FOLLOWING the closure of the infamous Tavistock Clinic and last year’s Cass Report (see here and here) into gender identity services for children, people would be forgiven for believing that this country’s terrible experiment with children’s biological sex had been brought to an end. Certainly Scotland’s gender identity services for under-18s paused new prescriptions of puberty blockers on April 18, 2024, mirroring NHS England’s approach. However, it’s been to the dismay of the Scottish Union for Education (SUE) and others to find that both countries are now participating in a UK-wide clinical research trial on puberty blockers. Its aim, to ‘gather more data on the safety, effectiveness, and long-term impacts of puberty blockers’, allows an undetermined number of children to be the subject of this experiment over the critical years of their adolescent development.
The Independent reported: ‘An NHS-commissioned study, to last until 2031, has now been confirmed by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), to be carried out by a team of researchers led by King’s College London on a contract worth £10,694,902.24.
‘It will see young people, who have the agreement of their parents and NHS gender services, given puberty suppressing hormones (gonadotropin releasing hormone analogues or GnRHa) while having their physical, social and emotional well-being monitored across two years.’
Amongst critics is Dr Jenny Cunningham, a retired Glasgow-based paediatrician, who has rightly called this move ‘unethical’ and ‘injurious’. In a recent article for SUE, she argues transgender activists’ ‘advocacy for puberty blockers is not based on medical benefits or harms’, rather on ‘persuading minors to undergo gender transition’ which is ‘integral to the vindication of [their] transgender ideology’.
The trials would seem to make a mockery of the government’s emergency orders made in response to the recommendations of the Cass Review to restrict the sale and prescription of puberty blockers. However there was a get-out clause included in Cass’s final report. It recommended that puberty-suppressing hormones should (i.e. could) be prescribed only in the context of a clinical trial or under the guidance of the national multi-disciplinary team (our italics).This has quickly been taken advantage of by the NHS England and Scotland.
Dr David Bell, a retired consultant psychiatrist, explains why this trial is wrong medically and ethically: ‘To be clear, the prescription of puberty blockers in the context of a trial would, in effect, introduce a known risk of systemic harm to a physically healthy child. To put it mildly, this is a divergence from normal clinical trial practice.’
Keira Bell, the brave young woman who had treatment at the NHS-run Tavistock child gender clinic and brought a successful judicial review against the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, has also responded to the dangers of puberty blockers inherent in this new trial: ‘Giving life-changing, damaging drugs to confused children in mental distress is an obvious recipe for disaster. It is completely unethical and unjustifiable to proceed with a trial for these drugs that have not indicated any benefit, only detriment, and facilitate no return.’
Any idea that later or consequential gender reassignment surgery leads to happiness or fulfilment has been debunked by a Swedish study that revealed a 19.2 per cent greater risk of suicide for those who underwent it. And yet it seems there are still politicians around the world who would support this. When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was asked about ‘gender-affirming care’ (here, at 28:58), he responded by calling it a ‘fundamental right’ that will be defended ‘without exception’.
The SUE are right to raise the alarm about these trials. There is no indication of how many children are going to be hoovered up in them or to what extent they will simply take the place of previous NHS puberty-blocking services. How many children or their compliant parents will understand the long-term risks involved in undertaking this trial? The well-being of children should be imperative, but it seems that the NHS are still happy to use them as guinea pigs for the transgender ideologues.
