NHS trans drug trial ‘betrays our children’

[IwantToRetire]

Puberty blockers will be given to more than 200 young people, potentially as young as eight, who think they may be transgender.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, banned the drugs last year because of “unacceptable safety risks”, but they can still be administered as part of clinical trials for patients who meet certain criteria.

For the NHS trial, being run by King’s College London (KCL), children who show a “persisting desire” for the drugs and are deemed by gender doctors as standing a “reasonable prospect of benefit” could be eligible.

Children will be screened for neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism, but participants who are deemed to have such conditions will not be excluded from the trial.

While researchers running the trial acknowledged that children faced potential harm in their cognitive and sexual development, they claimed the risks of not prescribing the drugs could include depression and self-harm.

Article continues at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/22/nhs-trans-drug-trial-betrays-our-children/ and at https://archive.is/cyLf9

Puberty blocker trial turns children into crash-test dummies
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15317453/MAIL-SUNDAY-COMMENT-Puberty-blocker-trial-turns-children-crash-test-dummies.html

'Lambs to the slaughter': Anger as under-16s put on puberty blocker trial
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15316005/Professor-proud-NHS-plan-children-puberty-blockers.html

“Researchers running the trial acknowledged that children faced potential harm in their cognitive and sexual development, they claimed the risks of not prescribing the drugs could include depression and self-harm.”

Wait…? So what they’re saying is that harm in children’s sexual and cognitive development is LESS desirable than depression and self harm, which can be resolved much more easily and without the use of pharmaceuticals?

What will be next? Offering breast implantations if they aren't happy with hitting puberty later than peers because of the "mental risks" of that unhappiness?
No child can give informed consent to this.

Its a really bad idea for children to be allowed to be transgender.

There are "thousands and thousands" that webberlery has treated apparently, why not contact them and all the other kids around the world who were put on these drugs and do the research from that?

I agree. But clinical trials were approved and, since there is no reliable data on the effects of the drugs, this is how to get some. I'm sure there was no shortage of volunteers.

Data from the thousands of kids who've already taken 'blockers' can't be used because the initial evaluations weren't done properly, progress wasn't monitored and there were no follow-up procedures.

David Bell doesn't think it's a well-designed study, however. I must admit I'm confused about the expected utility of the one-year wait for half the subjects.

I wonder whether the trial will lead to cross-sex prescriptions, as this was overwhelmingly the case with previous users.

Wouldn't they have to monitor for impacts on those taking part in the study for a significant amount of years to fully understand side effects? I mean like 20 years or more?

The lawyers are rubbing their hands for the future law suits.

I don’t understand why this is still being allowed to happen. If children are experiencing hormonal imbalances that make them feel uncomfortable in their own bodies, and doctors have access to medications that can address those imbalances, then why are drugs being used to push them further toward the opposite sex rather than drugs helping them align with their biological one?

I’m not well-informed on this topic and rarely speak about it. I’m always open to learning more. But honestly, it feels like complete nonsense. It seems as though there’s a darker agenda at play, one that’s preying on vulnerable, mentally struggling children at an age when identity and self-understanding are naturally uncertain. It’s a phase most go through, a time of questioning who we are and where we belong. Evil has been allowed to operate unchecked for far too long.

Yes my thoughts exactly.
Apart from the utter lunacy and cruelty I can’t believe any medic wants to run the risk of being part of it given the likelihood of being sued by these poor children in the years to come when they realise that they are permanently physically damaged?

@browser2025, the children are not experiencing hormonal imbalances. They're starting normal puberty for their sex, this isn't an imbalance.

There is no known physical cause of 'trans'. You may rest assured that extensive efforts have been made to find one! As there isn't, the only diagnostic criterion is that the person says they feel they're the wrong sex. But they insist it isn't a mental illness.

It could, conceivably, indicate a 'brain wiring' problem akin to those (very rare) individuals who feel they have an extra or missing limb. Proprioception issues can be spotted in a brain scan, though, and 'trans' people have not shown similar signs in fMRI or diffusion scans.

Ok, thanks for explaining. I suppose it makes me think back to when I was at school. I went through a phase where I really disliked other females as my experiences with them were mostly full of nastiness and bullies. I started boxing every week to learn self-defence and to improve my confidence. During training, I had to tightly bind my chest just to keep my developing breasts out of the way, and I remember wishing I could just remove them altogether. Life seemed like it would have been so much easier as a boy.

Honestly, I’m thankful that gender transition wasn’t being pushed much back then, because I might have been vulnerable to that idea. I’ve seen documentaries where people who’ve detransitioned speak about their regret and anger.

My simple mind just wants to understand what being trans actually means. If you can give drugs to a boy to make him feel more like a girl, and to a girl to make her feel more like a boy, then why can’t you give drugs to help someone feel more comfortable with their biological sex?

The trial is badly designed and won't settle any questions about puberty blockers long term impact on mental health - for a start, if it's impossible to follow up a reasonable number of the adults who were given blockers as children, why does anyone think long term follow up of this cohort will be possible?

There are no measures of physical sexual development or fertility in the study, so no new information on the impact on those will be gained.

At the end of the study children can continue on blockers and/or cross sex hormones - both currently banned. This is exactly how the Tavistock worked - they started off with a research study' and without any results claimed it was so good that any 'transgender' child could get blockers. This is Tavistock 2.0

There are no measures of physical sexual development or fertility in the study

WTAF??!

@browser2025 the “cure” for the feelings you describe (which I also had, without the boxing/binding) is puberty. At 11, I hated my growing breasts, and the whole idea of being a woman was awful to me. By 18, I was wearing mini skirts & low cut tops!

We don’t need drugs to make gender confused kids feel more like the sex they are, we need to leave them alone to mature into adults.

Yeah, @browser2025, a lot of us would've been 'transed' as girls. I think this reinforces our belief that it's not a real thing, as most of us got over it after puberty. Was this true for you as well?

The drugs they're testing stop puberty. The typical user never goes through it, as they move straight on to opposite-sex hormones after puberty should have occurred.

There is no research on the effects of skipping over this crucial development stage, other than concerns over bone density. Most of the kids, both sexes, will never mature sexually and will thus be infertile. Puberty also brings complex and far-reaching brain development. There isn't any evidence that the human brain can simply resume interrupted development.

Interesting that they are screening for autism but not excluding children with autism from the trial.

IME if they were to screen for and exclude all children with at least one other issue (be that autism, other neurodivergence, adverse childhood experiences etc) they would have no participants.

No child have give informed consent to this.

This is the crux of the matter and I’m not sure how it’s passed ethical review.

Camilla Long ends her weekly column in the Sunday Times with a few sentences about this trial today:

"Rejoice: British children can be experimented on once more
I don’t normally listen to Today on Radio 4, but I was delighted to catch a few minutes yesterday.
I heard a segment on an incredible new trial of puberty blockers that will assess the “potential benefits” of giving them to trans children under 16.
It is the “first time” it’s been tried anywhere, said its leader, the psychiatrist Professor Emily Simonoff. Hilary Cass was “pleased” the whole thing was happening. She even called for it in her report!

To the casual listener the message was clear: this was a glorious sunlit upland of scientific inquiry.
What the programme didn’t mention is that giving puberty blockers to confused children is horrific. It is the gateway drug to chemical castration.

We already know the “risks” Today hinted at. Trans children on puberty blockers are at risk of decreased bone density and almost all of them go on to more treatments, leading to infertility, surgery and the loss of orgasm.

No one came on to say this. No one said these drugs would be offered to children as young as ten (not mentioned in the BBC article about it either). No one said a trial was clearly a back-door way for activists to get children on the drugs, now they’d been banned for trans children by Wes Streeting. No one said the trial really shouldn’t be happening.

Why is the BBC continuing to do this? Promoting trans ideology without any real sense of the dangers."

At the end of the study children can continue on blockers and/or cross sex hormones - both currently banned. This is exactly how the Tavistock worked - they started off with a research study' and without any results claimed it was so good that any 'transgender' child could get blockers. This is Tavistock 2.0

This is exactly my suspicion. The researchers have said the quiet part out loud (and given away how the only thing they're "trialling" is how they can carry on their self-identified Righteous evangelism) here:

For the NHS trial, being run by King’s College London (KCL), children who show a “persisting desire” for the drugs and are deemed by gender doctors as standing a “reasonable prospect of benefit” could be eligible.
Children will be screened for neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism, but participants who are deemed to have such conditions will not be excluded from the trial.
While researchers running the trial acknowledged that children faced potential harm in their cognitive and sexual development, they claimed the risks of not prescribing the drugs could include depression and self-harm.

How can this study design answer the questions they are claiming? Asking a bunch of distressed pre-teens and teens who have been steeped in Reddit and coached by Tumblr, how they feel before and after? Asking them if they're distressed if they have to wait a year for their magic pills that will fix everything according to Mermaids? Asking them if they're ecstatic when they get affirmed? Asking them if they'll be horrendously traumatised when the medication is stopped? Of course these children fully believe they're in the wrong gender and are in mental distress and it's a desperate life-endangering emergency and their existence will be erased if anybody disagrees with them - it's a feature not a bug of this ideology.

For consent they’ll just use Gillick competence. How any researcher would want to be part of this, how any parent would agree to it, how any parent would let their child do it is beyond me. However parents can’t really refuse because of the GC test that as far as I’m aware is based on no set test at all, just what the child is ‘deemed’ to be competent of. Can a child of 10 really understand that they will potentially never be able to have children?

There have been comments about lawyers and lawsuits. I hope the children and parents who do this have NO rights to sue or to any compensation. It might focus their minds on what this is which is child abuse of the highest order.

I disagree with your final comments.

I most certainly DO hope that the children who get dragged into this, have all the rights to sue everyone involved in this ridiculous experiment, including researchers, the government that allowed it to happen, and their own parents who agreed to them being used as test subjects. The children involved are innocent and deserve to be protected, even from their own views of themselves.

The adults are meant to keep them safe.

Surely most (all?) pre-pubertal children could not possibly be Gillick competent to consent to puberty blockers for gender confusion?

Here is a thread with lots of discussion about the trial.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5445222-why-the-nhs-puberty-blocker-trial-is-appalling