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

I was authorised to go on blockers by Brain and Viner at the Middlesex hospital after multiple appointments with Bernadette at GIDS.

I don't have 'a multitude' of health problems, and nothing to do with the effects of Blockers. There are elevated risk factors from being on oral oestrogen tablets for over 20 years but these are reduced somewhat by switching to transdermal patches.

I'm healthier than most of the people I know at my age.

I appreciate that there is a desire to find ways to undermine the narrative I've presented of a happy positive treatment outcome so that you don't have to acknowledge it, but I'm afraid I'm one of those annoying people who is able to demonstrate that this treatment is safe and effective when used to help people who need it.

Puberty blockers have never been 'dished out like smarties to anyone who was uncomfortable having their boobs ogled'.

They required multiple appointments over what steadily grew to become a multi-year waiting period. The number of people prescribed them each year started extremely small and despite tabloid hyperbole and fearmongering, never actually grew beyond a very low number.

You described your health as having the Sword of Damocles dangling over you. Most people in their 40s don’t feel that way. You wrote:

I'm on three different types of lifelong medication directly associated with side effects of my transition, alongside one that outright would have prevented me from being able to pursue treatment had I been on it at the time. I've a healthy dose of gallows humour regarding the sword of damocles hanging over me after 20 years of HRT, and the likelihood of life-changing implications in the decades to come.

Most 40 year olds are not on any medication, let alone three. Directly associated with your transition you said. You use gallows humour which is defined as:

grim or ironic humour in a desperate or hopeless situation.

I appreciate there is a desire to pretend everything is rosy after doctors hormonally altered your body for decades, but you have disclosed too much truth for anyone to believe you.

I have first hand experience of puberty blockers being offered to children at their first appointment. Gender clinics now argue that this is ok, because children come to the clinics already having “thought a lot” about the process and they turn up ready to start medical transition.

And they are given at Tanner stage 2 now.

Both of these things mean your experience cannot be used as a template for what happens now, and that’s without even getting to your current health problems.

get real. Hannah barnes gives chapter and verse how freely these were given out after the most cursory explorations of co morbidities. The multi year waiting period is only a reflection of waiting lists exponentially growing due to social contagion.

Oh dear. And Hatched wonders why we continue to point out the massive disconnect in their posts. It is like there is two realities depending on which narrative is needed. The one to pull sympathy or the one to brag about how successful they are.

Neither of these realities should be anywhere near children and young people giving any advice. Because their own situation, in their very own words, is nothing like the situation the majority of children and young people now needing advice. Because a MALE person with slow puberty is nothing like a FEMALE person at all. Nor like the majority of even male children seeking advice. But apparently, some irresponsible group allows this person access to children to give advice.

And this poster continues to show they have no fucking idea of the current situation. They keep denying that children were being prescribed hormones with so little treatment. They have no fucking idea that their own potentially irresponsible advice could mean a child can even go private and we all know private clinics are notorious. Patients don’t even have to be in person appointments, they can be on camera. And the expose showed that parents can be bypassed even by Gender GP.

This is how fucking dangerous it is to reject reality and cling to a falsehood as truth. Falsehoods of ‘it never happens’ become a defensive mantra that shows some posters to either be hideously out of touch with what is actually occurring. Or that they just don’t care.

Why would any adult be so lacking in curiosity that they would continue to deny what has been reported in court, in government sponsored reviews and by anecdote after anecdote? One who is so focused on their own story to the detriment and harm of those this person advises. One who gets direct acclaim for centring themselves.

In all aspects, one who a responsible group taking their safeguarding responsibilities properly would not allow such a person to advise anyone. Not even adults.

Because why would someone who consistently denies the truth about the treatments they advocate for and denies how the system let so many patients down to prop up their own story instead, be considered an ‘elder’ and someone who should be anywhere near vulnerable people?

Oh, well, if its just a 'low number' of children being sterilised and put on the path to a lifetime of medication, risky surgery and potential health problems to try and address dysphoria, with a dearth if evidence that this drastic treatment is actually successful, that's fine.

So, your previous posts should be ignored then? Because both situations cannot be true. Which is it? Do we believe the previous posts or this one?

I think readers have enough to go on by now to draw their own conclusions.

It's doesn't matter if it was even only one or two children.

Children and parents of children who support the idea they can and should change sex think they're like smarties.

It's in popular culture. A big American tv series a few years ago had a female teen character who was scoring pbs off one of the other characters.

There's hundreds of law suits against Lupron for adult applications for harm, and they were given to children??

The whole concept of their use needs to be taken back to only ever in exceptional circumstances for hormonal cancers in adults, and even then only when nhs predict scores show measurable benefit.

From what I can tell their use in precocious puberty is controversial, and can lead to many endocrine disorders, but at least these children move onto correct sex puberty for the cells of their body.

Also, the lay individual doesn't often fully understand or weigh the impact of treatments for many diseases.

Hannah Fry did an excellent programme looking at the actual effectiveness of cancer treatments on diseases. Notably a woman being counselled off chemotherapy. In her case the actual impact of the chemo on her likely hood of death after 5-10 years was very small in real terms - it often is. Reoccurrence is different and may matter more to people. But she fully believed in the treatment. Fry felt she didn't really appreciate that it may not make much difference.

In that situation you'll take what ever and what ever side effects. Plus for cancer there's so many charities there to support practically.

For PBs for trans there's also a massive online cheerleading community. There's YouTube videos, TikToks, Instagrams.

Because kids could get them on the nhs, more wanted them and believed there must be a reason why they're offered.

It needs to be a hard no. A firm line. And from the nhs, a well respected healthcare service.

The very fact that 80-90 % of children desist is clear proof that pbs (which do not 'pause' puberty) are absolutely the wrong treatment to give children confused about sex and gender stereotypes.

And considering it is trans people themselves using terms like ‘titty skittles’ all over the internet, the ‘handing out like smarties’ is very apt.

The term ‘titty skittles’ is used so much that my 14 year old, at the time, proudly told me what the term means. What 14 year old should know that terminology ? But when grown arsed adult males called their supposedly life saving drugs this, and children also know the terms bottom and top surgeries without understanding the life limiting and life shortening aspects of these terms, we are supposed to believe that children attending clinics understand the seriousness of these treatments? When they hear the constant diminishing of the treatments seriousness? And these adult life long medical patients who otherwise would have healthy bodies think it is appropriate for children to hold the belief these treatments are necessary and life saving because that is the mantra now attached to them?

But apparently, trans health is well controlled and well respected. Fuck, it is grim. Absolutely fucking grim.

I don't have 'a multitude' of health problems

I appreciate that there is a desire to find ways to undermine the narrative I've presented of a happy positive treatment outcome so that you don't have to acknowledge it

You said:

"When you spend a lifetime in a well of almost complete, crushing isolation, unable to speak to anyone other than medical gatekeepers who are perpetually looking for excuses to shut off your medication and delay your treatment pathway, then silence becomes a part of who you are."

I'm healthier than most of the people I know at my age.

According to your posts you're late thirties, early forties!!

You must know that most people that age aren't living a life of silence and crushing isolation, seeing only medical professionals, Butterfly.

Painting this as a 'happy and positive treatment outcome' is bloody irresponsible. Stop it.

Yes Hell, that's shocking that not only does a drug so potent that those HCPs handling it must make sure they're not going to get pregnant within a certain time frame afterwards, has slang, also that 14 yr olds can describe the slang.

It's doesn't matter if it was even only one or two children.

Worldwide, thousands of children have had their puberty blocked and gone onto wrong sex hormones, when you add up all the clinics.

but I'm afraid I'm one of those annoying people who is able to demonstrate that this treatment is safe and effective when used to help people who need it.

A single case study of a self-reported successful transition demonstrates absolutely nothing about the safety and effectiveness of medical transition as a “treatment”. Sadly though, this is about the level of evidence available.

This Cognitive Dissonance is astonishing. But also unsurprising.

A woman in her late thirties/early fourties will typically only see a midwife/ doctor during pregnancy. She won't generally have much cause to see a doctor unless she has a chronic condition. (You don't generally see a doctor for birth control). Certainly not for physical issues. Pregnancy is generally seen as an access point to women to give them all kinds of other lifestyle advice about their health for a reason - because most haven't had this contact point with HCP before.

Being trans is effectively a chronic condition in practice. But one that's by choice. And yes it is choice if you have surgery. If you say it's not a choice that raises various problematic conversations about consent and capacity - consent is about being free and able enough to make decisions in a fully informed environment without duress. Especially in the absence of actual evidence that it improves quality of life.

The placebo effect definitely stalks these posts with significant influence and is hard to ignore. It jumps out on you.

It's rather like someone going on about the virtues of something like homeopathy whilst saying if they don't have it they will die, whilst also saying they have dreadful side effects - like a limb hanging off.

It's just utter nonsense and only serves to demonstrate issues of 'medicine by anecdotes' rather than a robust reputable longitudinal medical study in this area.

The fact that someone spouting this nonsense can't see it, speaks volumes about their level of understanding of medicine and research. What they say should be treated accordingly as totally unreliable. It does, again, raise massive questions about consent and capacity to consent and huge questions about the cult like belief system that is pinning the whole damn quackery together.

The placebo effect definitely stalks these posts with significant influence and is hard to ignore. It jumps out on you.

Good article on placebo effect with “gender affirming” care.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9886596/

"But I'm afraid I'm one of those annoying people who says they understand medicine and research but then spouts anecdotes which are full of inconsistencies and completely contradictory because I'm so desperate to prove my ideological point. It is impossible for me to conceive of harm to others in the process of this, because my entire universe centres on me. Who cares if 99 people out of 100 are harmed to so degree along the road from teenager to adult by trans ideology as long as I'm the annoying one 'it works for'. I then get to eulogise to women about how I'm now a woman too regardless of how this may harm women. Bonza. I'm afraid I'm one of those annoying people who thinks I'm a whole lot cleverer than I am and that no one will see through this. I say I understand medicine and research and then manage to undermine my point in the next sentence by talking about how I am the exception to the huge amount of side effects that proves that it works. Whilst also saying how medicalisation has been such a traumatic ongoing experience. I do all this with a straight face not realising that I sound like an actual drug addict hooked who says they are fine while they actively looking for their next fix. I am on of those annoying people who evangelises about my beliefs and how it will improve the lives of someone many others, whilst I deliberately disregard the impacts on others because 'hell I'm alright jack' and I refuse to acknowledge how cult leaders do the same for their own benefits because others are there to serve their interests and their faith with a total disregard for the harm it does for followers of lower status"

The level of narcissism you have to be at this stage is off the scale.

Sometimes reported as successful.

Perhaps it depends on how someone defines 'successful'.

I watched a YouTube last week of a male who was highly disturbed as a child, suicidal at 8, enormously anxious etc. Given puberty blockers, hormones, etc. In their twenties passed as a woman, albeit a very large one.

The depression and suicidality had continued. So this person was then 'coming out' as trans in an attempt to try and assuage the suffering.

All that effort and treatment to address dysphoria had not worked, despite successfully 'passing'. So the next thing to try was apparently being honest about their sex.

This was 2017. Did it help? Who knows - they have since deleted all social media.

*By harms I also include parental alienation and emotional distress to teenagers who get caught up in the ideology at school through social transition as a form of self harm even though they later detransition and never medicate.

Precisely.

This drug should never have been conceived of being given to any child anywhere for what is at its core aesthetic body modification.

Thanks for the thread bump.
Recent posts from Butters are a classic example of how self interest renders some completely oblivious to the need to protect and safeguard children. I know that Butters has previously told of having a role in influencing children. We see this repeatedly. Self invested adults being allowed to gaslight children into ignoring the physical and mental harm of pbs and transitioning, with a catastrophic impact on their mental and physical health.

Aren't titty skittles cross-sex hormones, not PBs? Oestrogen that causes breast growth in males?