Puberty Blocker Trial Paused

[CrocsNotDocs]

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

Good start. Now shut it down.

Interview starts at 7:37am if you want to listen on catch up

You just really like to tell women off while showing off your (rather lame) witticisms, don't you?

This is heartbreaking. Children like this have been utterly failed by a society that should have protected them.

Haven't RTFT so apologies if already asked-
Where is this from please, Soon?

An interesting tone on that Today interview, Nick Robinson adopting quite a deferential attitude towards Hannah Barnes. I think a number of trans allies/fence sitters at the BBC might finally be “getting it”.

Many children, parents and clinicians see gender distress as being a primary condition that needs treating as such. Others see gender distress as a symptom of other conditions which, when treated, the gender distress will disappear or diminish. Some, like Cass, suggest that it is primarily a symptom of other conditions but in very rare cases, it can be a primary condition.

The positive element of the Pathways trial was wider data being collected that could provide evidence to support/challenge these differing perspectives.

If the trialing of puberty blockers is stopped, I hope that investment in research will continue so good quality evidence can be used to inform how gender distress is understood and treated.

The scientific parameter in this case being suicides of gender-confused children since December 2024 when the puberty blocker ban was imposed.

Not the five years before it.

Like almost all TRA arguments, there's a sciencey-sounding factoid in there, but it's incorrectly applied and buried in emotive bullshit.

Doesn't work any more. Next.

The Pathways trial was only ever going to (poorly) replicate the failed and disastrous trial that was already carried out at the Tavistock. The solution is not to harm more children, but to expend all energies to track down the children that have already been harmed.

I think it's from here. @IwantToRetire posted this link earlier.

https://twitter-thread.com/t/2024940290050535563

There may not be new information here but there will be new process. All trials are assessed by the HRA, where an ethics committee look at the protocol and make a determination on whether there are any ethical challenges with the protocol. They said everything was tickety boo. I am not sure if they even requested any changes.
MHRA then look at safety and they are not happy. However many of the issues raised by MHRA (like the issues with impact on fertility and how this relates to consent) should have been picked up by the HRA.

I still think there is a need for a well designed study on PBs. Without it, questions on safety and efficacy of PBs will never be answered, and kids will just source this stuff through other much less safe means. However, this trial is not it.

"But Cass told the BBC last week it was "vital" that the trial for puberty blockers for under-16s went ahead, or "we're going to have ongoing charlatans just handing out inappropriate drugs", pointing to the private sale of the drugs - particularly online."

From the BBC article linked in this thread.

I cannot get behind this argument at all and I am surprised that someone like Hilary Cass is sinking as low as to use it. I know she has spoken to many of the parents and children accessing PBs via people like Webberley and I think she comes from a place of compassion, in that she may think that these children are going to get the drugs anyway so it would be better if they were monitored via the trial. I can understand she may think this justifies the trial.

But thinking it through, would we do this for any other illegal drug? I know they have tried things like ’safe injecting rooms’ in Scotland (I think) for heroin users etc. but suppliers are still prosecuted.

If PBs are banned, then surely shutting off every illegal supply (there can't be that many) would be the best option? The vile people supplying PBs to vulnerable families need to be in jail.

Where are these figures from? I can't find them on the NCMD website.

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

What is the point of blocking the puberty of. 14 year old girl? I had boobs, a period and was sexually active by then.

A well designed study should have as its starting point a clear description of what the condition is that they are trying to treat, and why they believe that this treatment is going to alleviate that condition.

Waffle about gender identities not aligning with sex isn't adequate.

There isn't any point. This means the trial is dead and children won't be harmed by it.

I understand you feel that some sort of controlled test is necessary, but in the world of research, you need a valid reason for proposing a particular solution to a problem - otherwise you would be testing “having crushed glass for breakfast” as a means to alleviate gender distress.

Why is it thought that stopping puberty, specifically, will alleviate gender distress?

And furthermore (as I have said on another thread)

What does “alleviation of gender distress” even look like?

(the below is cut and paste from my other post:)

If it looks like some sort of general removal of depression and anxiety, then why would puberty blockers be the drug being tested, when we already have vast reams of research on multiple sorts of anti-depressants? We don’t need a new drug in that particular market, so surely that isn’t what is being tested.

So it must be specifically about gender distress. And there are only two ways (that I can think of) one might think about that being alleviated:
One, “alleviating gender distress” could mean that the child no longer feels uncomfortable in their sexed body, that they no longer feel like they were “born in the wrong body.” That is a plausible definition of “alleviating gender distress” but there’s no plausible reason to expect that to be the outcome of stopping puberty. In fact, given everything we know about how puberty works, that is the opposite of what we might expect to happen. By stopping the child from going through the natural development of the brain (as well as the body) that happens during puberty, you are almost guaranteeing that they will have no “changes of mind,” as it were, about their view of their sexed body.

The alternative is, two: “alleviating gender distress” means “increased happiness simply because stopping puberty in this way is seen by the child as the first step on a path towards medically altering the body to make it fit their mental image of what their body should be.”

Now, if the latter is the case, that is a whole can of worms for the research team, and that the ethics committee should have been aware of. Because if that is the case, then you are not ever going to be able to test the “effectiveness” of just stopping puberty on gender distress - because it is not ever considered a just in the minds of the experimental subjects.

If you cannot say to the subjects “you will be given this drug and nothing more, ever” and have them believe you, then you are not testing just that drug - particularly when you are looking at psychological outcomes - you are testing the effect of knowing that they have (finally!, after begging and begging) taken the first of many steps on a path that they have already decided is the right path for them.
In other words, there is no way to test the effectiveness of stopping puberty on alleviating gender distress in isolation. Again, the whole premise of the study falls down.

No point. Even if you agree with drugging children to improve their ability to pass as the opposite sex in adulthood it’s totally unnecessary to include girls in the trial. They are being sacrificed for the benefit of adult men who are annoyed that however much effort they put into their transition 99% of them still look like men.

Thank goodness. It was clearly a thinly veiled attempt to restart the Tavistock's original approach of puberty blockade then cross sex hormones. Terrible trial design to the point of either incompetence or being deliberately shit. To quote Good Clinical Practice training - the safety of participants is always more important than any benefit to science or society. If you want to know more about what permanently stopping puberty might do to humans, do it to monkeys first.

The whole sorry business has totally undermined my faith in MHRA & the REC system. The REC system is clearly not fit for purpose.

Thank you!

Thank you for this post!

I was wondering why the MHRA kept going on about having to bridge the gap between PB and cross sex hormones. It really is a given that this is the pathway.

Completely unethical and not a 'time to think' at all.

You’d have been witchfinder general, if you were given half a chance.
Anyway, off to celebrate! Have a shit day x

The rather muddled rationale is to see if they improve mood, perception of wellbeing etc. The criticism is that even if they do, is it because they actually do that, or because the recipients are happy because they got what they wanted.

The more one thinks about it, the more senseless is the design.

Indeed.

In fact, we already know from the failed Tavistock experiment that puberty blockers don’t work as a “time to think”.

If you assume that the “time to think” is an extra period of time in which the child and their carers and physicians can determine whether they are one of the 90-95% of gender distressed children who will grow out of the gender distress, then we already know that puberty blockers do not give this extra time. We know this because 90-95% of children who were given them at the Tavistock went on to cross sex hormones, which is not the numbers that would be expected if you left the children unmedicated. There was no evidence that anyone was able to use this supposed extra time to identify the tiny proportion of children who would not outgrow gender distress.

So, it’s not a “time to think” thing either.

Without it, questions on safety and efficacy of PBs will never be answered, and kids will just source this stuff through other much less safe means.

This argument doesn't make sense to me. With any other drug we would go after the people supplying it and shut that down. We wouldn't say "let's give spice/ketamine/whatever to children so we can prove once and for all that it harms children and then everyone will of course immediately stop trying to obtain or supply it".

That's not how we deal with any other substance being supplied illicitly or inappropriately.