Why the NHS puberty blocker trial is appalling

[Soontobe60]

Stella O’Malley from Genspect telling it like it is - that a state endorsed trial of puberty blockers for gender dysphoric children should NOT go ahead.
the NHS are not walking into this nightmare blindly - there are enough experts out there telling them what will happen happen to these children if they’re given these life changing drugs.
https://x.com/genspect/status/1989896741358113127?s=61&t=gKvvk-rWmOlYFGMZN8QVvQ

Not to mention the obvious and horrible question : let's be curious about the potential future dating pool of those females, because it will matter to them, and what kind of a person would be sexually interested in an adult with a pre pubertal body and a very limited capacity for arousal.

The question I never seem to find an answer to is if preventing puberty stops their body maturing, what does it do to their mind? Do they still have the maturity of a 10-year-old when they're a chronological adult?

There seems to be some evidence that stopping the natural process of puberty negatively impacts on brain development? But presumably this is what all those advocating for this want:
"Let's see whether puberty blockers will keep this child's mind at the level of a child / teenager as they grow to adulthood? How exciting to finally find out"

Ugh, you're right.

@OpheliaWitchoftheWoods And when a prepubescent person reaches adulthood with a child's physiology, they will presumably no longer have the protection of laws which automatically deem it illegal to have sex with a child, although they still retain that body.

And possibly that mind?

This is an article written by a man who naturally didn’t go through puberty (due to a medical issue):

https://genspect.org/frozen-in-time-when-puberty-doesnt-happen/

“What I’ve learned since is that when the adolescent brain is starved of sex hormones during the critical window, the damage is permanent. Autism is five times more common in people like me, ADHD several times higher, and severe intellectual disability nearly eighteen times more likely. A quarter of us never become sexually active, and three-quarters of us never have children. Executive function, attention, and processing speed are all measurably lower. I live with ADHD and learning disabilities that no amount of therapy will ever fix.”

So, in answer to the questions above, even though his medical problem was eventually identified, and, at 15, he was given exogenous hormones, he never caught up with his peers.

I have seen videos of him speaking (he spoke at some Genspect conferences): he sounds like a very much younger person than he actually is.

Thanks for posting this.

I watched that podcast a little while ago and it has really stuck with me.

Everyone supporting this trial (or not actually) should watch it.

Powerful stuff.

And I agree with pp, some people are very excited to see what happens to this cohort of kids. On another podcast, a guy who transitioned 30 years ago commented that the majority of MtF transitioners he knows are now on OnlyFans.

This is an utter horror show.

Absolutely.

Small clip of this man speaking to Stella O’Malley:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o8AqXOqgR5g

So basically, put a lad on puberty blockers and it makes it harder to surgically transition. DON'T put a lad on puberty blockers and he'll probably never pass as female no matter how much surgery he has.
It's almost as if you're not supposed to be able to do this. As if... I dunno. HUMANS CAN'T CHANGE SEX.

Football is actually a very good example of how gender norms differ across the globe. In America - so not even a radically different culture to our own - Soccer is mostly regarded as a girl's sport.

This reminded me of this article (from 2019).

Puberty blocking drugs: ‘For the past four years I’ve been stuck as a child’

https://archive.ph/iZTk5

This female child, 'Jacob', was one of the Tavistock's victims. If they really want to know about the effects of puberty blockers they could follow up with children like Jacob who have already taken them. They don't need to create new victims.

In the Times today.
"She said demand for puberty blockers had started rising when the Gids team — along with paediatricians at University College Hospital London who worked with them — failed to publish the results of a study into the drug that found no benefit."

I honestly don't get it. I would ask myself why are they not publishing their results (or only with great delay), what are they hiding? It wouldn't make me want to repeat the trial.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/cfbd017d-d8a4-4410-a732-0a8a188a09ef?shareToken=20cf1929d5c8c5c78415f0f1a35b48f3

Lucy Bannerman has done such good work on this. 2019!

The quotes from GIDS are harrowing, for example:

A spokesman for Tavistock said: “All young people considering the puberty blocker or cross-sex hormones are repeatedly made aware of the known potential impacts of these medical interventions . . . as well as the areas of impact that remain to some extent unknown.

“In the end the decision to go on blockers is a balancing act weighing up these factors against the perceived distress of undergoing puberty in the ‘wrong’ gender and developing unwanted and potential hard to change secondary sexual characteristics.”

The idea that this is the sort of conversation you can have with someone who isn’t old enough to consent to having a tattoo, or on another occasion might sulk for a week because they’re not allowed to have their tongue pierced (I had one of those) would be laughable if it wasn’t tragic.

I spent 4 years looking at all the studies results and trials and had all the adult followups blocked from me and there was no benefit, only disasters so gee, best we start again from scratch.

Nah, don't buy it. You know full well it is all a bag of shite.

In other words, “these children will be going on PBs anyway via overseas sources so we should divert them to us instead.”

A) I think it’s a very naive belief that even if the trial shows that some would benefit from PBs (and I don’t think this trial will show that beyond mental health improvement in some over the short term which is likely to be because they are getting what they believe is the solution to their problems ) that they will be able to work out which children going forward will be in this group.

B) I think it’s a very naive belief that if the trial does not show benefits, that the parents who already go to overseas sources will accept the results of the trial - they will still do everything they can to medicalise their child.

'...guy who transitioned 30 years ago commented that the majority of MtF transitioners he knows are now on OnlyFans.'

That is something a journalist should be looking at. So many trans males on X seem to have Onlyfans in their bios.

The man who is funding Anne Health, Finnster, was groomed on Youtube, paid vast sums to 'transition'.

Its almost as if a whole.sector has been created to cater for a niche sexual interest.

Anne Health is openly prescribing blockers to children, btw.

“It is very unfortunate that in 2011 they didn’t do a controlled trial because it would have been much easier to conduct at that time when there wasn’t the belief and expectations that we have now.”..... No large, randomised control trials comparing the outcomes of puberty blockers in children against a control group have taken place, making the Pathways trial the first of its kind.

PATHWAYS IS NOT A CONTROLLED TRIAL!!!

I forgot about them!

I can help here:

PATHWAYS IS NOT A CONTROLLED TRIAL!!!

Archive version

https://archive.ph/iZTk5

Two quotes from that article stand out for me:

“They asked a 12-year-old to make a decision an adult would struggle with.

The whole ‘it’s parents giving consent’ to the current proposed PB trial is a weaselly specious tactic. Parents would not consent but for the child saying they are ‘meant to be the opposite sex’. So in effect, it is the child consenting.

Without the slightest idea of what they're doing to their bodies and minds.

And this one.

“My Tavistock worker was saying to me, ‘once you have the testosterone, you’ll be a boy’.

And this highlights how there are far too many uninformed, even ignorant, and biased workers in so-called gender care. There to proselytise and recruit to the gender religion rather serving the needs of vulnerable children.

That they have all this information and yet still plan to go ahead and harm further children with the current proposed trial leaves me speechless. I’m sure there are carefully worded articles in the consent form signing away the right to future legal action.

Healthcare professionals can succumb to the heady mix of virtuous beingkind, messiah complex, and the egotism of believing you’re the smartest person in the room leads to hubris for the patients. So, unfortunately it will only be lawsuits that stops the madness.

Ok, so, I’m an ex-academic, have spent a stupid amount of my life designing research studies, and teaching students how to do the same, and evaluating those of other researchers. It is clear that the Pathways trial is the most flabbily designed piece of shit ever. I think we’ve established that.

But! What bothers me most is this: what is the goal? I mean, “make these children happier,” sure, but what does that mean? If it is just “alleviate depression,” well, we have drugs for that - drugs that don’t have the diabolical side effects of puberty blockers. So it can’t be that.

The goal must be “remove their perceived gender incongruence.” But what does that mean? It can only mean somehow bring their mental picture of themselves, and their physical body, into a state of congruence.

Which means one of two things. Either help them to accept their sexed bodies as they are, using tools that address this as a mental health or psychological issue. Or cosmetically alter their body to make it match their mental picture.

Puberty blockers do not help a child accept their sexed body. We know this. The flawed data collection from the Tavistock showed this. They lead in 90% or more of cases to a desperate desire for cross-sex hormones. They prevent the brain development that happens in puberty that would allow for a child to mature and realise that there is nothing wrong with their sexed body.

So, by default, this study is starting from the standpoint that the solution to “gender incongruence” is to permanently cosmetically alter a perfectly healthy child’s body.

The study is biased and broken before you even get to the fact that the design is beyond flawed and won’t give any useful results at all, and will physically harm vulnerable children.

How Cass can look anyone in the eye and say that this study is necessary is beyond me.