubmed on this topic, I’m somewhat astonished at the 100’s and 100’s of articles by medical professionals blithely writing about a range of permanent changes and increased risks to young people associated with surgery, PBs and CSHs. Seemingly without any medical, ethical or moral concerns. It makes sense though that the very first group that would have to be captured would be the medical community.

It feels like there are similarities with the opioid crisis in the US where Purdue Pharmaceutical senior management played a key role in spending decades convincing the medical community to change its standards in relation to pain management. All the while being completely aware of the highly addictive nature of the pain medication the firm developed and aggressively marketed. Likewise there were a few lone voices raising concerns that were dismissed.

Will there ever come a day of similar reckoning? Possibly not as responsibility is too dispersed in the case of gender dysphoria treatment approaches.

I recall thinking I was the centre of the universe when I was 16, too...

What fantastic news that the French scientific community is also considering bans on puberty blockers in addition to those who already have. On ethical grounds and due to a lack of evidence that they have a positive effect.

Yes what a time to be alive that we've had so many people successfully lobbying for ideological use of drugs on children to support their views as adults against the evidence and ethics.

It is great that it's starting to finally be tackled head on as an unacceptable approach.

Do have a nice day.

I am hoping that after the German team did their review of the evidence, including any evidence since the previous reviews published, and confirmed that no new papers have evidenced that these treatments improve the life of children, that the German government will now start their own ban too. We have to wait and see.

Don’t let’s forget the Dutch are also doing their own review too! Again!!

Gosh…. What a thing in life eh? To be an advocate for treatments that even the original country who developed the treatment now may reject?

I reckon that this acknowledgement may be as hard to do as understanding that your family and friends may have been lying to you all along and that other people, especially female people, really can correctly identify the type of sexed body you have. But that due to different aspects of female social conditioning (that you as a male will never have) those female people will not let on.

I hope those finally understanding this get the mental health support they need. Because this must be very distressing.

Good to see this thread being kept bumped. It's important to document the international realisation of the extreme harm happening to children because medics have listened to self interested activists instead of undertaking the research and evidence that their profession and ethics dictates.

A lifelong positive effect?

You said you've had to hide for 20 years to avoid being pushed out by society and that you live a life of crippling isolation seeing only doctors!

Yet,

I'm in favour of there continuing to be a provision by the NHS for children in the same situation I was

This is the exact reason why these blockers have been stopped.

No one wants to push kids into a life of isolation completely dependent on medical treatments. Only TRAs.

Well males in their 40s have to have kids today follow the same path, otherwise they have to come to terms with the fact they could have avoided those harms with an alternative path these kids will get. Rose tinted retrospection has been a big driver of how kids got the treatment in the first place. The original Dutch researchers listened to males who had gone through puberty who were sure they’d be happier if they hadn’t and decided to make sure the next group of kids didn’t. And now here we are.

You said you've had to hide for 20 years to avoid being pushed out by society and that you live a life of crippling isolation seeing only doctors!

@Datun that's when Butterfly isn't on holiday for a few weeks, duh! 😉

It's such a load of bollocks isn't it!

Butterfly has had to avoid society because they are targeted for being trans, while simultaneously passing so well that both men and women hit on them relentlessly.

And travel the world with wonderful family and friends, whilst also living a life of crippling isolation (but being hit on by lesbians and making other transwomen jealous).

Plus butterfly's relentless medical problems feels like the sword of Damocles hanging over their head, and they have to employ 'gallows humour' to deal with it all.

Well males in their 40s have to have kids today follow the same path, otherwise they have to come to terms with the fact they could have avoided those harms with an alternative path these kids will get. Rose tinted retrospection has been a big driver of how kids got the treatment in the first place. The original Dutch researchers listened to males who had gone through puberty who were sure they’d be happier if they hadn’t

Nailed it there NotBadConsidering

And no amount of doctors, worldwide, actually confessing that children have no fucking idea what they're getting into, will stop these men from using them to justify their own decisions.