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

Do you understand there is a significant difference between treating cancer and doing a trial where a group of children have a philosophical belief about themselves that doesn't reflect material reality having potentially irreversible treatments to make their body better meet the expectations of their philosophical belief?

Why do you believe that they are comparable?

And the drugs side effects have been well documented already for female children with Lupron. There has been a class action building with those patients who are now adults suffering from significant issues with bone density, connective tissue issues and some much more serious health impacts. There is a reason why female people taking the drugs for other conditions are now limited to 6 months only.

That is great and I am glad you have benefited. You had an illness, qualified for participation in a trial. There is still no comparison with giving known dangerous drugs to healthy children.

endof can I just ask something, given your experience?

If I recall correctly, Kiera Bell's original argument was that children shouldn't be on puberty blockers because they end up sterilised and without sexual function. something they can't consent to at the age at which they are asked.

But the counter argument was that it wasn't puberty blockers that did this but cross sex hormones. Neatly forgetting that children on puberty blockers almost always go onto cross sex hormones.

In terms of passing an ethics committee, would this distinction generally be considered the loophole it clearly is?

Wouldn't they have to take into account the likelihood that puberty blockers cement the children into their condition?

I'm not sure that's something you can prove, beyond the fact that if they don't take them they usually desist, and if they do take them, they don't.

But it's obviously something that a normal person would think an ethics committee would consider.

You haven't explained clearly why they are comparable.

Am I to understand that you believe treating someone for depression should be acceptable with drugs that lead to significant long term issues and are irreversible and have already been studied by multiple countries and found to have results of having long term mental health improvement because depression might lead you to harm yourself?

And how the fuck do you know how this impacts me or not? You have just made a huge fucking leap there to be wonderfully condescending considering this is mumsnet and this thread is about children. But do crack on.

Retrospective audit is another method of assessing risk/benefit of medication in high risk groups. For example, a large European retrospective audit of drugs used in pregnancy and labour was done to look at short and long term outcomes where concomitant conditions needed treatment, prevention and treatment of DVT/PE, pain relief in labour and so on.
It is deeply suspicious that gender clinics deliberately kept no records/follow up audit of children they "treated". Had they done that, we probably wouldn't even be talking about trials.

I'd channel my energies to getting upset about things you can control

If we did that, the Tavistock would still be transing away the gay, women would be being raped in prison by male sex offenders, beaten to a pulp at the Olympics and this thread would have been deleted before the second post.

I don't know how long your niece was on pb but there is a difference between blocking puberty for a year or six years.

I think the biggest issue is that we all know blockers have a negative impact on the physical health and you are doing it to tackle a mental health issue. The question is the phyiscal ilnesses caused by pb worth it if it doesn't even resolve the mh issues?

All evidence, even from WPATH itself, shows little to no improvement on MH. WPATH celebrated that because at least is wasn't a broken body AND deteriotating MH

Does the drug you were/are on sterilise you/children?

If not, it's no comparison.

The medical evidence is clear that this harms children. Doctors don't agree with you on this.

Remarkable. Gosh... a brand new poster telling women that they shouldn't swear and if they do they should be ignored.

How fucking wonderful. Sounds just like the last poster who fucking told me the same thing only last week. Gosh... imagine that. Women told how they should speak to be heard.

Bad women.... fucking swearing and 'all that'.

Mate, if you cannot read over a couple of swear words that are not even being directed at you, I think that you need to seek some additional support for that.

But hey.... I'd channel my energies to getting upset about things you can control..

And no... "everyone with the power to have a say in this obviously agrees with me, hence the trial" is rather a false conclusion on your behalf. But really... do crack on.

Yes.

Naughty women. Fucking swearing and directing their energies to change things that apparently we cannot control.....

Meanwhile, 'turtles all the way down' seems to be good enough for some people to condescend to parents on Mumsnet about medical treatments for children.

Puberty blockers are not comparable to ADHD meds. And what has ADHD got to do with any of this?

@Datun

I posted my last post before reading your question.
I think, IME, the known harms of puberty blockers and the evidence we do have regarding the progression to cross sex hormones should be a huge red flag to an ethics committee.
My personal view is that I would expect the ethics committee to go back to all the previous work surrounding the use of these drugs for precocious puberty in the first instance, then any and all trials using them for other conditions such as prostate cancer. Biggest question would be why the importance of stopping the drugs asap when using to treat precocious puberty. What were the documented risks to the child in that protocol? What was in the patient/parent information sheet and consent form?
Having said that, an ethics committee is only as good as the people who are on it. I don't know if we know who they are/were. That is a whole other issue IME.

Do you not see the difference in trialing treatments for people with serious physical medical conditions and children who are physically healthy

For precocious puberty?

Were the children on your trial physically healthy children who needed no medication?

This

It seems extraordinary to me that some people can't see the difference.