Puberty Blockers Trial

[Cismyfatarse]

NHS to launch £10.7 million trial of puberty blockers

www.thetimes.com/article/1a43ff7e-3929-4d78-9ac4-7490b5cc2e2e?shareToken=14e04db1b508819178c480124574cb9b

I really, really hope they are not going ahead with this. I have only skim read the article. But can you trial something where there is evidence of harm?

I wonder where this will go. Remember James Esses and Keira Bell have their legal challenge against this (apparently already paid for )

Telegraph article

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/27/nhs-puberty-blocker-trial-to-monitor-children-for-two-years/

https://archive.ph/5oS7Q

Sounds very worrying, but also as though it hasn't got ethical approval yet.

Not like the NHS doesn't have more pressing needs. FFS.

Oh for FUCKS sake.

Fucking child abuse.

Puberty blockers were ‘indefinitely’ banned across the UK last year for children identifying as transgender, due to fears they are unsafe and harm development

What a ridiculous statement.

Of course they harm development. That's their function. Puberty blockers stop puberty so that a child's development is halted. Surely nobody can be surprised that a child's development stops when the child takes puberty blockers.

Although a lot of otherwise rational people seem to lose their minds when the word trans is mentioned.

Of course they harm development. That's their function. Puberty blockers stop puberty so that a child's development is halted. Surely nobody can be surprised that a child's development stops when the child takes puberty blockers.
Although a lot of otherwise rational people seem to lose their minds when the word trans is mentioned
Yup. This.

"Cass welcomed the new trial, saying it “aims to fill some of the gaps in our knowledge about the outcomes of different interventions and address some of the uncertainty about the impacts and efficacy of puberty-suppressing hormones”."
Why can't they trace and follow up all the Tavistock patients instead?!

“If we accept that puberty blockers were an experiment that failed many many children, how can we justify conducting a trial when we know that a significant number of children will be harmed?”, he asked.
“There are a number of reasons why it is unethical. Once children are started on puberty blockers it’s extremely hard for them to come off them. By starting puberty blockers children are in effect being put on a medical pathway to gender transition which will include, for many, progression to surgery.
“The prescribing of puberty blockers introduces physical harms to a physically healthy child. There is significant evidence that puberty blockers seriously impact on bone density.”

I could not agree more. This is wrong. These people will be on the wrong side of history.

What’s worse is the trial will only follow these children up for two years which is wholly inadequate given the longterm impacts of these drugs on sexual function, fertility, bone density etc. Most children are started on these age 10-11.

Hannah Barnes has written about the Pathways study as well:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/society/2025/02/the-new-puberty-blockers-trial-is-expensive-and-adds-little

https://archive.is/ywTk9

"But it is difficult to see, from the information we have, how this research will add to our current knowledge. Just like the existing low-quality studies that have been so roundly criticised, Pathways aims only to “Build the evidence base on the (short and medium-term) benefits and risks” of using puberty blockers. But the Cass Review identified how we do not know the long-term impact of the drugs: on neurocognitive development, psychosexual development or longer-term bone health. This is what led to NHS England ending the routine prescription of puberty blockers. It seems unlikely that any of these gaps in the evidence-base will be filled by the planned 2025 study. It seems to want to inform “any longer-term follow-up studies.” But why not do that work now?

It should be possible to answer some of the unknowns. But there have been unnecessary roadblocks. Research commissioned by the Cass Review tried to find out what had happened to around 9,000 children who had been seen at Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) – but the service itself failed to follow up any of its patients during its 35-year history. According to several freedom of information requests, up to 2,000 children may have been referred for puberty blockers during that time. The research would have helped “develop a stronger evidence base about the types of support and interventions received and longer-term outcomes”, Cass wrote, but it was “thwarted by a lack of cooperation from the adult gender services”.

To make matters worse, NHSE – having now taken on responsibility for doing this research – does not even have the required permission to even request the data from the adult clinics. In 2022, the Conservative government changed the law to make it possible for adult gender clinics to share all medical data with a small group of researchers working with the Cass Review. There seems to be a similar lack of any progress for a number of Cass’s recommendations: research does not appear to have begun on evaluating the outcomes of either talking therapy or masculinising and feminising hormones; services for 17-25 year olds have not been established, and nor has any new provision for those considering detransition."

FFS. I hope the government and NHS are putting some money aside for all the legal cases coming their way in under a decade.

This comment from Helen Joyce sums up what they're doing.

“It’s as if the NHS was planning a trial of lobotomies long after concerns first started to be raised — in fact, even worse because the test subjects are children. It seems that £10 million of public money is going to be spent on this unethical experiment.”

And has anyone yet stated clearly what the condition is that they're trying to treat?

What is gender dysphoria? Why does anyone think that the solution to a mentally distressing condition is to destroy a child's physically healthy body?

Very much this. 👆

Lobotomies and their history have lessons to teach us. McCabe describes the Oedipus Trap. A situation where it would be so psychologically devastating to discover that you’d made a mistake, no matter how well-intended, that would do everything in power to avoid recognising it.

This would all be rather touching if it weren’t taken from “The Lobotomist,” Jack El-Hai’s biography of Freeman, who was America’s foremost practitioner of the procedure. The patients he visited were people whose brains he had mutilated — inserting a “picklike instrument” through the eye socket, piercing the thin bone, and jamming it into the delicate tissue of the prefrontal lobes, leaving permanent scars on the very seat of personality and consciousness.
Today, we rightly view this procedure with horror. Even within Freeman’s lifetime, it fell into disrepute, a fact of which Freeman seems to have been acutely conscious. He must have hoped that he could find evidence for lobotomy’s benefits, enough to salvage his legacy."
**
I can’t help feeling sad for that broken old man, at the end riddled with cancer and missing a significant chunk of his colon, yet still clinging to the wheel of his camper bus as though one more mile, one more case history, might somehow turn an atrocity into a triumph. In his desperation to become a medical hero, he had become a hero out of Greek tragedy: consigned to ignominy by his own hubris, and doomed to struggle against a fate that was inevitable.

https://archive.ph/HjXYo

Well the legal profession will be licking its lips.

Puberty Blockers thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5057269-5057269-puberty-blockers-how-exactly-did-we-get-here?

So, 2 years so that they can track the 'euphoria' but too soon to track actual damage and harm.

Such a bunch of utter [redacteds].

This was my first thought too.

They should put more effort into tracking down former Tavistock patients.

OldCrone I know you and I are on the same page on this and this is an absolutely vital question that we often ask that no one ever answers. It’s often taken as a given that there’s a condition to treat, the only argument is about how best to do it.

But it is absolutely not clear what is being treated, particularly in children. The diagnostic criteria in children rely on stereotypes. What is being treated is not even close to being clearly defined, and that should be the first thing determined in a clinical trial.

In some ways, lobotomy makes more sense.

“There is distress in the brain. Let’s try surgically altering those connections to see if it impacts the brain.”

It’s a lot more logical than “a child prefers society’s stereotypes consistent with the opposite sex, and wants their body to match. Let’s prevent their body going through puberty to start with.”

NIHR funding award information. .

https://fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk/award/NIHR167530

The legislation to allow clinics to share data with trhe Cass reviewers is clearly insufficient. They need to amend it to compel sharing, and analyse that throughly before even thinking of starting any new trials.

There's poor data on short term effects. But there's virtually none on long term effects - so following up existing patients will be most effective at filling the larger gap, as well as being the most ethical option.

So it's not yet got ethical approval? I'm genuinely gutted and horrified by the two year framing. Surely they must know that's not enough.

The Cass review left the way open for this because of it's underlying belief that gender incongrunence is genuine diagnosis and there are a subset of children who could benefit from medical transition.

If that's your position then question is how would you identity who those children are.

To suggest the answer is: give all the confused children part of a mass social contagion harmful drugs and see which ones feel better seems an egregiously stupid methodology for scientists to come up with.

The methodology doesn't make sense even if you accepted the premise.

Which I don't.

Our Duty response: https://ourduty.group/2025/02/27/nihr-pathways-a-misguided-use-of-10m/

Are they well known stakeholders?

10 million - suppressing healthy children's puberty, for an imaginary condition where autistic children play dress up as the opposite sex because they've been groomed by the internet, friend groups and institutions to think people can be born in the wrong body.

This is just child abuse by the NHS.