Thanks Andrew. There is already a mountain of evidence of the harms of puberty blockers going back over decades. Their use in precocious puberty has provided much of it and there are now thousands of children who’ve been damaged by them because adults have been too stupid to look at the evidence and make sane decisions. The fact that our national health service and govt are colluding in such a terrible experiment is beyond belief. Not only will they be harming the healthy bodies and brain development of children who are too young to make informed decisions, they will be choosing the most distressed children to do this to. Why could they not do a mass experiment using therapy? Why destroy the very thing which usually resolves feelings of confusion in children- puberty? I can only think that the plan has always been to relaunch the use of puberty blockers but hide behind the word ‘trial’. This era has opened my eyes to the fact that people can be so easily led into performing atrocities. And that’s what this experiment is.
Want you say about already many children have already been exposed to these puberty blocks, surely and in-depth study of those children who be more sensible rather than exposing more children to this barbaric practice, as I am sure you will find on the whole those who have already been treated will have been damaging.
Exactly. It’s unforgivable. I taught a child with precocious puberty in the 80s. I remember the parents being incredibly worried because of the side affects on bone density and brain development amongst other concerns. The child was kept on them for the shortest possible time.
I have to say that, in my ignorance, I had no idea that puberty blockers have been around for so long. It would be most interesting to know what trials had been done before they had been approved for use. Otherwise two spot-on comments.
I was a nurse and a midwife for forty years and during that time the advice on drinking alcohol in pregnancy barely changed. It is widely believed that drinking moderately during pregnancy is okay but there is no empirical evidence to say that it does not do harm to the unborn child. The reason being is that it we do have empirical evidence that excess drinking in pregnancy is harmful to the foetus so therefore running a trial would be unethical because to ascertain the ‘safe’ level of alcohol intake in pregnancy would cause harm to some women and their unborn babies. This means that the advice is quite simple - do not drink alcohol during pregnancy 💁🏼♂️. Using this logic the same should be applied to puberty blockers and I am incensed that it is not! 🤬
I agree with every word. At the same time, I don't think the issue is going away - there are doctors who apparently believe this is the best thing to do and apparently there are parents who agree. The only caveat I would add to the experiment is that when it goes wrong, compensation is sought from the people responsible and not tax payers. The doctors who think irreversible change on children is the best approach to mental health should stand by their convictions and not rely on institutions to pay.
You just trended into my area which is clinical research!
In short - If the government were health advisors they will be probably telling people to use condoms after they are done having sex. That's very much their logic in this case too because they should have conducted this research before they allowed puberty blockers to be prescribed to any children. There is a whole organisation called NICE which is basically their job to have sufficient clinical evidence before recommending any treatment on NHS.
The reason for these clinical trials is slightly different. The reality is that there are no clear guidance on what is allowed and what is not allowed in the UK when it comes to puberty blockers (I am sure you are very surprised to read that!). According to the EU agreements if someone goes to a doctor in EU country and he / she is prescribed puberty blockers they can come with the prescription and get their medications from a pharmacy in the UK. This is why they are doing these studies to have enough clinical evidence to be able to make a decision and block that route (which could be easily abused as it is now). The existing data that they have is based on observational studies of people who have taken puberty blockers but this data is incomplete and could be biased so they need solid traditional clinical trial data.
I even had a look into the protocol for you. They have included a lot of safety measures for additional protection. Participants will be approved by 2 committees and parents will be required to have prior knowledge and understanding on the therapy before their children are considered. In addition, they say that they may not need to recruit all these patients but use statistical extrapolation.
Unless the first safety measure is “No healthy children shall be injected with a hormone-suppressing drug”, then I don’t think the trials can be morally defended.
An assessment of previous cases would be excellent though, and should already have been done by now. Unfortunately, so many clinics have failed to undertake follow-up analysis and those that did refused to hand over the data to Cass.
Oh, yes, I agree, Andrew. I don't think kids need this at all.
I was only explaining why they are doing it from research perspective. From ethical point of view, we need to make sure there is safeguarding to participants but the participation is voluntary and we need the agreement of both parent and child to participate. The treatment protocol does not allow to include those who do not have capacity so this will remove a big vulnerable population which may not be considered competent to make such decisions.
If someone has decided to buy these drugs they can find them on the black market too. I would rather have them participate in controlled research instead. Unfortunately, we live in such a mad world that we have to do such research.
"but the participation is voluntary and we need the agreement of both parent and child to participate"
Then the parents should make themselves available to be pumped full of GnRH agonists like leuprolide/Lupron, triptorelin, or histrelin implants and then report how "beneficial" the drug is for their well-being. But of course these cowards would not volunteer as human lab rats, that's what they have their children for.
Honestly, I don’t have any understanding left for these parents. I only feel hate. Others would be happy to have a healthy child, and they do everything in their power to make their children sick just because they play with the 'wrong toys' or like 'wrong colors.'
Jesus Christ. In the early 20th century it was the Eugenics movement, used to justify mass sterilizations of the unfortunate. It is now understood that eugenics was ideology, not science. You would think we had grown up and learned from this. Clearly the human race has a massive, massive problem, and it isn't "gender identity", it is vulnerability to being possessed by irrational ideologies. And it is evidently nothing to do with "intelligence", just as losing a limb or your eyesight is nothing to do with your IQ, you can be objectively "brilliant" and still be a bloody dangerous fool. And the more "intellectual" you are - academic, doctor - the more dangerous you are, and the more you will go down in history as having been part of something evil and stupid that "these days we know better about". I suppose the ones in favour of this will say "how can we know anything without evidence, and this is to establish the necessary evidence", like a moron standing in front of Auschwitz and needing some statistics before they know anything was seriously wrong.
Perhaps try applying the standard, ethical practice of "watchful waiting," including parental and professional therapy to help relieve such children's distress? And compare the results to those achieved by puberty blockers and surgery?
Thanks Andrew. There is already a mountain of evidence of the harms of puberty blockers going back over decades. Their use in precocious puberty has provided much of it and there are now thousands of children who’ve been damaged by them because adults have been too stupid to look at the evidence and make sane decisions. The fact that our national health service and govt are colluding in such a terrible experiment is beyond belief. Not only will they be harming the healthy bodies and brain development of children who are too young to make informed decisions, they will be choosing the most distressed children to do this to. Why could they not do a mass experiment using therapy? Why destroy the very thing which usually resolves feelings of confusion in children- puberty? I can only think that the plan has always been to relaunch the use of puberty blockers but hide behind the word ‘trial’. This era has opened my eyes to the fact that people can be so easily led into performing atrocities. And that’s what this experiment is.
Want you say about already many children have already been exposed to these puberty blocks, surely and in-depth study of those children who be more sensible rather than exposing more children to this barbaric practice, as I am sure you will find on the whole those who have already been treated will have been damaging.
Exactly. It’s unforgivable. I taught a child with precocious puberty in the 80s. I remember the parents being incredibly worried because of the side affects on bone density and brain development amongst other concerns. The child was kept on them for the shortest possible time.
I have to say that, in my ignorance, I had no idea that puberty blockers have been around for so long. It would be most interesting to know what trials had been done before they had been approved for use. Otherwise two spot-on comments.
Thank you.
I was a nurse and a midwife for forty years and during that time the advice on drinking alcohol in pregnancy barely changed. It is widely believed that drinking moderately during pregnancy is okay but there is no empirical evidence to say that it does not do harm to the unborn child. The reason being is that it we do have empirical evidence that excess drinking in pregnancy is harmful to the foetus so therefore running a trial would be unethical because to ascertain the ‘safe’ level of alcohol intake in pregnancy would cause harm to some women and their unborn babies. This means that the advice is quite simple - do not drink alcohol during pregnancy 💁🏼♂️. Using this logic the same should be applied to puberty blockers and I am incensed that it is not! 🤬
I agree with every word. At the same time, I don't think the issue is going away - there are doctors who apparently believe this is the best thing to do and apparently there are parents who agree. The only caveat I would add to the experiment is that when it goes wrong, compensation is sought from the people responsible and not tax payers. The doctors who think irreversible change on children is the best approach to mental health should stand by their convictions and not rely on institutions to pay.
I would really like to know if there is any action we can take to try to stop this going ahead
James Esses and Keira Bell are going to do a legal challenge. No doubt they’ll need to raise funds so watch out for news.
Thanks, that is a relief to know. I will support them
On its own this won't do it but this is still worth signing
https://protectingpuberty.com/#mou
This is so wrong.
What parent in their right mind is going to sign their child up to participate in horrific experiments like this?
Münchhausen by proxy parents.
You just trended into my area which is clinical research!
In short - If the government were health advisors they will be probably telling people to use condoms after they are done having sex. That's very much their logic in this case too because they should have conducted this research before they allowed puberty blockers to be prescribed to any children. There is a whole organisation called NICE which is basically their job to have sufficient clinical evidence before recommending any treatment on NHS.
The reason for these clinical trials is slightly different. The reality is that there are no clear guidance on what is allowed and what is not allowed in the UK when it comes to puberty blockers (I am sure you are very surprised to read that!). According to the EU agreements if someone goes to a doctor in EU country and he / she is prescribed puberty blockers they can come with the prescription and get their medications from a pharmacy in the UK. This is why they are doing these studies to have enough clinical evidence to be able to make a decision and block that route (which could be easily abused as it is now). The existing data that they have is based on observational studies of people who have taken puberty blockers but this data is incomplete and could be biased so they need solid traditional clinical trial data.
I even had a look into the protocol for you. They have included a lot of safety measures for additional protection. Participants will be approved by 2 committees and parents will be required to have prior knowledge and understanding on the therapy before their children are considered. In addition, they say that they may not need to recruit all these patients but use statistical extrapolation.
Unless the first safety measure is “No healthy children shall be injected with a hormone-suppressing drug”, then I don’t think the trials can be morally defended.
An assessment of previous cases would be excellent though, and should already have been done by now. Unfortunately, so many clinics have failed to undertake follow-up analysis and those that did refused to hand over the data to Cass.
Oh, yes, I agree, Andrew. I don't think kids need this at all.
I was only explaining why they are doing it from research perspective. From ethical point of view, we need to make sure there is safeguarding to participants but the participation is voluntary and we need the agreement of both parent and child to participate. The treatment protocol does not allow to include those who do not have capacity so this will remove a big vulnerable population which may not be considered competent to make such decisions.
If someone has decided to buy these drugs they can find them on the black market too. I would rather have them participate in controlled research instead. Unfortunately, we live in such a mad world that we have to do such research.
"but the participation is voluntary and we need the agreement of both parent and child to participate"
Then the parents should make themselves available to be pumped full of GnRH agonists like leuprolide/Lupron, triptorelin, or histrelin implants and then report how "beneficial" the drug is for their well-being. But of course these cowards would not volunteer as human lab rats, that's what they have their children for.
Honestly, I don’t have any understanding left for these parents. I only feel hate. Others would be happy to have a healthy child, and they do everything in their power to make their children sick just because they play with the 'wrong toys' or like 'wrong colors.'
Jesus Christ. In the early 20th century it was the Eugenics movement, used to justify mass sterilizations of the unfortunate. It is now understood that eugenics was ideology, not science. You would think we had grown up and learned from this. Clearly the human race has a massive, massive problem, and it isn't "gender identity", it is vulnerability to being possessed by irrational ideologies. And it is evidently nothing to do with "intelligence", just as losing a limb or your eyesight is nothing to do with your IQ, you can be objectively "brilliant" and still be a bloody dangerous fool. And the more "intellectual" you are - academic, doctor - the more dangerous you are, and the more you will go down in history as having been part of something evil and stupid that "these days we know better about". I suppose the ones in favour of this will say "how can we know anything without evidence, and this is to establish the necessary evidence", like a moron standing in front of Auschwitz and needing some statistics before they know anything was seriously wrong.
Well said.
Perhaps try applying the standard, ethical practice of "watchful waiting," including parental and professional therapy to help relieve such children's distress? And compare the results to those achieved by puberty blockers and surgery?