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

I came across this link on another thread but its relevant here. Kings College are not only captured but it seems heavily invested in embedding trans activism and overturning the prohibition on puberty blockers for children. Not exactly an impartial partner in this trial.

https://www.transgendertrend.com/gender-activism-nhs/

Excellent post.

It sums up a number of observations really that seem to form a common pattern whenever the establishment has the word 'trans' involved. The census comes to mind.

It's incoherent and very poorly designed
It appears to be flailing around without any clear intent or reasoning for the desired end point
The desired end point is extremely questionable
All basic good sense, normal standards and ethics appear to have been abandoned
Advisors and consulting groups involved are somewhat interesting in their impartiality and histories, and represent only one very specific agenda
All legal barriers and normal safeguards have been lowered to let it through.

There must be legal consequences to hiding losing, stopping gathering or otherwise burying your trial results otherwise what at the HRA and MHRA actually for? There’s loads of regulations around UK trials. I don’t understand why NHS record-keeping is now being given some ‘too difficult’ label to forensically piece back together, while another few hundred kids lives will get ruined by medication because this is too hard or too expensive or too controversial for the adults to actually sort out. It’s an awful prospect.

Yes.

Someone needs to be looking into them.

They don't have a batshit Helen Webberley fronting them, instead, they are working quietly behind the scenes.

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.

And cosmetically alter the body for what reason? Even if you agree with the theory, how does treatment that reduces height and bone strength make a girl resemble a boy?

ALSO!

Cass says in that Times article:

“We wouldn’t want to be starting from here,” she said about the Pathways trial. “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.”

Human studies cannot be carried out in a societal vacuum. There is a belief system now, and there are expectations now, the existence of which mean that any trial must take these into account. You can’t just say “it’s unfortunate” and throw your hands up and say “best we can do.” (Not that what they’ve come up with is the best. It’s something like the 6th least bad, if that.)

Exactly. A

And that's why, I think, Hannah Barnes and Hadley Freeman (?) were not allowed to attend the media briefing.
As these are precisely the points they would have raised.

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.

Some parents will be convinced by their child telling them that they need blockers. Some will be terrified, because of the suicide narrative that has been deliberately and recklessly pushed, over and over, that if they don't do as instructed, they may lose their child, either to estrangement or suicide.

Some parents may have other reasons for wanting to stop the development of their child, and/or wanting a child of the different sex.

In most cases, parents only want the best for their child, of course. But we also cannot ignore the existence of abusive parents. It should also be noted that the statistic about parents and convictions for sexual abuse, from the GIDS patients.

There are also some parents with strong beliefs about, for example, reincarnation, who have 'trans' children, who I would say are unbalanced themselves. Munchhausens by proxy is a thing.

Sonia Sodha was the other one I think.

Yes, no one was allowed to ask the difficult questions. But SOMEONE should have been asking them, and a long time before the study got this far.

Seriously though, the human behavioural studies that I carried out were so tame, and the rigor that was required to get ethical approval for them was fierce. This abomination seems to have been waved through by people with blindfolds on and their fingers in their ears singing “lalalala”.

That report of the conference is extremely worrying.

Including reports of how Professor Clive Kay and Dr Michael Brady - who are such high profile and influential men within the NHS - continuing to proselytise and insist on pushing through medical treatments that have attracted both anecdotal and empirical evidence of harm. Doesn’t feel like affirmative ’gender care’ is going to stop anytime soon. Heartbreaking.

It’s also concerning how much Wes Streeting is trying to play both sides here. I wonder what he really thinks when no one else is there.

Haven't societal beliefs and expectations changed in other ways?

Certainly in the late 90s and early 2000s and perhaps in 2011 you could have argued that this treatment could be life saving, and that the likely end for any non-passing trans person was an early suicide. The goal of all legislation and treatment was concealment.

However, the increase in numbers of people identifying as trans without having taken puberty blockers, including people identifying with a gender not even recognised in law undermines the idea that being trans is life threatening.

Exactly. This is a real safeguarding issue- if these ‘treatments’ in fact create a group of highly vulnerable adults (in legal terms adults). If this is what is happening- (and why wasn’t this the toppermost thing on GIDS’ list to research, and for the UK research regulators to force GIDS to research?) then that would be appalling abuse of the most fundamental lifelong kind of already distressed kids. That would be actual genuine ‘transphobia’. How is this not an urgent question at PMQs, news item etc. Hundreds of young people been given a very controversial potentially life altering set of drugs then allegedly lost to follow up.. within NHS records.

NRTFT and just seen comments that they seem to be selecting out the informed gender critical journalists in discussing this. WTAF?!

The tide has definitely not turned if this dangerous selection of questions is still acceptable in any press briefing

Further evidence that if done openly, honestly and without bias they know they could not get it through . The deceit and control of the message is necessary to sustain the bias.

I honestly despair at our current political leaders and the world they are so busily creating.

This bit stuck out to me

Cass insisted she did not blame parents who chose to seek drugs for their children from alternative sources. “We have to acknowledge that parents are doing their best to do what they think is right for their children. They’re not setting out to subvert a system, they’re parents who have been let down because they’ve been so long on waiting lists that they’ve become desperate and have gone to seek help where they can.”

She seems terribly naive about the parents, or carers/social workers as 'looked after' kids seem to be over represented in the gender confused. The parents, etc. should be part of the preliminary investigations before any child is considered for this horror story.

This sums up exactly what I've been trying to say.

What is the aim here?

And why isn't the aim for children accept their healthy bodies? Measure that.

The parents will be a self selecting group, not a random selection of people with distressed children.

I would presume they'll all believe in gender ideology. Which is a belief system.

Can you imagine if any other religious group were seeking dangerous drugs to alter children's bodies as part of their belief?? They would probably be imprisoned instead of given trials to see if their belief was real.

They should be collecting data on the parents who seek this treatment. Their views and beliefs.

I presume they'll skew left and progressive, and this will be an important part of their own identity.

They'll subscribe to beliefs embedded in queer theory.

So children from particular religious or political backgrounds will be more at risk of this dangerous medicalisation.

That should sound some enormous fucking great alarm somewhere.

Here’s another question to throw out to the void:

What exactly was Cass’s role in the production of the Cass report?

By which I mean, I know she didn’t personally conduct the systematic reviews - those were done by (I think) researchers at the University of York.

But did she even write the final report? Or did she somewhat supervise someone else writing it?

Because the way that she is currently talking about these studies (both the ones in the systematic review and the Pathway one) is starting to feel very much like some professors I knew who would present the work of their PhD students without really understanding (in as much depth as the student) the work.

She doesn’t sound so much like an ideologue as she does like someone who - while very intelligent and well-versed - simply doesn’t have the depth of knowledge that I would have expected of someone who had conducted the work themselves. She constantly sounds like she is going on what someone else told her about something.

Is it just me?

I'm getting 'be kiiind' vibes.

We know that Gendered Intelligence & Mermaids exerted massive control over child healthcare at GIDs resulting in its closure. They and other queer theory lobbyists have self identified as experts in so many professions despite having zero qualifications / expertise. So it's not beyond the realms of possibility that some of the dangerous men heading up numerous queer theory pressure groups in & outside the NHS have been able to persuade her that she just doesn't understand the issues?
It's happened to countless politicians, academics and leaders so could have happened to her as well?

But also, where is her intellectual or academic curiosity?

Like, you presided over something as in-depth and damning as the Cass report, but when this new trial pops up and it looks like it’s got the scientific rigour of a pineapple and would definitely have been thrown out as poor quality by the systematic reviews that you yourself presided over, you shrug and say well, you know, what can you do?

Really?

Just read it and couldn't agree more. The level of capture in the higher reaches of the NHS is very worrying.

Clive Kay is retiring from King's in the summer.
https://www.kch.nhs.uk/news/kings-chief-executive-clive-kay-announces-retirement-from-role/