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

I didn't think there was going to be a placebo group? Just one group that starts a year after the other?

PATHWAYS TRIAL will use a randomised controlled trial design. This means that everyone taking part will be randomly placed in one of two groups - by chance, like flipping a coin. One group will start the treatment straight away, and the other group will start the treatment after 12 months. No one in the study will decide which group they are in.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/pathways-trial

Gender incongruence is when someone’s gender doesn’t match the sex they were registered at birth. Puberty can be a difficult time for young people with gender incongruence. This is because their body starts to change in ways that don’t match how they feel inside.

Gender isn't defined (which is a major flaw in its own right), but they're clearly saying it's something different and separate to sex. So they really are just talking about personality and the extent to which someone's personality conforms to our culture's stereotypes for their sex, aren't they?

I could cry that supposedly intelligent people are doing something this horrific to children on such a ridiculously illogical and nonsensical basis.

Is it possible that the language has been mangled and distorted so much, and there has been such a climate of fear due to TRA behaviour, that people don't understand what they're saying and aren't trying to understand? They're just repeating the dogma and accepting it must have validity without critical thought?

I just don't understand how someone could write something so spectacularly stupid and not think "oh, well hold on, does this even make sense?".

Puberty can be a difficult time for young people with gender incongruence.

And it's a breeze for everyone else!

Not just puberty but everything else women experience - period pain, endometriosis, cervical smears, child birth, perineal tears, stretch marks, Diastasis Recti, miscarriages, IVF treatment, mastitis - it's all great because a normal woman identifies with her body!!! We all just have this feeling of rightness inside when we suffer from stress incontinence!

This is because their body starts to change in ways that don’t match how they feel inside.

I wonder if these people have ever heard of menopause?

Will there be two control groups, one which takes a placebo and another which has a completely different treatment plan such as talk therapy and social support only?

Will the researchers explore WHY the children are thinking this way? Which schools they attend, does the curriculum include Trans topics and how much and which kind of social media they consume?

Will they record the quality of their relationships with their parents, siblings and extended family? Will they examine how many close friends they have and if they show social delay or struggle socially?

Will they be screened for all types of trauma: bereavement, bullying, sexual assault, exposure to pornography - how much and what kind, internalized homophobia and misogyny, other kinds of abuse and neglect, social services involvement etc etc?

Giving hormones doesn't change someone's feelings about what sex they would like to be (as far as we know).

Puberty blockers, which are what is being trialled, prevent puberty, so the child will not develop the usual adult sex characteristics for their sex.

Often (not in this trial) these are followed up with cross sex hormones. These don't make you 'feel like the opposite sex', they make you begin to develop superficial sex characteristics of the opposite sex - so girls on testosterone get low voices, facial hair, skinny hips/bum and more muscle. Boys on oestrogen get a fatter bum and start developing breasts.

People do this because they say they feel happier looking a bit like the opposite sex. You can't actually change sex nor go through opposite sex puberty, so the changes are just superficial.

You'd think they would trial talking therapies and support as all available evidence shows that most gender confused kids grow out of it if supported to go through natural puberty (this has the added bonus of not messing up their fertility, sexual function, brain function and bone density).

@OldCrone - Thank you for those links x

Where do we complain about this? It’s unethical, immoral and it’s terrifying that it could happen in 2025 or any time really

There isnt a placebo group - it's impossible in a study where it will be obvious whether you're on active treatment or not (because of physical evidence).

There is an observational linked study - pathways horizons - which will be questionnaires about mental health and quality of life for all participating children attending the clinic, whether or not they are on the treatment trial, as well as a brain imaging study

www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/assets/pathways/trial/pathways-trial-connect-faq.pdf

This might have been mentioned already, so sorry if I'm duplicating, but the kids who'll end up on the NHS trial will have a vastly different experience than the kids who went to GIDS and other kids around the world. When you're on a clinical trial you have much more monitoring and after care.
Many of the young people who went to GIDS didn't have any aftercare, I'm pretty sure this was highlighted in the Cass review. There are also lots of detransitioners and trans people from the US who's posts I've seen saying that they were effectively cast out by the Drs after surgery and other treatment.

The trial protocol is only for a 2 year follow up, which is nuts.

There is also (AFAIK) no plan to assess future fertility and sexual function.

Trial participants have the option of staying on puberty blockers or going on to cross sex hormones once the trial has ended (outcome of which is not being assessed, as only 2 year follow up).

I worry about the extreme pressure these children will be on to persist with treatment. All the adults around them will be committed to their transistion - what chance will that give them to desist naturally?

You can write to your MP.

Rupert Lowe MP was organising a group letter yesterday, you could reference that.
https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1992869298701025512?s=20

@AstonScrapingsNameChange thanks, I've written to my MP

I'm really sorry to hear about your experience @Sufferlittlechildren . This gender bullshit really does damage from every angle, doesn't it.

Well done, every letter counts.

I wrote to my MP and asked for my email to also be forwarded to Wes Streeting as I believe the electorate aren’t supposed to contact ministers directly.

The cost of this trial will be peanuts compared to the potential injury claims these victims will be able to put forward.
This is state funded sterilisation of vulnerable young people.

Thanks @Evolutionarygoals

I dread to think of being that child in 2025. Back then it was just a daft and fleeting idea I had; it came from nowhere other than desperation. Today I would likely have heard about it in the classroom and my parents would have been aware. One trip to the wrong “specialist” and I’d have been set up for a life of misery and madness.

As @AstonScrapingsNameChange has said, it’s the pressure from the adults around these children.

That's interesting, I didn't know that.

I have written to ministers directly - you have to specify that you are writing to them in that capacity, not as an MP or they will just fob you off and say you aren't their constituent so to take it up with your own MP (unless they are your MP).

In my experience, MPs will write on your behalf if they think you have a point. If they don't agree your email will be 'lost in the spam folder'.

My daughter has cystic fibrosis. When she was 11 her consultant at a local hospital wanted to prescribe puberty blockers as she said my daughter would not grow anymore at the height of 5 feet. She started puberty at age 8. Thankfully Great Ormond Street hospital rejected this drug being prescribed and took over her care. She is now an adult and a healthy 5 feet 2 inches. The drugs have awful side effects, so not something to take lightly.

So is it possible that a child could have no puberty at all? I have a feeling Jazz Jennings went from PBs to CSHs. So no puberty?
What if you took them until you were, say 18. Then stopped. Would you have a late puberty?

Apologies if this has already been added, but this is a suggestion from Nick Wallis' twitter account
https://genderblog.net/tavistock-whistleblowers-call-for-immediate-halt-to-puberty-blocker-trial/

Letter from Sex Matters to Wes Streeting:

sex-matters.org/posts/publications/letter-to-the-secretary-of-state-for-health-and-social-care/

If you miss the window of opportunity to go through puberty then you cannot catch up later. If you take puberty blockers until age 18 then stop you will in all likelihood never go through puberty.

Thank you. I can't get my head around someone not having a puberty and what their life would be.