The puberty blocker trials cannot be justified

The UK government is preparing to experiment on healthy children to investigate a belief it cannot even define.

First do no harm. It’s a neat summary of the ethics of the Hippocratic Oath, and one that doctors generally abide by so long as their names don’t end with ‘Crippen’, ‘Shipman’ or ‘Mengele’. Specifically, we might look to the line: ‘I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous’. Few would argue with that.

So why is the UK government now embarking on trials of puberty blockers for the treatment of children who believe that their identity is misaligned with their body? Approximately 250 children will be involved in the study to be conducted by researchers at King’s College London. Because they are too young to consent, permission will be sought from parents who may or may not have been deceived by the reckless lie that gender-nonconforming children are more likely to commit suicide if not medicated.

The Cass Review confirmed that the evidence for the efficacy of puberty blockers in such cases is remarkably weak, but we do know of the likely harms. Documented cases include an increased risk of osteoporosis, testicular atrophy, cancer, brain damage, and impaired future sexual function. And all of this to prescribe medication to children who are fit and well, and whose problems are clearly the result of a mental-health condition. Why would any conscientious doctor take such risks for a problem that requires a psychotherapeutic approach?

Once again, children are being treated as cannon fodder in the culture war. The grooming gangs scandal saw thousands of girls raped and tortured while figures of authority failed to intervene in order to promote the myth that multiculturalism is beneficial for society. In the midst of the genderist stranglehold on our culture, one whose grip has only recently begun to falter, we have seen countless healthy children experimented upon to promote another ideological fiction; that we each have a gendered essence that may not correspond with our anatomy.

In order to justify this trial, which could potentially ruin many children’s lives, we should surely first establish beyond doubt that such a thing as a ‘gender identity’ exists. In spite of its confidence about the trials, our government cannot even define the term ‘gender identity’. When its spokesperson for equalities in the House of Lords, Jacqui Smith, was asked for a working definition, she simply could not answer. Not that she is alone; even those who believe in a ‘gender identity’ and claim to possess one cannot tell us what it means without resorting to circular (and therefore useless) definitions.

We need to be honest about what is happening here. An unevidenced and pseudoscientific claim is being assumed to be true, and innocent children will almost certainly be injured as a result. This is wholly unethical. Medical trials are initiated on the principle that the potential benefits outweigh the potential risks. But, as Tavistock whistleblower Dr David Bell has pointed out, these trials will ‘introduce a known risk of systemic physical harm to a physically healthy child. To put it mildly, this is a divergence from normal clinical practice’.

Why stop at trials for puberty blockers? In some communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, children believed to be possessed by kindoki – a type of evil spiritual influence – are treated by beating, starvation, burning or forced submersion in water. There is no evidence for the existence of kindoki, and those who believe in such witchcraft represent a minority of the population. So will the government commission a medical trial to ascertain whether beating, starving, burning and submerging a cohort of children is beneficial to their wellbeing?

The analogy seems extreme, but testing for the presence of demons is no less absurd than doing so for the existence of an innate gendered soul. If evidence for such a phenomenon were to be discovered, and reputable doctors were then to put forward a case that this soul/body incongruence is best treated with medical rather than therapeutic intervention, then a puberty blocker trial might be justified. We are so far from this scenario that it is astonishing it is even being entertained as a possibility.

Injecting children with a hormone-suppressing drug to investigate supernatural claims is simply not morally defensible. It will doubtless impact most severely on children who are autistic, who suffer from unrelated traumas, or who are likely to grow up gay. While the power of the genderist ideology continues to decline, we need to be alert to those in positions of power who still insist on conflating medicine with metaphysics. Children should never have to pay the price for the delusions of those entrusted with their care.

---