Mick Hartley

Another powerful demolition of the puberty blocker trial, here from Andy Lewis at Reality’s Last Stand (via):

Ethical trials require a clear intent to answer a scientific and clinical question that can inform future treatment decisions. It is hard to see what that question is. The trial is formally to test a treatment for “gender incongruence.” But this is not a clinical diagnosis. Activists insist this means the child is “trans,” that they possess an internal gender essence incompatible with their body, and that the only “remedy” is to alter the body to somehow match this ineffable feeling. There is no scientific evidence that such an intrinsic thing called a “gender” exists. This is postmodernist claptrap: the reification of abstract ideas about the sexes in society.

Gender is a social concept built on sex stereotypes: boys must be tough and sporty, girls must be pretty and gentle, and both must be heterosexual. Many (if not most) adolescents feel they fall short of these stereotypes; some feel it acutely. Puberty sharpens the discomfort. In the overwhelming majority the discomfort resolves without any intervention as puberty progresses. To pathologize this entirely normal process, label it a medical condition, and treat it with powerful endocrine disruptors is not progressive healthcare; it is regressive, cruel, and inherently unscientific.…

So what sort of results can we expect? Allow me to take a punt. The children who receive blockers immediately will, on the whole, report being “happy.” The children forced to wait a year for the treatment they have been told is life-saving will, on the whole, report being “sad.” The headline conclusion will be that puberty blockers must be offered as early as possible because they improve wellbeing. The two-year follow-up is conveniently too short for the serious skeletal, sexual, and fertility harms to become undeniable, so the treatment will be declared “safe and well-tolerated.” Critics who point out the blindingly obvious methodological flaws will be dismissed as bigoted, hateful, or “anti-trans.” This trial could not have been better designed if the brief had been: “Produce the most quack-friendly trial methodology possible while retaining a veneer of scientific respectability.”

Surely by now it’s clear that this trial has been set up with only one result in mind: to show that puberty blockers are really just fine, and make all these sad “gender incongruent” children happy.

It’s a national scandal.