Streeting says puberty blocker trial is ethical

[Apollo441]

https://www.thetimes.com/article/b7add3b3-dde5-441b-b6cd-72fc541f4dee?shareToken=3b33d5e67c9fc595192ba4d22fb4669a

Good point.

So when these poor recruits (and their likely confused and partially reassured parents**) finally realise that their involvement in this trial was simply to act as data points, there is no guarantee of support for what will highly likely be a (shortened) lifetime of medical dependency just to keep their bodies functioning.

** It's easy to imagine that these parents must be stupid or somehow leading the way. Having been a lost parent in this mess about 3 years ago, I leant on the NHS as the source of truth. Thankfully at that time they openly said that the impact of PBs on the developing teenage brain was unknown. Screenshot and link below.

This information was what stopped us from saying yes to our daughter's request for them, even though we knew nothing else about gender identity at that time. I would hope that my critical thinking would have kicked in had we been in the same position with her distress and mental health breakdown now in 2025, but I can completely understand why parents of children who are caught in the grip of this would place their trust in a trial that is run by the NHS.

Archive of NHS advice on PBs:
https://archive.ph/LwIm3

Screenshot ⬇️

It's a disgrace that they haven't been forced to supply that data. It should be thoroughly examined and assessed before considering any fresh trial. And if there are howls about "data protection" it should be pointed out very firmly that it's far less unethical to cough up the old data than to create a new cohort of underage human guinea-pigs.

I work in a field "adjacent" to clinical trials, so I know something about that, but I'm not an expert and I'm happy to be corrected.
The stress on free, informed consent is very strong: I doubt you could legally bind a patient not to sue.
However, associated to a trial, there is a costly insurance that should cover all the possible side effects, but I'm familiar with treatments with short term toxicity , so I don't know how far in the future the cover goes.

Streeting is responsible and I wonder why he’s so weak on saying no.

Which is why I think he has said " at heart" rather than just " ethical". If the intention of the trial is to show that puberty blockers cause damage and do not have an overall positive benefit in the long run then their discontinuation would then have a firm evidential basis.

So, he means " Ethical at heart" in the most pragmatic of ways.

It is because he is a trans activist and has been for years.

He still has the weight of his own backbenchers and TRAS bearing down on him; plus the fear of losing votes to the Greens etc

I've said this before, but I really don't understand why a gay man would be a TRA. A large proportion of effeminate little boys grow up to be gay. Trans ideology says that they should not be allowed to reach sexual maturity.

Why do gay men advocate for the next generation of gay men to have their sexual function impaired or removed?

Why was he part of a gang of TRAs trying to get women who know sex is real out of the Labour Party a decade ago? No idea.

He hasn't changed his tune at all, he just pretended to to get himself into a position of power and oh boy, does he now have power over kids who say they are 'trans'.

The only explanations I can think of.

A) They don't know about boys who would otherwise grow up to be gay getting transed. The sources they see never mention that.

B) They don't think. They just repeat fashionable mantras.

For the record, this isn't even a trial at all. It isn't capped at any number, there aren't comparisons between people who get the drugs and those that don't, they are just not giving them to one cohort for a year. They have left themselves a loophole for anyone to be given them if they decide it.

A better way forward would be for a non activist centrist group to contact and interview as many of the 9000 people who have already had the drugs as they can, using a non activist centrist set of questions that don't just say 'are you sad or happy' but go through all the short medium and long term physical and mental health effects of the drugs. Which really Cass should have been able to see as a better way of analysing what happens long term on these drugs.

Worse than not saying no, there is pressure from no 10 to recruit even when those clinicians on the team do not feel comfortable in doing so. These sort of pharmacological interventions are simply inappropriate for these extremely vulnerable young people.

The problem with a retrospective approach is that it is likely to elicit a biased response.

Any groups of people who feel strongly that want their views known (pro or anti) will respond as a higher proportion than others.

And, of course, such a retrospective approach can get no responses from those who have died. A prospective study will get responses up until death which may not be perfect in terms of inferring if the intervention was related to their deaths, is still far better than a retrospective approach where nothing would be known.

I think this is why Cass etc have suggested and support a prospective trial.

The trial has absolutely no mechanism for measuring effects long term however. Therefore, it is completely useless.

There’s a lot of excellent materials produced on the trial, Sue and Marcus Evans, Transgender Trend and Stella O’Malley’s open letter (link below).

I’ve been bombarding my MP (well I’ve emailed twice) but still haven’t had a response - although I was pleased to see their name as a signatory to Kemi’s letter.

I fear the courts may be the only route out of this but we should try very hard to open the eyes of parliamentarians- particularly Conservatives as this is actually something popular they can beat the government with to look good.

I fear though that none of them understand the issue at all and see it as niche (with a side of toxic). To be fair to Wes, when you see coverage like yesterday’s of all the people being treated in hospitals in corridors, he’s got a lot to deal with.

We need to do everything we can to make the puberty blocker trial the sort of political issue that can end his career- and make sure he knows it. So hard specially as so many of us can only afford to act anonymously for lots of different and v valid reasons.

https://open.substack.com/pub/genspect/p/an-open-letter-from-genspect-to-dr?r=1one23&utm_medium=ios

Oh and Cass made over 30 recommendations, few of which are being acted on. It’s unbelievably irresponsible to prioritise a trial over other recommendations like the data linkage study and the design of this one is totally flawed. Apart from the many other issues, all the children will also receive psychotherapy which is a massive confounding factor. What is improving wellbeing, the drugs, the therapy or the placebo effect? Surely start with trialling psychotherapy as a standalone intervention?

of course the general population is under the mistaken belief that all gender- related medicine is supported by much psychological support, which of course is bollox.i

And a non activist centrist body would be able to weed these out. It's the very essence of the original way we used to design things.

It is much better to research deaths and after effects of literally every other thing on the planet. Why is this particular thing so different? Why must we insist on sterilising more kids just because we are ineffective at contacting past patients of these gender ghouls? They will all be in the system somewhere.

The data linkage study doesn’t need volunteers- literally looks at the anonymised medical data of all 2000 children given pbs by GIDS.

I think he is a closet trans activists but had to go along with the SC ruling. Philipson, Streeting (Nandy et al) will work towards changing the law over this parliament and I suspect this is just one step.

Scientists will always say trials are needed, it's their day job!

I don't think that there is a loophole for anyone to be prescribed PBs outside of the 226 trial participants. The trial protocol doesn't allow for it & outside of a clinical trial it's illegal to prescribe PBs for gender dysphoria.

Sadly, it is entirely possible that he is a duplicitous fuck.

I'm still hoping that's not the case. However, I'm slowly losing that optimism.

Given he kept referring to "trans children" in the parliamentary debate on Cass (will dig out the thread...), I was sceptical. But I had allowed myself to edge towards believing he planned to do the right thing.

This is a huge issue.

How can a child sign a legal agreement; and how can a parent sign away a child’s legal rights and human rights?

Who is guarding against situations where a dominant or manipulative member of the family feels pressured or tempted to get the ‘free drugs’ on the ‘free trial’? How on earth are these adults going to be screened?

You just have to see the state of some of the mothers and fathers in the UK (many described on the Relationships board on MN) to be aware of how bloody devious, duplicitous and disingenuous they can be where ‘the authorities’ are involved.

Most of the measures wanting to be assessed won't be formally and consistently questioned over time; that's why a structured trial is needed because these measures won't necessarily be asked and recorded at every appointment.

Reading consultation notes may, if lucky, be able to provide data for some patients (probably biased towards consultants who always ask those questions) but unlikely to be a random, representative sample which is needed for reliable inferences to be made.

The complications of concern are very diverse and may not be consistently recorded outside of a structured trial which could lead to an analysis providing false reassurances.

We have to start somewhere. If this shorter term trial conclusions are "too much harm, stop", it provides the evidence to say a longer term trial would be unethical. It would be extraordinary to go from no solid evidence base at all to a >10y length of trial.