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.”'

Quite. All this has always been driven hardest by adult men with fully intact bodies who very much enjoy their often interesting sex lives, many are fathers, and retain the advantages of an adult man such as deep voices, which they use as and how it best serves them.

Yet they insist it would be better for these children to never have such advantages as they have enjoyed.

Safeguarding questions galore. Everywhere you look.

Insurance, for plausible deniability.

Baroness Cass said this in the Lords a couple of weeks ago.

"My Lords, we are faced with a situation where, for 15 years, clinicians in this country have told children and young people that these medications are safe, fully reversible and indeed life-saving. Last year, they were rightly banned from clinical practice. However, the upshot is that now, of the 75 children a month who are coming to the new services, about 20% are getting these medications and, worse, testosterone and oestrogen from unlicensed and unregulated sources—and those are the ones we know about. In addition, referrals to the new services have dropped from 200 a month to only 30 a month, so we think that a large number of those young people are also being harmed through those mechanisms.
We are concerned about this much broader harm; children are voting with their feet now. Does the Minister agree with me that, for the very tiny number of young people who clinicians believe will ultimately have a long-standing gender incongruence and will therefore be eligible for this trial, it is better that they get their medication under careful clinical supervision rather than on the dark web? Secondly, does she think that this trial will be a way of attracting that broader group of young people back into the NHS who do not need medical treatment but need holistic wraparound care?"

Baroness Cass should have made that first sentence,

My Lords, we are faced with a situation where, for 15 years, clinicians, charities, schools, parents, MP's, the BBC etc etc in this country have told children and young people that these medications are safe, fully reversible and indeed life-saving.

My gut feeling is that this trial may be the less worst option for those brainwashed kids and I think that's where Streeting is coming from too.

Well. Thats the 'legalise heroin' argument, only for children.

So Cass thinks, they're going to do it themselves so we might as well do it to them as well, and collect a bunch of data while we do. 🤯

If the data proves there's no benefit to PB's and is indeed harmful to children will we keep give it to them because they'll only go and get it somewhere else if we don't. WTAF

I think Cass and Streeting want the best solution for this cohort of children which won't be the same solution for the cohort coming behind them as society has changed. I would imagine there will be a smaller proportion going ahead with PB via the NHS than if they went to a private provider because they will be given all the facts and not instantly affirmed. But the clinics won't broadcast this as they would be accused of conversion therapy.

Can't think of anything else they'd do like this specifically for children.

I may be well out of date but I thought that medically prescribed drugs were not tested on children and hcp relied on using a mathematical formula for correct dosage for children? Based on weight?

I mean obviously puberty only happens at a discrete time for humans.

The cart well and truly in front of the horse. If the retrospective study was done first, we might not need the prospective one. Or it might change the design, or recruitment. Or the consent/assent process.

Agree with PP - who has the ear of Wes/Cass that this must be done? Someone in power with a transidentified child?

The parents in this situation are the very opposite of safeguards.

I didn’t get further than,

“They’re not old enough to consent. They would need to assent”

Someone is speaking with a forked tongue.

Transgender Trend have a detailed article explaining so many of the issues with this trial. It's lengthy and clearly evidenced - well worth a read:

"The Cass Review should not be used as justification to run a trial of puberty blockers. This was only one Recommendation of 32 Recommendations in total. To go forward with this one Recommendation while ignoring others that are crucial to put in place first, is using the Cass Review to implement an agenda, not following it to ensure patient safety and evidence-based treatment."...

www.transgendertrend.com/pathways-puberty-blocker-trial-cass-review/

That letter has a lot of signatures.

Streeting should’ve NEVER allowed this so-called trial to happen. The longer he prevaricates, the harder to stop it. When it goes ahead, and tragically fails the children on it - who at their young ages have absolutely no idea what they’ve been signed up for - then he’ll be long gone from politics so won’t care it’s called the Streeting Trial

Unless he wants to be leader of the opposition when Labour are kicked out at the next general election. Maybe he’s angling for a position with the UN and that’s why he’s letting it go ahead?

Please everyone keep writing to your MPs
I see a tiny tiny bit of hope here.

If they’re say they’re going to be following up the kids who have already been through this ‘treatment’, then that is really great in itself. Plus if they’ve said they will do that then it makes absolutely no sense to start a new trial before we know what happened to kids who went through GIDs and had PBs.

So the government has an out that it could take here. Just prioritise the follow up study. Insist on doing that first. That is the precautionary way to proceed.

The rest then takes care of itself because it will no way be ethical to pursue a new trial of PBs once it’s emerged how children and young people were treated before with PBs. Streeting needs colleagues to be constantly reminding him of this.

I'm concerned for all of the young people who will be part of the trial, but I am particularly concerned for the young girls.

Around me, I see quite a few TIMs who all decided to transition in their middle age, or older. I don't know ANY middle aged (or above) women who have decided at that age that really they're men. Is that just where I live?

If not, then why are there so many young women suddenly feeling like they need to? My theory is that it's because they don't fit the stereotype these days and feel under pressure because of it. But that's no reason to halt their development and tell them they are boys.

I fear that so many of the children that are caught up in this trial will come to regret being part of it, and it will do far more damage to them when they should have been given actual help to come to terms with their own natural bodies.

Yes. They're not really thinking about protecting children, are they? Nobody is thinking about what is actually best for these troubled children. It's all about arse covering for the medics.

Does the Minister agree with me that, for the very tiny number of young people who clinicians believe will ultimately have a long-standing gender incongruence and will therefore be eligible for this trial, it is better that they get their medication under careful clinical supervision rather than on the dark web?

So how do the clinicians know which children "will ultimately have a long-standing gender incongruence"?

Do they have a time machine which will tell them what these children will be like in 5, 10 or 20 years' time with or without 'treatment'?

And what is "a long-standing gender incongruence" anyway? Can we have a definition, please?

Are there questions that we could ask about legal liability for the damages done to those children?

No response at all from mine :( (libdem).

The CAN-SG letter (posted above) has many more private signatures as well. Please sign it if you are any stripe of clinician.

Yes, please sign if appropriate to do so.

Did I read the follow up will be in just two years? So soon after they've destroyed these young people's bodies? (And too soon for the kids to notice any long term damage) I assume that short window, where there's less risk of highlighting the inevitable long term regret, is to protect themselves and this protocol.

I seem to remember the only longitudinal study on transsexualism was on a 10 yr study on adults where rates of suicidality went up after adult 'transition'? Wasn't that from Sweden? I know it was a study from decades ago, long before all the gender madness was fashionable with confused and indoctrinated children.

The kindest interpretation I can come up with is that Streeting and Cass are trying to solve The Trolley Problem without acknowledging the very real children they are sacrificing for political expediency.

What's driving it, really? I don't buy its adults being unable to say no to children (although I do think 'child-centred' has sometimes morphed into that and has played a role).

I've signed it but my name has not yet appeared on the list. I wonder if they are verifying the signatures in some way?

The legacy of 'The Streeting Trial' will definitely not come back to bite him on the arse...

... Don't say we didn't warn you.

then he’ll be long gone from politics so won’t care it’s called the Streeting Trial

He is only 42. I reckon 20 years till the inevitable enquiry and plenty of politicians are in their early 60s.

Whether he pays a price is another question. I can't think of any politician who have faced consequences after a public enquiry - can anyone else?

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

FFS Wes, no clinical trial can ever be declared as “safe” up front. In fact you do the clinical trial to determine the safety and efficacy of the treatment, that’s the whole bloody point. Ok, so you’ve strengthened the monitoring process, but not enough and not for long enough.

The long term health and wellbeing of these 200 children are being sacrificed because no one seems to want to get the full data from the old clinics that was denied to Cass. I can only hope that if it does go ahead, the data from the first few participants clearly show the downsides of PBs outweigh any tangible benefits and so the trial is halted early.

there are lots of checks, balances, oversights and safeguards and constant monitoring in a way that disgracefully wasn’t there before

Disgracefully, I bet Streeting hasn't even read the contents of these supposed safeguards.