Telegraph: Labour moves to ban puberty blockers permanently

[ResisterOfTwaddleRex]

Wes is getting it in the neck online from the TRAs. He should stand firm.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/12/labour-ban-puberty-blockers-permanently-trans-stance/

"A ban on puberty blockers could be made permanentt_ as the Labour party takes a harder stance on transgender issues, The Telegraph can reveal.
Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, intends to stop powerful hormone blockerss_ being given to children via any means, subject to the outcome of a legal hearing.
Laws to ban the blockers being supplied to children by private or off-shore clinics were passed by his predecessor, Victoria Atkins, in emergency legislation ahead of the general election.
These are due to expire on Sept 3 and the new Government has to decide whether to pass a law to make it permanent.._
It is understood that Labour will now seek to renew the ban with a view to making it permanent."

I'd definitely send her a card or a letter. I am sure she'd appreciate it.

Make sure you say you're a constituent. I'd like to write to some of these MPs but I wasn't sure if they ignore communication from people who aren't in their constituency.

I'd be delighted to have her money but sadly no - I didn't know anyone on them for periods but it was definitely a thing for height.

Are you sure your friend is remembering correctly Mayel? There was a time when tall girls were given oestrogen to try to limit growth. It may be she's remembering how it was described to her not the drug name and has made a wrong connection to things she's heard in the media re PBs.

e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1755636/

https://www.sciencenorway.no/children-and-adolescents-forskningno-medical-methods/height-as-an-infliction/1388308

Looks like it was treatment with oestrogen. That's not the same as puberty blockers, is it?

Why would a drug that helps young girls grow taller be given to girls hoping to be shorter?

Definitely the U.K., definitely for being too tall (though the girl I'm still friends with ended up tall anyway), definitely puberty blockers (according to someone who was on them). On them for just under 3 years in the case of my friend, no idea about the others.

i mean you're welcome to say it isn't true? It literally is though.

LOL! I had the same thought! 🐝

I guess that's possible - I wasn't sure if it was the same treatment so did ask but my friend said it is and described it as blocking puberty (it did also stop her periods, would oestrogen do that?).

It made quite an impression on me at the time - I was short and chubby and really wanted to be tall. Looking back on it I've always found it a terrible thing that we gave girls medication to keep them dainty.

I was wondering if a chat bot had an hallucination.
https://www.ibm.com/topics/ai-hallucinations

Puberty blockers STOP the production of oestrogen, so it would mean giving young girls massive doses of oestrogen the literal opposite of that.

I've no doubt your pals were subjected to hormone meddling, but it wasn't puberty blockers.

It is a liiiiittle weird to be accusing me of being a celebrity or a bot jsyk

If it were the case that puberty blockers were used extensively to stunt linear growth in socioeconomically privileged girls in the 1990s, those on both sides of the debate would have access to a great deal of long term evidence on the safety and effectiveness on these drugs when used in healthy girls during puberty. Or at the very least, we'd have lots of (actual) women in their forties on Mumsnet posting, "I took puberty blockers for years when I was a teenager and it didn't do me any harm/this was my experience."

Well, I'm weighing up the different possibilities. It's good to consider all the options when you read daft things on the internet.

Such confident assertions, so quickly disproved.

You know, that could be Jamill. She's a bit of a pea brain....

It's amazing isn't it? How long did the Cass report take to research and write? What are the qualifications of Cass and those involved?

All those wrong conclusions they've come to, all that time and public money, when all they needed to do was ask a random MNetter. Bone density and IQ stuff.... well Cass was clearly just worrying over nothing.

There are some references to reduced height growth in PB literature, so it's not completely silly. At least in the short term girls falling behind their peers who are going through pubertal growth spurts. They don't sound like much is known about the impact on ultimate height though, so it would seem unlikely it was historically given for that purpose. Unless you had a rogue local GP with a bee in their bonnet and this wasn't a general thing at all.

Oestrogen sounds more likely, plenty of references to attempts to limit height with oestrogen. I'm not an expert, but messing with hormones could well have an effect on periods depending on exactly what was given when. As you say, not a comfortable idea that doctors would mess with healthy children for aesthetic reasons.

On one hand, the 388 page Cass report.
On the other hand, 'It literally is though.'

Looking back on it I've always found it a terrible thing that we gave girls medication to keep them dainty.

You found this terrible (quite rightly) yet you question why we're making such a 'fuss' about giving puberty blockers to healthy children? Strange.

I think the posters friend has probably misunderstood how the "treatment" she received actually differs from puberty blockers. Leaping to conclusions is so much quicker than proper research.

😂

It’s very effective derailing, though, to make an unsubstantiated claim of this sort, based on anecdote, or completely fabricated, and displaying a lack of understanding of either the subject or the context, in order to keep people occupied in countering it.

The mistake is in supposing that the post is in any sort of good faith.

I'm now thinking about the handful of GPs I knew in the 1990s who did some private practice, and wondering how surprised I'd be if I discovered that concerned parents of tall daughters had been beating a path to their doors to get special daintiness injections. Maybe there was a social contagion going on under my nose and as the short parent of short daughters and as someone who only worked in the NHS I was unaware of it.

Heads off in search of Mumsnet Conspiracy Theorists group.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2598084/ PPS who mentioned oestrogen seem to be correct. I've never heard of this before. Looks like a combination of oestrogen and progesterone were also used. It's fascinating that these were prescribed privately in the 1990s. I presume it has been misinterpreted as a puberty blocker because the girls' periods stopped.

An article from 2017 that I'm sure most of us have read, but I'm reposting just in case anyone hasn't read it yet. We have known about the awful side effects of this class of drugs for a long time.

www.statnews.com/2017/02/02/lupron-puberty-children-health-problems/

Pixieland by the sound of it.