Puberty Suppressing Hormones, House of Commons, Wes Streeting taking a firm and intelligent stand

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Wes Streeting is doing a good job of calmly holding his own in Parliament on this issue of puberty blockers being banned pending a trial.

Some MPs have been standing up and speaking about ‘trans kids’ and suicide and so on, and how young people currently taking puberty blockers will source drugs from other sources as they will be left so desperate. Certain MPs have shown no inkling of the wider issues concerning gender dysphoria among troubled young people.

WS read out report saying that suicide figures of trans people were skewed, and reporting of it dangerous.

Others have seemed to be more aware. Sir John Hayes has brought up those who were vilified for whistleblowing such as Kathleen Stock, the lives ruined by the Tavistock and how it could have happened? WS has just paid tribute to Hannah Barnes. Women’s concerns.

“I am very disappointed in behalf of our trans children….” Vikki Slade. She says there is no information on suicides for those on a gender waiting list. WS says all child deaths are monitored and reviewed.

Jim Allister asking about parental consent and age for the puberty blocker trial. WS ethical concerns are being taken very seriously.

“A breach of young people’s human rights” Carla Denyer (Green).

Robin Swann County Antrim asking about closing access to puberty blockers through loopholes.

Anyway, it is worth hearing WS. It seems to be the first time someone from Labour, who is allowed to speak, has seemed to have a depth of understanding about gender issues. He also speaks lucidly and with nuance.

I don’t know if he is just very clever, but in the end slippery, or actually someone who will make a difference for the better but was impressed.

Yes, they are at odds aren’t they?

Is he riding two horses or trying to be tactful with those who feel that blocking puberty blockers is an attack on trans people ( instead of about the protection if minors)?

The paper he refers to in regard to the unsubstantiated suicide claims, WS said was written last July by Professor Louis Appleby.

I'm not sure what his true intentions were but he didn't half look irritated and fed up with some of the (clearly stupid) questions.

He may well have been advised (and did mention it a few times) that this announcement was going to mentally affect young people (and parents) who truly believe in them,

And so his speech may well have been over egged around holistic care etc.

It was a shame that it no point did anyone say "they were never truly legally allowed in the first place."

Currently watching my way through the statement to the House, and so far I’ve got the impression from some of the MPs asking questions that they believe the clinical trial will obviously produce results in favour of prescribing puberty blockers for gender incongruence and that they just want the trial out of the way as soon as possible.

Everyone talking about ‘building an evidence base’ seems to mean evidence in favour of blockers, they don’t seem to be considering that the findings might be negative.

I did like the (very nervous sounding) Labour MP who asked if Streeting could investigate how the NHS began prescribing PBs without doing proper research beforehand - he made an excellent point that prescribing what is considered to be a panacea doesn’t always work out in hindsight.

I thought the tone of the debate was much more measured than in the past but too many MPs were virtue signalling with their questions (catastrophising statements and all) rather than taking a curious and cautious approach as to how the NHS has got itself into this situation.

I would need to go back and watch it again, but it’s possible to both acknowledge that the trans community - for want of a better expression - are indeed at the less desirable end of the mental health spectrum, with the attendant risk of suicide, and make it clear that the suicide rhetoric is reprehensible.
Gender dysphoria seems to coexist with other MH conditions that put individuals at risk, but it’s the underlying poor mental health that increases both the suicide risk and the gender dysphoria - no causal link between the two. I thought he was treading a very fine line, or trying to.

It'll be interesting double think for Labour to support a clinical trial of drugs they have described as a scandal. I wonder if ongoing medical negligence cases in the USA will have a bearing on the feasibility of a clinical trial. I predict that in about in 10 years time there will be a flurry of publications comparing the puberty blocker era to frontal lobotomies - and not favourably.

That is true Born

Hadn't got that far utopia. Good for him.

Certainly the general discussion seems to be that a trial will be favoured.

There seems to have been zero homework done by any of them. It's bonkers

I know MPs are busy people but the knowledge level among the MPs was not impressive. Some of them were making statements with out of date information and some were making statements with info that seemed to have been given to them by lobbying orgs. The discussion in the HoC feels behind the times considering how the discussion has moved on in the wider world. The public seem to be ahead of their representatives on this (and other) issues.

Have none of these MPs thought to read widely on this important subject?

Good stuff. I'm glad this Labour Government are focused on harm reduction and safeguarding children.

This is what I was struck by. Many of the MPs seemed clueless about what the issues and questions are.

Unfortunately clearly not all the MPs in the government are focused on this at all except in thinking it is puberty blockers themselves that would reduce harm.

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/65702/1/young-trans-activists-trans-kids-deserve-better-wes-streeting-office
Looks like at least one of the 🦊 killer's trans kids was camping outside Streetings office last night.

I’ve heard of free range kids but that’s frankly ridiculously lax parenting.

Climbing up & down the building to hang a banner, fortunately not as high as the DfE building she did this to at their previous camping trip

These are from the group's Instagram

MPs sometimes live in a very small bubble on some of these issues which I hope be can prick and expose them to better and wider ideas but at least Wes Streeting is trying.

There really is a ‘house style’ used by all these genderist groups in which words like ‘love’ and ‘joy’ don’t have their generally accepted meaning 🤷‍♀️

What melodrama. The coffins.

They really seem to have been brainwashed by trans activism.

“Wes Streeting has stabbed the LGBTQA+ community in the back”. The statement does not even make sense. Why does an A
a +, an L B or G need puberty blockers?

They've been leaving tiny coffins outside that office since the summer. There was much drama when they saw some of them in the recycling bins. Not sure what else they expected Wes to do with them.

The wording of "access to" is very descriptive. It is a parallel to "access to clean water", "access to education" etc which are about completely different topics.

The baseline should be that no medication is necessary. Most medication has negative or harmful side effects; they are prescribed despite the side effects because the positive outcomes are (or should be) worth the side effects and (longtime) risks. For a lot of drugs, the risks and side effects are cumulative, the longer they are taken, but a lot of diseases are short term and to an informed person usually a temporary intake is acceptable for the outcome.

Also the blockers given to children who actually suffer from too early puberty have the exact opposite intention of them being given to gender-dysphoric children.
Given to 7 year olds, the intent is for the child and later youth to go through puberty, but at the age-appropriate time, as a too early puberty is not in line with the rest of their development.

From the article:
"In addition, research published in 2021 by the NHS Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) found that the majority of transgender teenagers who take puberty blockers to treat severe gender dysphoria feel happier, and that 98 per cent of the young people continued on to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) once puberty-blocking treatment stopped at the age of 16."

They've just thrown down their own arguments:
"feeling happier" - nice outcome, but at what price? AD or psychotherapy could have the same effects, without sterilising people. And teenagers are unhappy about a lot of things, with good reason. Young people are also unhappy about the state of the world but there's no drugs for that.
"moving on to cross-sex hormones" - refutes the "time to think" argument

And then the next steps are probably about their "agonizing attempts to have a family and the trauma of their surrogacy journey" which will make them very unhappy again.

PS: Sorry, didn't realize the original links from the Dazed article would be transferred...

It's also worth noting that using puberty blockers to treat precocious puberty in girls is still relatively controversial and Lupron is subject to a class action lawsuit in the US alleging that it caused necrosis (death) of jaw bone amongst other side effects. So not all doctors would agree with the claim that they are safe full stop.
They are used for prostate cancer but again significant side effects, and for the chemical castration of paedophiles (not sure how common that is but definitely happens- with consent of the male offender).

Yes, as some people feel that it is discriminatory that puberty blockers have been stopped for gender dysphoric children pending a trial, maybe it is time those drugs being considered started to be actually named in the same way they are for non gender related use. In relation to discussing the care of boys wanting to appear to be girls, for example, actually call them ‘chemical castration. Maybe then this treatment would not seem so life affirming to MPs.

Watching Wes Streeting's announcement again yesterday, it definitely seems as if his sesnisble, pragmatic brain; and his desire to be a good and professional Health Minister - is taking the lead over the side of him which has a residual emotional attachment to trans ideology and the belief in 'trans children'.

His little speech at the end about " I know what it is like to be able to come out and be your true self...." felt very much at odds with his initial pronouncement, and the two MPs sat on either side of him, nodding more or less vigorously to each announcement ( nodding especially hard when he talked about being 'true self') looked like the light of consciousness was perhaps finally beginning to disturb their elongated slumber and/or disinterest).

Streeting still wants to be warm and cosy with MPs like Nadia Whittome and Stella Creasy, and so was throwing them a few affirmations,and one of those affirmations seemed to be the suggestion that the upcoming trials would offer some confirmation that puberty blockers were a good thing.

Thankfully his desire to do a good job is taking precedent. He's definitely at the stage of waking up to the cognitive dissonance.......but is not fully there yet.