Mick Hartley

This is a disgraceful decision.

The NHS has announced plans to start offering puberty blockers as part of a £10.7 million clinical trial, prompting warnings of an “unethical experiment on children”.

Puberty blockers were “indefinitely” banned across the UK last year for use in children identifying as transgender, due to fears they are unsafe and harm bone and brain development.

Under the planned trial, run by a team at Kings’ College London, children seeking help from NHS gender services will be eligible for the drugs, if their parents and doctors agree it is suitable. The “Pathways” trial will closely monitor participants for two years, including with regular brain scans.

Giving powerful drugs to confused children is no better simply because it's part of a trial. They're still getting the drugs – which we have very good reason to believe will ruin their lives. It's still child abuse.

In her final report, Dr Hilary Cass recommended a new trial to look into puberty blockers. This NHS-commissioned study, due to last until 2031, was confirmed by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), on a contract worth £10,694,902. The trial is yet to pass ethical approval, although the NHS expects it to begin this year.

Cass welcomed the new trial, saying it “aims to fill some of the gaps in our knowledge about the outcomes of different interventions and address some of the uncertainty about the impacts and efficacy of puberty-suppressing hormones”.

That's a shame. I assumed she'd put that in originally as a kind of sop to the inevitable push-back she knew she'd get from trans activists – so perhaps now she feels she has no choice but to back it.

However, several doctors and campaign groups have raised concerns about the ethics of the trial, arguing that existing evidence proves puberty blockers are harmful, and damage brain and bone development as well as long-term fertility and sexual function.

One psychiatrist warned the trial risks “repeating the same ethical failures” of the now-closed Tavistock and Portman NHS gender identity development service (Gids), which was accused of rushing hundreds of children on to puberty blockers from 2011 onwards.

Dr David Bell, a psychiatrist who was a whistleblower at the Tavistock trust, said he found it “extraordinary” that the NHS-supported trial was going ahead, adding that “again an experiment is being carried out on children”.

“If we accept that puberty blockers were an experiment that failed many many children, how can we justify conducting a trial when we know that a significant number of children will be harmed?”, he asked.

There's no answer to that. We can't.

“There are a number of reasons why it is unethical. Once children are started on puberty blockers it’s extremely hard for them to come off them. By starting puberty blockers children are in effect being put on a medical pathway to gender transition which will include, for many, progression to surgery. “The prescribing of puberty blockers introduces physical harms to a physically healthy child. There is significant evidence that puberty blockers seriously impact on bone density.”

Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy at charity Sex Matters, said: “We have good reason already to think these drugs are harmful, and that the benefits are limited or non-existent.

“It’s as if the NHS was planning a trial of lobotomies long after concerns first started to be raised — in fact, even worse because the test subjects are children. It seems that £10 million of public money is going to be spent on this unethical experiment.”…

Thousands of children and young teenagers were put on puberty-blocking drugs — known as gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues — by the NHS Tavistock gender clinic (Gids) from 2011 onwards, in what is increasingly seen as a medical scandal. Some doctors are concerned that this new NHS trial, however well-intentioned, risks repeating some of those same mistakes.

In particular, campaigners fear that the trial’s two-year follow-up period is insufficient to tell us about the long-term outcomes of putting children on a medical pathway.

Dr Louise Irvine, a GP and co-chairwoman of the clinical advisory network on sex and gender said: “A two-year follow-up will tell us nothing at all about risks or benefits of puberty blockers. I am shocked they are putting children through the known risks of puberty blockers for no gain in knowledge and I consider it totally unethical.”

"The trial is yet to pass ethical approval". We shall see.