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.”'

Hannah Barnes in the New Statesman

https://archive.ph/4orNj

https://www.newstatesman.com/investigation/2026/01/nhs-puberty-blocker-trial-information-ignores-or-minimises-critically-important-risks

I don't understand why Cass is supporting this trial when

The trial information sheets say that puberty blockers may provide young people with gender incongruence “time to explore their gender identity without worrying about their body starting to change”. Parents and children are not told how speculative this hypothesis is, nor that it was rejected by the Cass Review.

My bold.

Thanks for this. The lack of clear unambiguous information is appalling. Nothing's been learnt it seems. Those poor children

I feel like we need a round of letter writing to Baroness Cass to ask how she can support a trial that plainly goes against her own recommendations.

The trouble is once transactivists get hold of this stuff - and we know how deeply embedded they are in the NHS - they revert to what they've been parroting for years. "Pbs are reversible, they're just a pause you can freeze your eggs / surrogacy, nothing to be concerned about tra la la ". And nobody dares to tell them to fuck off.
It doesn't matter to them that it's lies. The safety and wellbeing of children aren't of concern compared to their mission of gaslighting the young into believing all this will "cure" their developing bodies and pubertal angst.

They're immensely powerful and enabled from the top of the NHS.

The people that did the original 'trial' are not only at the op of the NHS, they are also at the top of the DfE.

Russell Viner was President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health from 2018 to 2021. Currently Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department for Education. He is a paediatrician and professor at the University College London (UCL) Great Ormond St. Institute of Child Health and works clinically at University College London Hospitals (UCLH).

This is never going to go away whilst these people are hailed as medical heroes and are at the highest positions within the organisations that control what happens to kids.

I suspect she feels like she's washed her hands.

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”

Surely by not making trial participants aware of know harmful outcomes risks they are leaving themselves open to be sued?

🎯

That will probably be in the small print, because they already know what the harms are. So they will have constructed a get out clause to suit.

Given these drugs are widely used and the side effects are well.documented, not sure that'll wash in court. Especially not when the main side effect - stopping puberty - is the stated aim.

The consequences and risks only worsen from here on in, but I expect its like playing pass the parcel with a hand grenade. Nobody wants the music to stop.

The outcomes of this drug (not really ‘side effects’) are well known to anyone who researches it or works with it, but not to parents and children signing up for the trial off the back of TRA propaganda.

The problem with using this drug for this purpose is that the purpose is in itself harm.

The aim of the drug is to stop puberty in a healthy pre-teen. Stopping puberty in and of itself is harmful - puberty is a one-time only deal, and all evidence is that if you go on to wrong-sex hormones immediately from puberty blockers, you do not “go through the puberty of the other sex” but rather will be stuck in a pre-pubertal state, physically and neurologically.

The unwanted (ie non-puberty-stopping) effects of the drug are horrific, but the wanted ones are bad enough that this trial should not be taking place.

This is something I’ve tried to understand - when they use it in v young children to ‘delay’ precocious puberty - does puberty then happen when they come off the drugs at, say, 11? And if so, why doesn’t that happen if they give it to a 11yo who by the time they are 16yo have changed their minds? Or is the issue that they have been mis using it as a treatment for precious puberty too?

Am trying to understand why it’s safe (supposedly) in one scenario/age but not the other?

That's presumably because it is not "safe" to use in precocious puberty, but the risk of serious harm from precocious puberty outweighs the dangers of the drug.

PP is under 9. Any young girl showing signs of PP will be assessed to ensure that there isnt any other cause and that the first stages of puberty are developed normally, apart from the precocious of it.

So children would be on blockers for a short time with a definite ending, when the child is still young.

Puberty blockers for trans is different. The children will be older, and very often started puberty, so the drugs aren't stopping it right at the start. Also, they would only stop if they change their mind, or are old enough for cross sex hormones or surgery. So could be 11 to 16-18?

Their bodies will be growing during this time only without puberty, which is something that doesnt happen for children with PP. And because, once on PB, these children rarely stop identifying as trans, there isnt the data regarding starting normal puberty.

Its such a risk.

There used to be lots of information available about the side effects of PB for PP.

Lots of it has disappeared from google, but treatements have changed too. PB arent prescribe as long as they once were. Its seen as within the normal range to start periods at 8 or 9.

I think it would be helpful if there was a better public understanding of the full range of changes that puberty causes.

Parents and medics in this seem very focused on the visible changes to the body by have given little thought to the neurological changes.

Why do they think puberty blockers will stop the body developing but allow the brain to continue?

Expecting puberty blockers to stop a child’s body developing into an adult body but to allow the child’s brain to develop into an adult brain is lunacy. What on earth makes them think a child is going to become a fully functioning adult if the key development process is stopped? It is literally creating chronological adults with a child’s brain. Like Tom Hanks in Big.

This is quite mind blowing in its stupidity - so wilfully stupid it borders on evil.

Thank you - all the lit when you google it is now very biased by the trans/GI positives that it’s hard to understand how they are still saying its reversible/safe - when it seems it is only comparatively ‘less unsafe’ than the impact of doing nothing for a child with PP, and even then only in very very short term use and in very limited clinical circumstances.

My DS had to go to a growth clinic when he was young as he was off the growth charts with average/short parents and our HV was having kittens. I met a mum there with her 8yo DS who already had stubble and looked like he was 8 going on 38. She was really distraught as he had stopped growing and had huge emotional and behavioural problems arising from his experiencing puberty (testosterone surges) when he really wasn’t old enough to process. They had started him on PBs because it would give him the chance to grow a little more and hopefully reach 5ft 5 (ie not look like he had dwarfism) and enable him to grow up a bit. I had no understanding, back then, that there would be life long impacts of the route they were taking.

I remember feeling really guilty because I was soooo relieved when the tests for my son showed he was ‘just tall’ and genetically harked back to previous generations of the family. Until my DD started down the trans path I had thought I would never need to try to understand these things again.

https://www.statnews.com/2017/02/02/lupron-puberty-children-health-problems/

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/20/experience-i-took-hormone-blockers-to-become-an-ice-skating-champion

Whatever the reason, the use of puberty blockers has to be weighed up against the sided effects.

It's not true to say that people think there aren't risks if these drugs are taken for reasons unrelated to gender dysphoria.

The drugs are also used for endometriosis where there is a clear warning that must only be used for six months and once in a lifetime.

@nicepotoftea the article about the Russian ice-skater’s experience is, well, horrific and just seems to confirm that even in contemporary times the clinicians have eff all idea what the impact of these drugs may be. Jeez. Am so angry for her, even if she has moved on from it.

Yes, exactly.

Its so insane. How did anyone get persuaded by it?

I wish these could be sent directly to Wes Streeting and he would read them.

Government responds to the petition.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/751839