Hilary Cass sent a document to every single MP and Peer, justifying and defending the puberty blockers trial

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

https://x.com/JamesEsses/status/2075512549248745744?s=20

There are ten images on X, sorry can't add them all here, or upload a file with it all in.

Why do we keep having to go over the same undeniable facts? If puberty blockers are given to boys at Tanner stage 2, and they never stop them and allow puberty to resume, they don’t make sperm and are therefore sterile. That’s what happens now to children around the world and that’s what this trial is proposing to do. This Is incontrovertible.

Can you point to exactly where in the Cass report this is stated? I can't find it.

And has been established multiple times, on previous occasions, as ANOTHER fact we have to revisit, the children also received mental health support in both groups, and a third got worse in that particular trial. So it cannot be established that puberty blockers were the cause of “no deterioration”.

Can you point to exactly where in the Cass report this is stated? I can't find it.

And even if it were true, why is “no deterioration” in mental health a “lesser of two evils” requiring puberty blockers when “no deterioration in mental health” is the sort of outcome that is obtained from the most established of mental health treatments, therapy and support?

Can you point to exactly where in the Cass report this is stated? I can't find this either.

The bottom line is people like you want to puberty block children. You need to puberty block them because you need them to grow up and claim to be trans. You live vicariously through these children and the harms are inconsequential to you.

If that's how you rationalise normally that's very concerning. I'm simply a stickler for deferring to professional expertise on complex matters I have no qualifications in. Just like have no qualifications in climate or vaccine science, I defer to scientific consensus & expertise for my support.

That's upto an individual's priorities to decide.

Not when we're talking about children it isn't.

It is according to the Keira Bell & Gillick court judgments.

Can you point to exactly where in the Cass report this is stated? I can't find it.

Why does it have to be in the Cass Review for it to be true 😂. It’s basic biology. The process of spermatogenesis takes place through puberty and isn’t complete until late in puberty. So if a boy is stopped going through puberty as soon as it starts, he doesn’t make sperm.

Can you point to exactly where in the Cass report this is stated? I can't find this either.

I asked YOU why you thought “no deterioration” is the lesser of two evils.

Again, why does it need to be in the Cass Review for it to be recognised that the usual standard of care for mental health conditions is the pathway of therapy, support and medications targeting mental health? It’s completely anomalous to treat a still yet to be defined in this thread mental health condition by puberty manipulation with hormones.

If that's how you rationalise normally that's very concerning. I'm simply a stickler for deferring to professional expertise on complex matters I have no qualifications in. Just like have no qualifications in climate or vaccine science, I defer to scientific consensus & expertise for my support.

Okay, explain why you’re so keen for it to go ahead. And what about the experts who are opposed to the trial? And what consensus are you talking about? It’s being debated in parliament, that’s how little consensus there is.

So there are experts opposed and no consensus, so you must be deferring to the idea of puberty blocking children for other reasons. What are they?

@Tottenhamhotflushes:

Why do we keep having to go over the same undeniable facts? If puberty blockers are given to boys at Tanner stage 2, and they never stop them and allow puberty to resume, they don’t make sperm and are therefore sterile. That’s what happens now to children around the world and that’s what this trial is proposing to do. This Is incontrovertible.
Can you point to exactly where in the Cass report this is stated? I can't find it.

Well established:

Fertility preservation: is there a model for gender-dysphoric youth?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12022625/

Boys offered FP in prepubescence and early puberty (Tanner stages 1 and 2, in which gametes have not yet matured), have only the option of testicular tissue preservation available to them, since they have not yet developed mature spermatozoa (5, 16).

Wrong again.

Both Gillick and Keira's case are complex and don't simply translate in the way you hope - speaking as somebody who was involved in numerous professional discussions about Gillick / Fraser guidelines in relation to children.

The appeal won by the Tavistock was that it was for doctors to determine the consent on the issues outlined in the case, not the courts.

You don’t understand Gillick, unsurprisingly.

I'm not proposing a 'fresh set of data to yield different results', I'm proposing a complete, comprehensive and accurately recorded set of data that will yield statistically valid results.

Children are not a "data set." This trial proposes using drugs on healthy children to see what happens. Experimenting on children. The only way to get your "fresh set of data" is to experiment on healthy children.

Let's call this what it actually is.

I don't think any child can be Gillick competent to consent to taking PBs. They simply cannot have the maturity to evaluate the long term consequences in terms of sterility or sexual function.

So none of your assertions are in the Cass report as poorer outcomes? Interesting that they wouldn't mention them.

I already explained why puberty blockers is the lesser of two evils upthread.

And you can't have it both ways by deferring to the Cass report only when convenient.

As I already said I'm stickler for expertise & right now all countries that have conducted systemic reviews on puberty blockers either have them available for a restricted cohort or available under trial so like Cass I support the usage for a very restricted cohort.

Indeed.

And thankfully now it's all getting much more scrutiny from a safeguarding perspective.

With lots of people wondering how they ended up thinking that it was in children's best interests to progress as we had been doing.

The sunlight really is pouring in on this. It's pretty mainstream now to question why it's ok to experiment on these children's brains and bodies just because the children and their parents say they want it.

And that means they can be MINORS. So its you that's doesn't understand your own claims.

What assertions?

Cass mentions multiple risks of the treatment.

And why does something need to be asserted in one review for it to be true? What about other documents?

As I already said I'm stickler for expertise & right now all countries that have conducted systemic reviews on puberty blockers either have them available for a restricted cohort or available under trial so like Cass I support the usage for a very restricted cohort.

So explain which cohort should get them and how you are selecting this cohort.

You may claim to be a stickler for expertise but it doesn't show in your endless comments. There are so many aspects of this that you display significant ignorance about.

The rest of us on here are primarily concerned about children and their welfare. The well evidenced capture of the NHS by extreme transactivism raises many questions about the motivations of too many medics. The abandonment of fundamental principles of "first do no harm" and the need to safeguard children from unethical experimentation being clear evidence of pandering to a niche ideology rather than centring the rights and safety of children.

So who is consenting for these 11 year old children then? The doctors? The parents? Or themselves as Gillick competent?

Except that the child transed at 2 is not a real child. It's an illustratory example she made up.

I understand that, having said there is no good data, her impulse is to go and get some. And that impulse is sound.

What I don't understand, is her lending her name to a trial that is as poorly designed as this one seems to be. There were many other avenues she could have gone down.

I think she got corralled by the TRA contingent, into a research process that she probably knows is far from ideal. But she's in too far now to back out.

It's my understanding that for this trial, the parents are doing the consenting.

Which I would have huge misgivings about.

Indeed. Some parents consent to (i.e. drive and obtain) FGM or honour killings. There are all sorts that parents do in support of their own beliefs.

The whole premise of PBs in this context is predicated on a belief: the belief that we each have a gender identity that differs from our sex and that we'll feel better if our bodies are modified to match it if there is a mismatch between the two.

The opening paragraphs of her letter to MPs urge them to set aside ideological differences. Sure. What she means is she wants everyone to accept that the it's a fact that everyone has a gender identity. Even the schools' RSE guidance doesn't go that far. It's not a fact, it's a belief.

Edited for typo.

Yes. It's quite something to consent on behalf of your child to them having a future life of limited sexual function, potential arrested brain development and all manner of potential physical harms. Especially as these are physically healthy children with mental health challenges.

I don't doubt the pressure that groomed and gaslit teenagers can exert on a parent but how can anyone argue that a parent on behalf of (or even the child themselves) can give informed consent to such unimaginable potential limitations on future adult life?

Let’s say I’m a researcher (yay, I am!) who is interested in finding out the effect of cigarette smoking on people’s health (not me, but let’s play pretend).

Let’s also say that because I have read lots and lots of other people’s research (which is the bare minimum for carrying out a study of this sort) I suspect - nay, hypothesise - that the effect of cigarette smoking is going to be detrimental to health.

I also, from my reading, hypothesise that these detrimental effects will probably only be seen after many years of smoking.

Do I,

A) Give a small group of teenagers who are desperate to smoke, two cigarettes per day for two years, and, at the end of the two years compare heath factors to those in two other groups - another group who are desperate to smoke, but who have only been given cigarettes for a year, and a group who have no interest in smoking and indeed have never smoked;

or

B) Collect health data on as many factors as I can (factors that will be defined by, what’s that? Oh yes, reading lots of other research) from as large a group as possible of adults who have smoked for a significant amount of time, and compare this to outcomes on the same factors for a large group of adults who have never smoked?

Additional question for bonus points: Given that my hypothesis is that smoking is going to have negative effects on health, do you think that an ethics committee should allow me to give two groups of children cigarettes at all?

I'm very confused about the example of the child transed at 2. It seems to be suggesting that John Money was right and you can change a child's sex by simply telling a boy that he is a girl.

Miss, miss! <shoots hand in the air> I think I've got the answer!

Yes. As long as every child (and their parents) knows that there are unknown risks, if they genuinely believe that it will help their health to smoke 2 cigarettes a day for 2 years you should go for it! It really doesn't matter whether they continue smoking the cigarettes afterwards for a while and/or decide to move onto something stronger like weed or crystal meth if it didn't do the job on its own of making them feel better. All that matters is data from your 2 year study.

And of course it's ethical. If you deny them their 2 cigarettes a day because you're worried about long term health implications that you can't even prove (assuming we're going back to the time when we didn't have health data for smoking) then you're the unethical one.

Am I right, miss! I do hope so <twiddles hair shyly and hopes the class thinks it sounds clever>

@BonfireLady, you are such a swot. Or as we used to say when I was a kid: teacher’s pet!

This is because their body starts to change in ways that don’t match how they feel inside.

Is there a person on the planet whose body does NOT change, at puberty, in ways which do not match how that person feels inside? The person feels to him- or herself like a child; the body is turning into an adult. Does any child really feel inside as if he or she were an adult? Even those who pre-puberty are caring for an incapacitated parent know they are not adults, are too young to have this task put on them, are a child who needs not to have adult responsibilities.