No child is born in the wrong body - Kemi Badenoch. Letter to Wes Streeting

[IwantToRetire]

Saw this being shared on facebook. Quote:

No child is born in the wrong body.

I cannot believe we are back to square one, with NHS England backing an experimental trial of puberty blockers on healthy, vulnerable children, ignoring the damage already done.

The No1 rule of medicine is "do no harm".
This is activist ideology masquerading as research.

I'm urging MPs of all parties to sign this letter from me and Shadow Health Secretary Stuart Andrew for Daventry, calling for Wes Streeting to step in and stop this trial before more damage is done to children who are too young to understand what they are doing to themselves.

https://www.facebook.com/kemibadenoch/posts/pfbid02c3rSBKCtNCY5qHeLVtJN94j4MhB7fZnoW159VXbzJUBdrMrDDbC3C4v6KX3W7MEbl

Just assuming a theory isn't how the scientific method works.

But we should just believe doctors when they say they believe a treatment works (despite a lack of evidence)?

That isn't how the scientific method works either.

You can't deny the existence of ROGD. Just look at the figures of children being referred to gender clinics. Particularly teenage girls.

Part of the problem is that these children are depressed, anxious, autistic and there is zero support from the NHS. CAMHS is on its knees. But back in the day the moment they said they were trans it was straight to the Tavistock. Actual investment in supporting children’s mental health would be a lot more productive than funding this trial.

You think parents should be able to consent to their physically healthy child being sterilised?

Read up on the profiles of the parents of children referred to the Tavistock. There seemed to be a fair few paedophiles amongst them.

I was surprised that Dr Cass was so positive about a further trial of puberty blockers, given what she said in the rest of her report. I am also surprised now that the ethics committee has approved the proposed trial.

I do think that the start of any further trial should be conditional on follow-up first being done for all the children and young people who were previously prescribed puberty blockers for gender dysphoria. That might focus some minds on making the data available!

And any further trial must include long term follow-up because many of the downsides and negative side effects are long term. It must include the effects of any follow-up hormones and of being on what is now known to be a pathway to cross-sex hormones.

The proposed two-year uncontrolled trial is not going to add much that is useful and not enough to justify the dangers.

Worth having a listen to some expert critique from the spring (2025) which goes into the history and the data we already have. Beyond Gender episode on the propose trial

From the other thread on this topic. Reasons one might want to be cautious:

UtopiaPlanitia · Today 01:19

Excellent analysis of the PATHWAYS trial:
https://www.quackometer.net/blog/2025/11/pathways-a-trial-built-on-missing-data-pseudoscience-and-quiet-cruelty.html

'The trial’s design guarantees we will learn almost nothing useful about puberty blockers themselves. Every single child (treatment arm and delayed arm) receives the same new package of psychosocial support: therapy, family work, psycho-education, regular clinic visits, the full comforting apparatus of being “in the system”. The only variable that changes is whether a child receives triptorelin injections now or in twelve months’ time.

That single difference in treatment timing is the sole thread we have to pull on if we want to isolate the specific effect of the drug. Yet the thread is buried under a dozen powerful confounders: the therapeutic alliance, the placebo effect of finally being believed, the nocebo effect in the delayed group who feel cruelly denied, the natural maturation that happens to every teenager over two years, regression to the mean, and the simple passage of time away from whatever acute crisis brought them to clinic in the first place.

Because the psychosocial support is constant and the drug is the only thing that moves, any observed change in mood, self-harm, or quality-of-life scores can be attributed to the counselling just as plausibly as to the hormone suppression. The trial has no mechanism for disentangling the two. It is rather like testing a new analgesic by giving every patient in the study the drugs and a daily massage and then wondering why both the drug group and the waiting-list group report less pain. The protocol may produce reams of numbers, but it is structurally incapable of telling us what the blockers actually do.

Any improvement in quality-of-life scores can therefore be attributed to the counselling, to placebo effects, to regression to the mean, or simply to the relief of finally being taken seriously. We will never know which. The delayed arm, meanwhile, starts the study believing they have been denied life-saving treatment. Nocebo effects and off-protocol self-sourcing of blockers are inevitable. The trial cannot separate these confounders any more than a non-blinded homeopathy trial can separate the effects of sugar pills from the therapist’s reassuring smile.

The follow-up in the trial is just two years. Yet, the major questions are about what happens to children as they mature into young adults and further. Peak bone mass is not reached until the late twenties. Fertility outcomes, late cognitive effects, and long-term cancer risks will remain unknown. The promise of “registry linkage pending further funding” is not a plan; it is an admission that the most important clinical questions have been postponed indefinitely.

Picture a 12-year-old girl who starts blockers under PATHWAYS this winter. By the time she is 30 she may never know what an orgasm feels like and will certainly never carry a pregnancy. That is not a rare side-effect from what we know already; it is the intended physiological outcome of the treatment this 12 year old is being invited to “consent” to.

A majority of the children in such clinics arrive with autism, histories of trauma, depression, or eating disorders. Almost all cannot yet imagine adult sexual relationships or parenthood. To ask them to consent to a pathway that carries a substantial risk of permanent infertility and anorgasmia is to ask them to consent to something they cannot meaningfully understand. The consent forms may be legally watertight; they are ethically threadbare.'
...

If PATHWAYS had been submitted to the Cass Review as one more observational study it would have been graded low quality and filed under “inconclusive”. Instead it has been granted the status of the definitive trial, the one that will finally settle the matter. It will do no such thing. At best it will generate numbers that can be spun either way. At worst it will provide a veneer of scientific respectability for continuing to offer puberty suppression to children on the basis of ideology rather than science and evidence.'

I think it's about time mainstream channels woke up to WPATH

I think we can assume Emily is not a disinterested scientist merely debating the scientific method.

Anyone who doesn’t believe in social contagion doesn’t have children or know how children learn or read history or isn’t on social media (or follow social media ’trends’) or doesn’t just look around and observe the phenomenon unfolding before their eyes. Humans are highly social beings with a strong herd mentality and decisions tend to be made not on the information they have access to but on the social norms found in their common networks.

Anyhow, my reaction after reading Badenoch’s letter, was ‘Wes Streeting was Stonewall’s head of education’!? How did I not know this? Do we think he’s had a change of heart or is the air of reasonableness just a sop to pretend he’s had a change in his thinking to those who don’t believe in the true religion?

@Shortshriftandlethal summary that 'Trans' is a framing device; a way of explaining emotional distress or psychological maladaptation. It provides a complete narrative. is brilliant.

Can you expand on the framing device bit?

Anyone who doesn’t believe in social contagion doesn’t have children or know how children learn or read history or isn’t on social media (or follow social media ’trends’) or doesn’t just look around and observe the phenomenon unfolding before their eyes.

Plus all the people who have said they had ROGD. See also AGP.

Can you give us examples of these? Particularly in relation to children.

Streeting was also in a secret facebook group with Lily Madigan and Aisling Musson intent on doxxing people so they could be thrown out of the Party for wrongthink.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4447315-Wes-Streeting-on-trans-rights

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I would like to read the data on that please, if you would post a link.

That's not comparable. These are not new drugs which require a trial.

These drugs have been used for many years on people with cancers which are affected by hormones (like prostate and breast cancer) and for some gynaecological problems like endometriosis and fibroids. They have also been used on children with precocious puberty.

As well as the desired effect of blocking hormones, the undesired side effects are also well known. There are additional dangers with giving these to children going through puberty at a normal age, who might then never go through puberty at all.

I asked you whether there have been trials on children of other drugs which are already known to be harmful but there is little or no evidence of beneficial effects?

And if so, was it decided to go ahead with the trial because a few doctors held a passionate belief that they were effective (despite the lack of evidence)?

You didn't answer these questions.

A child who takes puberty blockers during puberty and then cross sex hormones will never reach sexual maturity, so will never be able to have children.

Surely that's obvious.

I find it incredible that we are at this point when we just pause and look at the timeline of this.

Where were the hundreds and thousands of children who desperately needed a medical approach to gender/pubertal distress before the 1990s/early 2000s?

Was the Dutch protocol that started this created to meet a noted need recognised in many children across the world? Were they inundated with distressed children and needed to gind a solution? Or was it an experimental idea?

What was happening to all those children when 'watchful waiting' was the standard approach (including within the original Mermaids)?

Were those children in a better or worse position than they are in now?

Have those numbers exploded since the very recent introduction of puberty blockers (that happen to also offer an attractive solution to a normal, but often uncomfortable phase of development)

£10m, huge potential for harm, a fraught cultural debate, and high levels of mental and emotional distress for children, families, and clinician- all for what amounts to a newly, and culturally created phenomenon?

I fear that no-one with say so is just taking a step back to look at the big picture and with curiosity; ironically, not taking 'time to think'.

98% of children who started on puberty blockers went on to cross sex hormones. They will be unable to conceive, because their anatomy doesn't develop.

This was the problem highlighted by Jazz Jennings. That when he wanted a neo vagina, they couldn't make one out of his penis, because it was the penis of a prepubescent and there wasn't enough material.

Cass suggested a trial. The trouble is, this trial won't result in clear evidence either way, and it is unethical. Is there any trial that would be ethical? I can't see how such a trial could be designed.

We all frame our experiences in life; look at them and interpret them through a particular type of lens, with a particular focus, and via a narrative we assign to those experieneces. A personal teleology.

The way we frame our experiences ( I take a lot of photographs so I have an interest in framing. We all frame our photos in different ways) will vary according to our own personality and character; our preferences - likes and dislikes, our childhood and family background, our religious background, but also according to dominant themes that are circulating in the collective at societal level at any one time.

Trans ideology stems from post modernistic theories of the self, including 'Queer Theory' - which focuses on transcending traditional boundaries and ''queering' everything. The concept of 'gender identity' arose from within Queer Theory -with its re-conceptualisation of 'Sex' as being itself socially constructed. The idea that man and woman are social terms, not biological ones. That one can 'identify as' anything one likes. The most important thing is feelings and self reference. That one can be a girl even if one was born a boy and vice versa

Another idea is that you can change the world by taking control of language and meaning and re-shaping it to serve your own needs rather than the needs of the establishment.

All of this represents a particular framing device.

Maybe you should speak to Polly Carmichael.

This document contains some important information. One of which is that even in 2018, Polly Carmichael recognised there were signs of social contagion and influence from misinformed sources.

March 2018: Polly Carmichael had told an ACAMH conference:
“without a doubt there are some young people who are finding a community, friends and all sorts of things through joining a group who have an interest around gender and I think that for some of those we would be very foolish not to acknowledge that it's probably the case that they are caught up in something rather than it being an expression of something that has arisen from within. So there is a lot of concern.”

“I have been shocked by some of the things that are swilling around the internet that young people have access to. There are numerous groups on Reddit and Tumblr that many of the young people that are attending our service are going onto..maybe it's also the dissing of expertise, in a way, so that there is a feeling that this is about who I am, so what does anyone else know? It's a very odd situation in some way.`”

www.transgendertrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Medical-Scandal-at-the-Tavistock.pdf

The impact of media and peer influence was written about by clinicians in Australia too.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2768726

July 28, 2020

Association of Media Coverage of Transgender and Gender Diverse Issues With Rates of Referral of Transgender Children and Adolescents to Specialist Gender Clinics in the UK and Australia

Ken C. Pang, PhD Nastasja M. de Graaf, MSc; Denise Chew, MD;

Question
Is media coverage of transgender issues associated with referrals of transgender and gender diverse (TGD) children and adolescents to specialist gender services?

Findings
In this serial cross-sectional study across an 8-year study period during which more than 5000 TGD young people were referred to 2 pediatric gender clinics in the UK and Australia, a significant association was found between weekly referral rates and the number of TGD-related items appearing within the local media 1 to 2 weeks beforehand, for the UK only in week 1 and for Australia only in week 2.

Meaning
An increase in media coverage of TGD-related topics over recent years was associated with an increase in the number of TGD young people presenting to 2 gender clinics on opposite sides of the world.

However, we are also mindful that others have speculated that increased media content (specifically via social media) might act as a double-edged sword or a means of social contagion, whereby some individuals erroneously come to believe through exposure to such media that their nonspecific emotional or bodily distress is due to gender dysphoria and being TGD

This study has limitations. Our data provide evidence of an association between relevant media stories and clinical referrals of TGD young people but, given the nature of the study design, no indication of causation. Moreover, our study weighted each media item equally (despite likely differences in reach and accessibility) and was unable to quantify actual levels of media exposure among referred patients. Another limitation is that this association might not generalize to other services. After all, the RCHGS and GIDS were chosen for this study because they are publicly funded, do not charge attendance fees, and provide the only specialist pediatric gender services within their respective regions, thus ensuring that their referral data are likely to be relatively comprehensive and complete accounts of clinical demand within each catchment area; most other pediatric gender clinics will not share these same characteristics. Another important limitation of our study is that it only examines traditional forms of media and does not include social media, which are a very important source of information as well as a critical means for finding support and fostering connectedness and community among young people, including TGD adolescents.32-35 Social media were not examined in our study given the difficulties of readily accessing such information across time, but in the future, collaborations with relevant social media companies, such as Facebook, might allow us to address this gap.