Mick Hartley

Stella O'Malley at Spiked – No more experiments on children:

In saner times, nobody would need to spell this out: puberty is not a problem. It’s not a pathology. It’s not something to be halted, postponed or ‘paused’. It’s a normal, necessary part of growing up. But today, in an upside-down world where truth must tiptoe around ideology, even the most basic biological facts need defending.

That’s why Genspect, which I founded, has launched the ‘Memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the role of puberty in adolescent development’. It should be redundant. But it’s not. We now live in a world where the UK Supreme Court needs to clarify that men aren’t women, where state-funded studies propose prescribing powerful drugs to delay puberty in confused kids, and where medical authorities have outsourced their moral compass to activist groups.

This MoU is a line in the sand: puberty is not optional, and children deserve the right to grow up – unmedicated and unmanipulated. Genspect has created a platform, ProtectingPuberty.com. Groups like Sex Matters, CanSG, Transgender Trend, LGB Alliance and Thoughtful Therapists – alongside many other well-informed organisations – have already signed the MoU. Together, we’re pushing back against a tide of institutional cowardice and ideological capture. Around the world, organisations are downloading the MoU compliance badge and joining this public stand for a basic, commonsense truth that should never have been up for debate.

This isn’t some fringe concern. Last year, the Cass Review’s scathing findings led to the closure of the discredited Tavistock gender clinic and to a ban on puberty blockers. Yet despite all this, the NHS is now throwing £10million at a study that will dole out puberty blockers to gender-distressed kids – again.

Yes, even after all we’ve learned, the medical establishment is still flirting with the idea that we can chemically freeze children in time and expect no consequences. Effectively, UK health secretary Wes Streeting has banned puberty blockers with one hand and reintroduced them with the other – dressing up the same failed experiment as ‘research’.

A puberty blocker trial, as I understand it, was recommended by Hilary Cass as part of her review. It was a mistake. We don't need more evidence about the effects of powerful drugs – as used to chemically castrate sex offenders – on confused young children. It would be a horror show: like taking a group of "gender dysphoric" young girls, giving half of them double mastectomies, and see which group – the mutilated or the unmutilated – feels better afterwards. It's contrary to every medical ethic.

This is not a healthcare model. It’s dystopian. It tramples over ethics, evidence and common sense, echoing the darkest chapters of medical history, when vulnerable people were used as guinea pigs in experiments dressed up as ‘care’….

Let the tomboys be. Let the feminine boys wave their fairy wands and find their own path. Let kids be weird and wild. That’s childhood.

Puberty is not an error to be corrected. It’s the bridge between who we were and who we’re becoming. Blocking it doesn’t hit pause. It derails the individual onto a pathway of lifelong medicalisation.