Streeting declares the puberty blocker trial 'safe'

[ArabellaSaurus]

https://archive.ph/CFzK4

'On Monday, Mr Streeting reiterated that he was not “comfortable” with the trial, which involves more than 200 people under the age of 16, but said there were significant “checks, balances and safeguards” that made it safe.

He told Sky News: “The thing I’ve had to continually weigh up is that for lots of people who have been through this sort of gender identity treatment, they describe it as life-affirming and life-saving. But there is an understandable degree of public anxiety and concern.

“The crucial reassurance is that not just anyone will be able to sign up to this trial. They will go through extensive assessment by expert clinicians locally that will be reviewed nationally, and every young person would need to assent.
“They’re not old enough to consent. They would need to assent, and they would <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/CFzK4/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/17/children-cannot-consent-puberty-blocker-trial-wes-streeting/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">need the consent of parents.

“And so there are lots of checks, balances, oversights and safeguards and constant monitoring in a way that disgracefully wasn’t there before. That’s what gives me the confidence and assurance of knowing this trial is safe.

“There is a debate about whether this is the right thing to do. I understand that, and there’s one thing we’ve learnt about this particular area of policy is that we shouldn’t silence, debate, dissent, disagreement.

“So we’ll continue to have that, and we’ll continue to be subject to scrutiny and challenge.”

Mr Streeting admitted that the children who will be involved in the trial are “very young” and that the drugs are “very strong”.

But he claimed he had tried to take the “politics out of what has been an extremely <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/CFzK4/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/25/nhs-puberty-blockers-trial-repeat-tavistock-whistleblowers/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">difficult and sensitive issue”.

Despite the research going ahead, the Health Secretary added: “I think there are still big questions about how we ever ended up in this situation where these sorts of drugs were being routinely prescribed with and we’re continuing to get into that and looking.
“There’ll be another study looking at what’s happened to that cohort of young people over time.”'

Female puberty involves menstruation, ovulation, etc, as the main event. Secondary sex characteristics are a part of it.

I guess what PP means is that a male who takes oestrogen develops some fatty breast tissue.

Disappointing that Cass and the article only refer to political pressure and not the ground swell of public opinion against the trial.

Casd also strikes me as someone has has formed an opinion and suffers (as we all do) from the "I'm not biased bias". Perhaps it's particularly strong with her because her name is on The Cass Review and she feels any change or development from there would be an admission of error or something. She is unusually engaged in the public discourse for someone who is supposed to be independent (or was for the purposes of her review).

Except without the ability to use testorone to reach male sexual maturity, there is no puberty.

I am sure you are right Arabella. That some people associate female puberty as 'developed breasts and fat redistribution around the body'.

Having seen this numerous times now, particularly recently, it is incredibly harmful to female people to have terms like this used so very inaccurately. It also actually shows how misogynistic the support of gender identity is if people think this is in anyway appropriate. Because reducing female people to 'breasts and fat distribution' is misogynistic.

However it is also highly inaccurate because those side effects from taking large quantities of estrogen in a male body occur at any time. It is a general side effect and is not 'puberty'. A male person can have already gone through full male puberty and will still have these side effects, because it is a general side effect.

It is in no fucking way 'female puberty'.

Indeed.

100%.

No your words were and I quote "They are safe. My child went on them for a quite a few years."

You are making a very bold and unscientific claim there. Your experience does not mean it is "safe". It certainly does not mean it's "safe" for females given your child is male. This is an egregious thing to say ESPECIALLY as it's immediately after we've been talking about issues relating to sex and medical trails and how you can not assume that success in one sex equals no harm in the other.

You don't get to wriggle out of making that claim by then just saying it was your experience. No that's not a demonstration of it being safe. Not even remotely.

You should retract that comment completely. At best it's grossly misleading. At worst it's an outright deliberate lie.

No one has proved it's "safe". That's kinda the point here.

A transman of my acquaintance who transitioned at 40-ish described the period of voice breaking (due to vocal fold thickening) and scruffy beard growing as “going through male puberty.” At 40.

I do feel the phrase is used as a shorthand, without the users having a good idea of what they are really talking about.

I do feel the phrase is used as a shorthand, without the users having a good idea of what they are really talking about.

Which suggests that standards of clinical care are very poor.

I agree that it is used without thought. If clinicians are at all using these terms that should absolutely stop.

Not only are patients believing that they are actually experiencing these 'puberties' solidifying their identities, they are then ad hoc repeating these inaccurate terms causing not only confusion but negatively impacting on those people who are and have experienced those puberties.

It is clear that people use the terms to also signify and to mark their extreme body modifications as part of their 'transition'. It is all part of the symbolism. However, every single time they do this it just reduces human sex categories to a commoditised event through inaccurate usage of the terminology.

Accurately, it should be described only as side effects of taking exogenous hormones in larger quantities than the person's sexed body would naturally produce. But this accurate description solidifies that the person taking those hormones is not the sex they base their identity on. Obviously, this reminder must be rejected at all costs.

Yes. If the terminology is coming from clinician, it is very poor standards of care.

I suspect though the terminology is coming directly from the internet or support groups who have acquired this language for therapeutic benefit. ie. to allow a person to maintain their identity while describing their extreme body modification processes.

That's not acceptable and shows an inability to have properly consented.

A male taking oestrogen does not go through female puberty.

I mean, this particular transman also calls themselves a gay man, so I don’t really think we’re talking about someone who is fully reality-based.

I'm not going to get into the ins and out of what constitutes a 'real' female.

Said no properly informed person ever.

It would be very interesting to hear more detail.....

What impacts did blocking puberty for so long have on his sexual development and secondary sexual characteristics, for example?

What is it you mean by 'gender diverse'?

Is he no longer trans identifying, and if so why not?

You say he stopped with the blockers at 18/19.....why?

Was it expected he would want to go on to have surgery?

Are you in the UK?

The woman I know who took a GnRC for another reason has ended up with significant unexplained issues such as extreme osteoporosis, pancreatitis etc two decades after taking them. The NHS cannot explain why she has life shortening symptoms and because she went through a private clinic for the other treatment, there is no record of those drugs on her medical record from what she tells me.

I feel that these trials are really only focused on short term health issues and this is immensely harmful. There is a reason that for precocious puberty, the medical decision is based on considering the harmful medical conditions arising from that very early puberty to weigh against long term health.

You did say your child was male, therefore not female. A female is of course a biological category; one that is determined by chromosomes at conception.
A male taking oestrogen will never go on to develop ovaries or menstruate - because the underlying chromosomal 'hard drive' is male, and that hard drive will also shape how the body recieves and metabolises oestrogen.

Adults who claim body modifications mean they are going through puberty? That is wrong in several ways.

Oh it is very much a thing. We all remember whassisface and the 365 days of girlhood, no? It wasn’t womanhood, it was girlhood. And there are loads of trans-identifying men who talk about going through the teenage girl phase that they were so cruelly denied.

Yeah. The symbolism of girlhood and puberty for an identity is also strong, not just for the fetish element either.

I reckon this poster may be in the U.S. Activist language such as this is commonly used in gender clinics there.

Cass has inadvertently created an issue for herself by describing a potential trial that only permits the testing of puberty blockers on those of at least 14 years of age as " really, really unethical". She is going to have to explain why.

Why is ethical only if it involves younger children?

I think the missing data is the 8 year olds on PB for a sustained time.

From research around precocious puberty, they know the side effects for 5 to 8 year olds.

Clinics have a lot of information about 14/15 year olds being on PB for a couple of years.

But how many 8/9/10 year olds have even been referred to clinics historically, let alone been given PB? They know they dont have this data.

Its a very strange detail for Cass to talk about. For a start, to get to a clinic at 8, the child would have had to show signs of gender distress at 6? So it would be rare for a child of this age to be distressed about puberty. And if they were going through puberty, the first concern would be that, not gender.

Vegan cats.

Cass believes in Vegan cats.

Can an 8 year old understand gender / sex? Can they understand the medicalisation they are going through? In terms of distress they are EIGHT. If they are distressed about their sex at EIGHT there's bigger questions at hand.