Puberty Blocker Trial Paused

[CrocsNotDocs]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/e0a6d8e8751dbca8

Good start. Now shut it down.

Thank you. That was a good read.

I note Hannah Barnes doesn't think there is a middle ground compromise on the puberty blockers trial. She basically thinks it's not possible and the only alternative is an unscientific unethical trial.

I wonder how long it's going to take for people to realise this across the board for gender identity. There is no middle ground because it's an ideology which is fundamentally sexist, homophobic and sometimes racist and harms vulnerable groups which means it's incompatible with equality if it's just blindly accepted. There is no compromise to be reached which doesn't harm vulnerable groups including transpeople themselves.

The MHRA that took zero interest in the off label dispensing of these drugs to children by the NHS for the last 20 years? That 'brilliant bunch of scientists'?

The MHRA, who, according to Hannah Barnes’ article above, had already signed off on this study?

It is really concerning when you look at the process to approve this trial. It did seem to have the ability to miss a great deal and to be ideologically biased.

It keeps coming back to that we already knew about the limitations the MHRA now mention. Yet those issues seemed to be dismissed.

I genuinely think it is the potential for all this to come out in court that did it.

How did MN FWR posters know all this years ago and yet the Brilliant Scientists at the MHRA hadn't got a clue?

Every doctor that prescribed them knew they were castration drugs.

It beats me. It feels like they did very poor research themselves.

This pausing of the trial is about self-preservation not about the kids.

We could see it as a failure. We could see it as the safeguarding mechanisms of the legal system and compensation system kicking in and working.

on this score, I’ve been following Dr Rachel Barr for a while. Her book appears to tackle the intersection between brains and environmental factors and how to navigate them to be healthier. Key points being that today’s society set up is really fucking tough. She’s a neuroscientist with autism and adhd. Good reads threw up Haidt as an associated author.

I do also want to highlight that there are some authors/ researchers who are balancing out the “it’s all phones and screens” narrative as I don’t think it’s that simple. i also think there’s a bigger, nuanced picture.

even very early things like the amount of daily support a new mother gets, especially when she’s already got older children. Western cultures do not have this. There’s countless posts on mn about this. R4 did a piece in early Jan about a Nordic country who basically have post partum doulas who visit several times weekly, even to just clean the house, for a long time on their nhs - but is now going to stop.

Given the context of how we got into this mess, which Hannah’s has diligently documented, one would hope that these mechanisms are only improving.

We also always said here it would be the court cases that would turn the tide

I would like to think the latter, but as these safeguarding mechanisms - the MHRA - totally overlooked all these concerns the first time round when they approved this study, I am feeling more like @Shedmistress. If an external noise and threat of legal action hadn’t happened, I feel like their original approval would have stood and no one would have been the wiser.

Thanks for that - had not come across her.

Also good to hear that there are some bits of balanced (ie it’s the phones, but also it’s not just the phones) research going on. I do actually think Haidt is normally pretty balanced - he seems to love data and numbers and evidence - but at the moment he is leading a campaign, which rather necessitates single issue messaging. I don’t blame him - it’s getting traction. But I think there is a lot of nuance being missed.

Unbelievable...

https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/pausing-puberty-blockers-trial-is-bizarre-says-cass

Well there went the last bit of respect I had for the woman.

Hilary Cass the woman who couldn't read her own report and understand what she'd written because she doesn't understand the principles of medical ethics and do not harm.

Genius lady.

Crikey!

"...people from the gender-critical side of the debate seem surprised or discomforted that I'm supporting a trial,..."

Those are the words of someone captured by transactivism aren't they? Unable to see that responsible adults aren't going to agree that risking the fertility, brain and body development of a 10 year old is an acceptable risk.

So disappointing given that she's been clear about the harms all this causes to children.

I think this probably hits the nail on the head.

Gender medicine is no longer considered career enhancing.

I know I’ve said this before, but the more I read of her post-report interviews, the more I genuinely think she had very little to do with the actual writing of the report. That she was in the PhD supervisor/project manager role, and was the big trusted name that got put on it, but that she actually has no clue what’s in it or what it actually means.

I can’t think of any other explanation for the way that everything that comes out of her mouth undermines (or is undermined by, equally) her own study.

She may have thought that the screening and consent procedures would be guaranteed to exclude all but that very small cohort of “true trans” boys that she believes exist. But of course, no one could say that explicitly.

And in any case, blocking anyone’s puberty, thereby stopping them becoming a fully functioning adult, can never be anything other than immoral.

“I have not changed my position an inch since I wrote my report, and yet, suddenly, people from the gender-critical side of the debate seem surprised or discomforted that I'm supporting a trial,” she said.
“But I called for a trial two years before the report, and I said in the report that everything that we do to these young people needs to be done in the context of a proper research programme, because otherwise we can't improve what we're doing for them.”

So Cass is basically admitting she went into this wanting a trial and whatever her report showed, she wasn’t going to change her mind on that front. Even though her own report showed that evidence supporting puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria is "remarkably weak" and based on "shaky foundations".

Yes, she seems to be digging herself in.