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 can't find the recommendation of a trial in the Cass report. Which section is it in? I've found a trial mentioned several times, but only to say that puberty blockers should only be given 'under a research protocol', not that a clinical trial is recommended. For example:

84. The Review’s letter to NHS England (July
2023) advised that because puberty blockers
only have clearly defined benefits in quite
narrow circumstances, and because of the
potential risks to neurocognitive development,
psychosexual development and longer-term
bone health, they should only be offered under
a research protocol. This has been taken
forward by NHS England and National Institute
for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

I've found a trial mentioned several times, but only to say that puberty blockers should only be given 'under a research protocol', not that a clinical trial is recommended. For example:

This is what people are referring to when they say Cass recommended a trial.

To me, that's a deliberate misinterpretation of what was written, but the TRA side have never been shy about doing this.

Streeting needs to answer some simple questions:

What is a gender identity?

What is gender incongruence?

Why does this feeling that a child has need to be treated with drugs which have an adverse effect on neurocognitive development, psychosexual development and longer-term bone health (according to the Cass review)?

How do you obtain informed consent from a child to be sterilised and to have impaired sexual function as an adult?

Who benefits from there being a cohort of young people who have the brains and bodies of children but are chronologically adults? (Clue: it's not the children.)

I think they may struggle to recruit as there has been so much publicity. Parents hopefully will be wary

Any prospective study should be randomised but you don't need to randomise a retrospective analysis of treatment & outcomes to derive useful info from it.

It's the "this has been taken forward..." bit. That implies that at the time of writing NIHR had already begun moving towards a trial.

I posted this article on another thread but thought it might be of interest to posters here.

Barry Wall published an interesting article with info related to the trial on TwiX:

https://x.com/HeadWarriorTWM/status/1990683481265876994

"Imagine a government health service, already condemned for rushing thousands of vulnerable children onto powerful puberty-blocking drugs with almost no evidence of safety or benefit, now announcing plans to start doing it again, this time deliberately framed as a “clinical trial”.

That is not a dystopian nightmare. It is NHS England’s actual policy in November 2025.
Eighteen months after the final Cass Review, published on 10 April 2024, demolished the evidence base for “gender-affirming care”, the same individuals and activist organisations that helped entrench the discredited model remain firmly in post.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, medical procedures touted as necessary and humane are still ongoing, not just for children, but also for mentally ill and paraphiliac adults, inflicting sex frauds and con merchants across all spheres of our existence.

Despite this Dr Michael Brady continues to serve as National Adviser for LGBT+ Health at NHS England, with echoes of Stonewall, the LGBT Foundation, WPATH and similar lobby groups still apparent.

Why has he not been fired?

Professor James Palmer remains National Medical Director for Specialised Services, personally responsible for commissioning the adult gender identity clinics that the Cass Review found to be operating on shockingly weak evidence. The eight new regional children’s gender services, ostensibly built on Cass recommendations, are already being shaped by many of the same activist organisations that helped create the Tavistock disaster.

Why has he not been fired?

Most outrageously, NHS England is pressing ahead with a planned clinical trial that will give puberty blockers to children diagnosed with so called "gender dysphoria" a fake diagnosis that means nothing, despite the Cass Review explicitly stating that the existing research is of such poor quality that no reliable conclusions can be drawn about either benefits or harms.

The review recommended that any future use of puberty blockers in children should occur only within a properly designed research protocol, an egregious error in an otherwise excellent report, positing that in some way a medical experiment with a 100% failure rate is ever justified.

The proposed trial lacks a clear hypothesis, has no established primary outcome measure that would justify restarting these interventions, and appears designed primarily to keep the door open for their eventual reintroduction rather than to answer genuine scientific questions."

Rosie in the Times - share token in tweet

https://x.com/rosieduffield1/status/1997741866591396247?s=46&t=A2fpFNgDRyXF2d6ye97wEA

From the Times article: A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said that it was implementing the Cass review, adding: “The bar for the UK clinical trial to be approved is extremely high, with the Pathways trial going through rigorous rounds of scientific, clinical, ethical and regulatory review.

According to the article, Cass ‘welcomes’ the review. Looking at one summary of the recommendations, it says this:

• The puberty blocker trial previously announced by NHS England should be part of a programme of research which also evaluates outcomes of psychosocial interventions and masculinising/ feminising hormones.

This summary says the PBs ’should be’ researched, but I cannot seem to open the actual report to see what Cass wrote. I’m wondering if too many summaries were circulated that reframed what she wrote? Has anyone got a copy or can quote from the copy?

Bravo Rosie

May I suggest a FOI on exactly what legal forms these children and parents will (or have already) signed?

Because if govt and whoever runs this have not had legal draw it up to ensure they have protected themselves to the nth degree against future court cases and come back, and laid out the possible consequences in detail to ensure informed consent, they are mad.

And if they have done so, they are proving they know there is a very real risk of causing significant damage to children and families who will later regret it and blame those who enabled them into that damage while claiming it would all be fine. Which is beyond unethical.

I hope so but I suspect they won't have too much trouble. Too many people are still swallowing the "dead child or trans child" arguments and failing to use any form of critical thinking.

A friend's wife is one such example. She has a Masters in psychology so isn't daft, she three autistic kids (and I am certain she's autistic herself) and two of the kids have decided they are trans in the last few years.

She was fully supportive of her 15yo daughter going on to testosterone a few years ago via Gender GP, and was looking for a surgeon for the kids mastectomy. Fortunately the surgical part hasn't happened but only due to financial issues. The daughter is now 19 and in a relationship with a young woman who is NB, the GF is absolutely head to toe in SH scarring and deeply deeply troubled. The relationship is frankly very abusive in both directions and both young women are in dire need of psychological help which no one can make them have.

Her 13yo son isn't on anything hormonal, but I guarantee she'd want him on this trial if she can because it would save her money.

The father is devastated and keeps his mouth shut because he is frightened of losing his family to this ideology. He's very GC, and hasn't a clue how to manage any of it. Me neither.

@PinkFootstool Very sadly, I don’t think that is an atypical family situation. I can’t remember who first said it, but I wholeheartedly agree that the parents who put their children forward for a trial like this demonstrate that they don’t have the capacity to give informed consent.

It's like a Venn diagram with so many circles that don't overlap: lots of things that are mutually exclusive.

seven MPs and one peer

Doesn't that just sound kinda sad and pathetic from our elected representatives?

Rosie has said there are loads more who would have signed, but she needed it done fast and wanted a good cross party representation. My guess is more will come forward.

Thanks, good to hear. I'd love to know how many Labour MPs were clamouring to sign, and how many weren't.

I wonder how many Labour MPs are against this. This is the point they need to make their voices heard.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/37574086/keir-starmer-facing-labour-revolt-puberty-blockers/

I have not kept up with the thread, so someone may have already said this, but Labour Women’s Declaration is asking everyone to write to their MPs and have provided a guide letter.

From Labour Women’s Declaration
Puberty Blockers Trial
Following the Cass Review, a clinical trial of puberty blockers has now been approved. However, many clinicians and organisations have serious concerns that the proposed trial is not the careful, ethical research Dr Cass called for and may not answer the key clinical questions.
CAN-SG held a well-attended webinar in September, outlining expert concerns about the proposed trial and published an excellent summary of these views. Although the trial was originally expected to start early in 2025, ethics approval was only granted this month, and the protocol has only now been released (downloadable from here https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/pathways-trial).
We encourage supporters to read and sign the Statement of Concern at https://protectingpuberty.com/
Marcus and Susan Evans have also written to Wes Streeting raising their concerns about the trial.
Write to your MP using our model letter about the problems with the trial.

I got an email from LWD. I'm sure it said to only write if you had a Labour MP.

Mine's LD. I emailed him about getting the guidance that Phillipson's sitting on implemented. I got back a generic reply. Which, I guess, was fair enough, I'd sent him a template from SM after all. So, I emailed him again. All my own work this time. The reply I got back was, I'm pretty sure, plagiarised from the letter, all about tp, a bunch of LDs had signed and sent to Phillipson, with a bit about women and girls bolted on. It pretty much ignored what I'd put in my second email.

I've been thinking about writing to him again anyway.

I wonder too. I knew there was Jonathan Hinder and Rosie Duffield, but whether other Labour MPS are brave enough to put their head over the parapets...

The trans-rights lobby is one of the most powerful ideological forces in modern British politics – and has captured a large proportion of the Parliamentary Labour Party and its activists.

Far from acting in the best interests of children, the Health Secretary now appears instead to be performing a political juggling act to keep that group onside. In other words: Politics first, children second.

At last Wednesday’s meeting all of the clinicians who would be overseeing the Pathways trial appeared either unable or unwilling to answer the most basic questions about safety, risk and eligibility.

I asked whether there would be a cut-off age for the youngest participants (thus far, we have only been told that the trial will be limited to under-16s.

The panel simply refused to answer my question. Shockingly, not one of them would rule out children as young as seven or eight – or perhaps even younger – being accepted as participants.

This conjured up the unconscionable spectacle of children who still believe in Father Christmas being offered drugs that halt fundamental biological processes. Do we really believe that such children are capable of giving full and informed consent?

And this was not the only issue that concerned me deeply. They also refused to exclude participants with ‘pre-existing vulnerabilities’ – such as children who are autistic, in care, struggling with anxiety, depression, ADHD or other mental health problems. On the contrary, we were told that their participation would be welcomed.

The trial appears to going ahead without the most basic duty of care. And, given what we know about the potential risks to the children taking part, this is truly disturbing.

https://archive.is/gtRBX and
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15365251/Wes-Streeting-experiment-puberty-blocking-drugs-children.html

She's the Reform MP isn't she? Good to see her speaking out about this - child abuse & unethical medical experimenting on children should cross the whole political divide

+They also refused to exclude participants with ‘pre-existing vulnerabilities’ – such as children who are autistic, in care, struggling with anxiety, depression, ADHD or other mental health problems. On the contrary, we were told that their participation would be welcomed.*

If this is true that makes one’s blood run cold for their willingness to harm or their abject deep stupidity - it doesn’t matter which. They are criminals.

If this is true

Its getting harder and harder to know who to trust, but irrespective of Party it would be madness to write an article for a national newspaper saying something blatenly untrue.

It may be, of course that they still aren't prepared to say either way, but you would have thought that at a meeting for MPs to discuss this they would be more specific.

Have this horrible feeling that like the budget, the grooming inquiry, nothing is based on best practice but what will play best with the media.

The fact that other papers haven't as far as i know commented is I think more to do with them being captured, and so not wanting to raise questoins.