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?

First I'd like to see an enormous study into what puberty actually does to the brain, intellect, emotions, abilities etc. Once they understand those things fully they can understand what deviations blockers produce. Otherwise it's just all so superficial.

Where have the former Tavistock patients gone? I get that the Tavi didn't bother collecting or keeping data, or they've hidden or lost the data - I can only conclude because it didn't give the "correct" answers, or that they just didn't care. But the actual people should still be around - could they be linked back to their patient records, if they came forward?

Is this an issue with giving people new NHS numbers and lots of name changes?

I don't think we should be assuming that a two year time limit is designed to demonstrate happiness, TBH. Yes, we absolutely need longitudinal studies so that we have evidence of what happens 10, 20, 30 years post treatment. But the short term negative effects of gnrh analogues are pretty unpleasant. It requires a regular deep muscle injection which is painful enough as an adult, never mind as a child. Headaches, joint pain, bone pain, insomnia, hair loss, night sweats. The first time I was put on them, when my hormone levels tanked (which took about 3 weeks), I spent several hours hiding under the duvet because I could see teeth climbing out of the walls. They make you feel absolutely rubbish. So I'm not convinced that a child who is on them will say they feel happy if regularly assessed over a two year period.

If they can prove negative effects in a two year study, that gives a much quicker pathway to banning them for this cohort in all circumstances. What does worry me is that children will continue to be told that it doesn't matter how they feel on these drugs because as soon as they take cross sex hormones they'll feel better. Which begs the question, I suppose, of whether or not children (and parents) consented to cross sex hormones in an attempt to escape the misery of gnrh analogues.

They would also need a control group who were given a placebo to compare with the group given gnrh analogues, because it's likely that children who have been groomed online to believe that this medical pathway will solve all their problems will see some uplift in mood, at least at the beginning, due to the simple fact that they've started. I also wonder (just as an aside) what impact it would have if children and parents were told that they were not allowed to post about any of their treatment online.

It's also a sign that some very bad people are powerful enough to dictate how we mistreat mentally unwell children.

Not necessarily mentally unwell.

Transgenderism pathologises a perfectly normal response. Puberty can be miserable and confusing. Wanting escape, and to feel untouchable, are rational responses to sexual abuse. Social confusion and wanting to find somewhere you feel you fit are rational responses for an autistic person.

Fair point - I should have said "mentally vulnerable".

God this is so bloody unneccessary, a waste of money and is going to cause more problems than it actually solves. Firstly, why couldn't they track the pp they've ALREADY given pbs to? Secondly, there is no scientifically accepted definition of
' gender dysphoria', so how can they choose the young pp who allegedly have this condition?

they'd be better off putting the resources into why do so many young pp believe that they're in the ' wrong' body, what is influencing them? It's also going to cause actual physical and psychological harm, which, in years to come, the NHS will probably be sued for.

Stupidity upon utter stupidity. Enraging, and these poor children whose lives will be ruined by this idiocy. Makes me so angry!

What the actual hell.

Is there a practical problem with this whole thing? The issue is so polarised. There must be a significant section of the medical profession who don't want any part of a trial in giving children drugs that have known harms and no evidence of benefits. And a significant section of those who do who aren't to be trusted to do so impartially as they're politically invested in blockers as a treatment.

There are huge problems with this.

Firstly, there is no definition of general dysphoria which doesn't rely heavily on gender stereotypes. So they are medicalising something which isn't a medical problem at all, although might be very distressing for some children to the extent of being a mental health condition. How can it be ethical to experiment on children with a mental health condition using drugs which are known to have serious negative effects on their physical health and for which there is no evidence of benefits for their mental health?

Secondly, the treatment requires children to give informed consent to treatment which will affect their future fertility and sexual function as adults. This is impossible. Informed consent requires them to have an adult understanding of those things, which they can only have once they are sexually mature adults, but they have to give consent while they are still sexually immature children.

Times leader article today, calling for the trial to be stopped.

“The notion that an ethical trial should be undertaken to establish the possible downsides of chemically sterilising children is as macabre as it is irrational. That research could be conducted over a long enough time-scale to establish informative results, while remaining experimentally well-controlled, is just as dubious.”

NHS puberty blockers trial would turn children into guinea pigs

https://www.thetimes.com/article/4f30b1ee-9519-41b6-a00c-89c16810af64?shareToken=feb8cd09ecef6cf0b66f190ac2d8552f

Is the whole point of proprosing a trial to show that it would actually be impossible to carry out ethically?

Agreed. It's hard to see how an ethics committee would agree to experimenting with drugs that are likely to negatively impact on the body, brain and future fertility of children. BUT we know that the NHS is the biggest source of transactivism in the work place so safeguarding children from harm may come a poor second if those on the committee prioritise sex change over child welfare

Archive of Times piece:

archive.is/zRGBN

NHS puberty blockers trial would turn children into guinea pigs

Well that's a side effect I wasn't expecting 😂😂😂

They already have been. There are tens of thousands of children who have already been put on puberty blockers around the world before this trial has even come close to being feasible. Mass experimentation on a scale never seen on children.

There is a practical problem in doing RCTs, in that patients don't cooperate with them if they are randomised to the group that isn't given meds.

Perhaps that's the issue the Tavi faced with its "lost" dataset! All makes sense now.

People have been asking what's happened to all the data about the 9,000 children "treated" by GIDs who have transferred to the adult clinics - the clinics who shamefully refused to share their data with Cass. According the Hannah Barnes it appears that the NHS, although committed to following this data up, has yet to begin to do so. Instead it's proposed to spend £10 million harming another tranche of children while failing to even start looking at all the data the dodgy adult clinics are concealing.

https://x.com/hannahsbee/status/1895905652045988151

The level of scandal in terms of causing harm to children is off the scale

If the evidence from the adults showed ANY positive results, it would have been given to Cass. You can bet it would be all over everywhere.

Yes - there's a reason they refused to share it - and I suspect a reason why NHS England has failed to insist and threaten to discipline for their lack of cooperation. Once it's revealed, the whole thing completely falls apart ( and the compensation costs will be in the billions)

In any decent trial the patients aren't told which group they are in. Although with puberty blockers it would become apparent well before the 2-year endpoint so the drop-out rate would be unmanageable.

I can't see how it would even be possible to design any kind of useful trial. Especially one that involved children. Unless they broke every rule in the book and accepted that there would be no useful data. I can't even imagine what the protocol would look like, or how one would ensure informed consent.

Only adults can give informed consent to treatment which will sterilise them and impair their sexual function.

In any decent trial the patients aren't told which group they are in. Although with puberty blockers it would become apparent well before the 2-year endpoint so the drop-out rate would be unmanageable.

Yes, I don't see how an RCT would be possible.

The usual standard is double-blind random controlled trials.

The blind bit is not possible with this treatment as the effects are obvious. This wouldn't be the first trial where that occurs. For example if administering a treatment is too onerous, or if the side effects of the potential treatment are very obvious.

The random/controlled part - might be possible, if they can find participants who are willing to participate. This is probably actually why they've said 2 years. They're not trying to get people to commit to not ever taking blockers.

The problem with the 2 years is it's just not long enough. It doesn't give children time to get used to the effects of puberty or even finish puberty (depending on the age of the cohort they're picking). It certainly doesn't give them time to reach the sort of age when many people who were determined they never wanted kids suddenly discover they do. And it doesn't give time for any long term side effects like bone density effects to really kick in. And kids who've been on blockers for two years can still be on a 'well i don't feel better yet but it's still only the first step, once I've had cross sex hormones then I'll feel like myself...' ladder.