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

PS - and a totally separate topic - I can't find the pp who mentioned precocious puberty but yes, it can happen REALLY young (like 2yo) in unfortunate endocrine disorders
This comes under actual medical need 🤷🏻‍♀️

Fab will listen later

Omg on BBC news!

I'm not convinced. This is woolly wording. What does it mean in practice?

In legitimising and formalising this as an experimental treatment it changes the legal liabilities for the NHS in the future.

Imagine the next Keira Bell. They won't have the potential recourse to sue the NHS. Those hundred already prescribed potentially still have.

Whether this means the change is in the best interests of these kids depends very much on your perspective.

I can easily see more than 100 children being taken on in a trial and this INCREASING not decreasing the numbers on puberty blockers with the defense of experimental now being in place.

I am cautiously thrilled (even though, like some other posters, I thought this had been announced last year).

I wonder whether and how this might impact on proposals to ban conversion therapies? Or is that too much to hope?

We now are being told that children WILL be prescribed puberty blockers, but only part of research. We aren't being told how many children this will involve,

I actually thought they had announced a while ago that they'd do a study on around 100 children as part of research.

Was it linked to Cass? Or when the Tavistock was closing?

The timing is interesting; WPATH files released and the gender questioning children consultation ends today.....

This will be huge all over the world.

Long overdue. Let's hope the tide is starting to turn on this GC nonsense

Until I see firm guidelines on how safeguarding has been a) recognised properly b ) improved from where it currently is I'm not celebrating.

Has anywhere else reversed on this I wonder

“Interesting” editorial by two people who have no background in medical research or prescribing.

It's mixed emotions isn't it?
So many children harmed by this ideology. Stating that pbs are no longer to be prescribed unless as part of a trial is I presume a sop to the extreme transactivists who spend so much time interfering with child healthcare?

We all know that no trial will be able to sanction sterilising children let alone all the other damage that happens to their growing bodies. But there are thousands of children caught up in this who would be cast adrift by an outright ban. And cynically, the NHS will also have an eye on all the damages they'll have to pay out if they admit to how damaging pbs are? .

Listened back to PM and it was great - Evan D was spluttering a bit, and really didn't like it when Dr Bell corrected him - twice! - for saying 'trans kids.
Now to see what the 6 o'clock news is saying!

I did think the juxtaposition with the Diane Abbot story, where the word 'gender' kept being (wrongly) used, illustrated the need for clear language quite nicely.

I had an operation at the end of the summer and had the luxury of seeing how the Russel Brand thing broke across news outlets and the bbc while I recovered.

It was very well orchestrated, and even timing it to an exclusive interview with one witness (the child who had been taken to his home by bbc chauffeur), the return from maternity leave of Emma Barnett and also the bbc announcement that they had revised whistleblower rules to give more protection to victims and make no disclosure contacts impossible.

I would not be surprised if there is a number of things going on behind the scenes which will slowly come out over the next year.

So glad they had Dr Bell for that.

BBC 6 o'clock news begrudgingly mentioned it. Had I not seen twitter/m'net I would have probably missed the brief mention.

Did I see somewhere that the Cass report is expect in April? The team really does need to do something before the next election!

It's quite possible that before 'research' is attempted there will be a meta analysis of what's already been done and it will be deemed too dangerous.

The informed consent process would be immense. And hopefully put people off.

I’ve been looking at reactions on social.

India W is encouraging kids to get blockers privately (through Gender GP?) & their parents to sue the NHS.
Mermaids are ‘deeply disappointed.’ Stonewall are still claiming that blockers are safe & reversible, & have a list of groups for distressed trans kids to reach out to - which interestingly doesn’t include Mermaids.
LOJ doesn’t seem to have noticed yet. Unless he’s having apoplexy.

All that is quite encouraging.

GC nonsense? A typo perhaps, did you mean GI (Gender Identity)?

Thanks I needed cheering up.

@RedToothBrush

If I am correct a clinical trial should be abandoned once there is statistically powerful enough evidence of manifest harm.

If a drug Is being trialled and it immediately obvious from phase 1 it harms people then the trial is abandoned. Surely the same thoughts lie with pb? (or I hope so)

My hope is a clinical trial will unambiguously demonstrate the dangers in an empirical sense and stop pb prescription once and for all

I think that the guinea pigs will still be experimented on, however no new children will be in the future

The clinical experiment part will gather hard data ( unlike the Tavistock ) and over the coming years that data will be studied.
What happens before, during and after will all be collected.
The longer it continues the more data it will gather.
Actual real science will be done. The healthcare for trans identifying people will be continually reviewed and refined to provide ever better results for the individuals.
It's even possible that the study will show that for SOME people sexual reassignment is the best option. But it will be based on science and not religion. The results will have an effect outside of the United Kingdom as the data will be studied worldwide.
No debate is over, science will take it from here, fanatical religion has lost. The harm to young people will stop. Not all at once, but it's now inexorably heading down the unstoppable path of data over woowoo.

That's what I'm thinking; Any 'research' on puberty blockers will be akin to doing a trial of thalidomide on pregnant women, now, in 2024.

I'm assuming the study will be done on children who are currently on PBs or who were prescribed them in the past.

Can TwiX users get a community note (is that right?) appended to IW's twit?