Puberty Blocker Trial Paused

[CrocsNotDocs]

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

Good start. Now shut it down.

I'd be interested to discuss the research ethics side of this. Firstly if the study is not open they don't have permission to do any assessments on potential participants - that includes formal 'prescreening' by looking at medical history & drug history. So any list they have of possible people is an informal guess right now.

Secondly, what is the legal position of a doctor who sees a child who reports using illegally obtained medication? Psychiatrists will see kids using street drugs all the time but this is different - they surely should be telling kids to stop using them on safety grounds? For a start they have no idea what they are buying or whether the dose is accurate.

Horizons intensive protocol (the blocker trial) lists previous or current puberty blocker use or exposure to cross sex hormones as exclusion criteria.

desperate to start the trial, and that one of the reasons for urgency is that some of them are harming themselves and self-medicating with puberty blockers.

This is disturbing on so many levels, I wonder if anyone has stopped to find out if the PB's they're already taking are having such an effect on them that it's the PB that's causing them to become so desperate.

If the drugs are making them desperate to take more drugs, then they can't in all consciousness give them more.

They need a detox regime not a trial.

It's disturbing that the KCL team (as per their barrister's statement) seem to be actively planning to breach their own trial protocol. Current or previous use of puberty blockers is clearly an exclusion criteria for participation in the trial. Breach of protocol is very serious in clinical trials.

If anyone else is interested in reporting this inappropriate behaviour (planning to recruit children specifically excluded in the protocol) by the trial team & their sponsor the MHRA email address is:

[email protected]

Do we know that any of these children have actually sourced and started taking PBs though?

I would imagine it's more of an emotional blackmail approach that's being taken here, with children and their parents saying that they will source them if the trial doesn't go ahead. That would also tie in with what Cass said to "justify" the trial.

The MHRA (and Cass) really need to be grown-ups here. You can't go ahead with a trial just because the cohort in question might source the drugs themselves if you don't. Everything that's sensible points to finding the data from the previous children (now adults) who had PBs. If they really are that successful for gender dysphoria - and the NHS has lost their data e.g. because of their change in NHS number - then they should put out some kind of appeal to ask these ex-patients to step forward privately to their doctor and agree to share their data. There are 2000 people out there. Surely enough of them would want to help secure this "life-saving" treatment for future generations.

It seems like bonkers reasoning to me, but what do I know, I'm on the Wrong Side of History.

Thing is, if it was anything else, we wouldn't have the full weight of the Righteous establishment driving urgently to do this.

Imagine - a cohort of distressed, emotionally unstable pre-teen children with dubious mental health, getting themselves wound up in their online affirmative echo chambers and self-accessing asbestos cigarettes/weedkiller bubble tea/enriched uranium brownies?

Maybe I’m being unreasonably reasonable in my interpretation of KCL’s position.

I think they are referencing the self harm and self medicating that takes place within the population that the trial is focussed on. I didn’t think they were saying that the trial would address the risk for potential or actual trial participants but there is an urgent need to move ahead with research that could help reduce such risks in line with the findings.

This interpretation comes from key principles of research as much as what I read about what was said in the hearing - so I’m not confident in my take!

Cross sex hormones targeted for a ‘pause’.

I trust Nick Wallis to not release a leak if he really hadn’t seen this document.

https://archive.is/2zpo8

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15625107/NHS-stop-prescribing-puberty-blockers-trans-identifying-children.html

“The NHS is set to stop giving powerful cross-sex hormones to trans-identifying children under-18, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The move to pause the prescription of oestrogen and testosterone to 16 and 17 year olds could come as early as this week.

It is understood medical experts are firmly behind the ban on the roll-out to new patients - but there will be a brief consultation period.

It is a hugely significant milestone in the ongoing battle over trans issues.

Puberty blockers were banned for younger children in 2024, but NHS had continued to continue prescribing the hormones to some under 18 year olds, even though their benefits are unclear.”

And the article continues

I’m all for stopping the prescribing of cross sex hormones to children. I’m also interested in what is deemed to be different at 18 years to 17 years. I’m presuming it’s guided by pre existing legislation norms rather than development.

Adolescence, from a developmental perspective, is often framed at ending at 25 - recognising that there is precocious and delayed development. I would like safeguards to be based on a minimum age for prescription to be legal but for prescribing rules to require developmental assessment.

Thanks for the info

“The NHS is set to stop giving powerful cross-sex hormones to trans-identifying children under-18, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Great, it'll be tough on those who are being prescribed them, but it's got to be done, they'll undoubtably hate us for it but that's a price we can pay if it means they stop harming themselves with these unnecessary drugs.

There are 2000 people out there. Surely enough of them would want to help secure this "life-saving" treatment for future generations.

The traditional Reddit response to this is to exclaim that nobody should cooperate with a medical and civil regime that obviously wants to genocide them, and that any official move towards gathering data about who has received treatment in the past is simply a front for creating a register of people to be rounded up and killed at some point in the future.

When I read this point of view I wonder if extreme paranoia is a side effect of PB’s, also.

I think it is being stopped for new patients

I did think this, but the wording was odd.

The current cohort, if not part of the trial, will not be taking PBs at all, given the length of time until the reports get published. 5 years?

It was said as a 'need for speed' is we have kids self harming right now and self medicating right now.

And they were arguing about a stay of a matter of weeks.(Hardly significant given the length of the trial overall). So it did feel like the cohort they were referencing was those here and now.

I don’t think it’s a side-effect. More likely it is part of the cause, the reason these people end up on harmful and medically un-necessary drugs in the first place. They start from a POV that the world needs to shape itself around them and their distress, delusion or fantasy. This worldview is validated and reinforced by ‘gender’ affirming cross-sex hormone treatment - plus, of course, decades of Stonelaw. So anything that might take away such validation and affirmation is seen as a personal attack.

So should there be a trial of weight loss drugs for people with anorexia, on the grounds that they might also seek to get them illegally if they are told no?

Perhaps it's emotional immaturity, due to impacted brain development, that's driving the paranoia?

I must have missed a trick as I thought this had already happened

NHS England pauses new prescriptions of cross-sex hormones for under-18s https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly0ppdzj2yo

Someone has finally woken up to the evidence of the damage caused by testosterone on the female body and thought “oh shit”.

If they [the puberty blockers] really are that successful for gender dysphoria - and the NHS has lost their data e.g. because of their change in NHS number - then they should put out some kind of appeal to ask these ex-patients to step forward privately to their doctor and agree to share their data. There are 2000 people out there. Surely enough of them would want to help secure this "life-saving" treatment for future generations.

Worth repeating this! The silence speaks volumes!

I think that 16 and 17 year olds were eligible to be prescribed these from gender clinics. I could be wrong though.

Hannah Barnes thread:

https://x.com/hannahsbee/status/2030957769168134510?s=46&t=A2fpFNgDRyXF2d6ye97wEA

NEW: Today’s news that NHS England has paused new prescriptions of cross-sex hormones for under 18s a) seems a bigger deal than being suggested, b) raises several questions, c) has potentially significant consequences for any forthcoming trial of puberty blockers...

Long thread worth reading -

Finally, were the pause to be made permanent (after consultation), it has profound implications for any future trial of puberty blockers. The MHRA's recent request for a minimum age of 14, was in part because of fears of being on PBs for too long before hormones were available

That observation was when hormones were available at 16. What if they're unavailable until adulthood? If the trial goes ahead with unchanged age criteria, it could mean children remaining blocked for up to eight years, with all the risks that brings.

This could make the PB trial null and void.

I absolutely dread to think what the consequences of hundreds of 16 year olds being given cross sex hormones might be.

If anyone thought PBs were a bad idea, just imagine what's coming down the line.

Despite the new trial and some remaining extremist outposts, I really.do feel the NHS have been attempting to shut down this horrorshow, one bit at a time, with as.little publicity as possible.

They know.