Transphobic MPs move the goalposts on puberty blocker trial

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and a gaggle of other transphobes in parliament are now calling for a halt of the Pathways puberty blocker trial.

The trial was called for by the Cass Review, itself widely criticised by the medical community for its massive level of bias. Likewise, the leadership of the Pathways trial is already riddled with anti-trans ideologues.

However, now that the time for Cass’ trial has rolled around, transphobic MPs are trying to call foul on the very idea of conducting a study.

Puberty blocker trial

On 25 November, Badenoch tweeted a letter to the health secretary, and an accompanying statement:

No child is born in the wrong body. I cannot believe we are back to square one, with NHS England backing an experimental trial of puberty blockers on healthy, vulnerable children, ignoring the damage already done. The No1 rule of medicine is “do no harm”. This is activist ideology masquerading as research. I’m urging MPs of all parties to sign this letter from me and Shadow Health Secretary @stuartandrew, calling for Wes Streeting to step in and stop this trial before more damage is done to children who are too young to understand what they are doing to themselves.

All medications have side effects, and no medication is completely ‘safe’. However, the UK still considers puberty blockers safe enough to administer to cis children who are going through precocious puberty. The suggestion that the trial involves “experimental drugs” or similar is disingenuous.

Nevertheless, similar sentiments were echoed by Iqbal Mohamed, Rosie Duffield, Rupert Lowe, and a host of others. The problem, of course, is that this trial was a recommendation of the deeply suspect Cass Review:

The evidence base underpinning medical and non-medical interventions in this clinical area must be improved. Following our earlier recommendation to establish a puberty blocker trial, which has been taken forward by NHS England, we further recommend a full programme of research be established. This should look at the characteristics, interventions and outcomes of every young person presenting to the NHS gender services. The puberty blocker trial should be part of a programme of research which also evaluates outcomes of psychosocial interventions and masculinising/feminising hormones.

The Tories commissioned the Cass Report in the first place. Badenoch actually praised both Cass and the report, and celebrated when the latter was made a life peer:

In the face of intense obstruction and hostility and no doubt at great personal cost, she produced a seminal report that has provided clarity and saved many children from making irreversible decisions that would harm their long-term health. Public service at its best.

Questions already answered

Badenoch’s letter itself complained that:

There will be no properly randomised control group of children eligible for the trial but not receiving the drugs, creating an obvious bias.

The Pathways trial’s own FAQ answers that question succinctly. The reason to have one group not receive the drugs would be to conduct a double-blind trial. In this type of study, the patient and the researcher don’t know whether they’re in the group that is actually receiving the medication. That isn’t possible here, as the participant would become aware that they’re in the placebo group as soon as puberty begins.This information is freely available. Either Badenoch didn’t bother to look, or ignored it in order to try to decieve her audience. She also goes on to ask:

The fundamental question remains: why run this trial at all? The long-term data already exists, but those holding it refuse to release it, despite parliament having passed a statutory instrument to enable access.

That one’s easy too: because those are patients’ private medical records. They don’t stop being private just because parliament would really really like to see them.

‘Inexorably progressed’

The letter also states that:

We have all spoken to young people from the Tavistock clinic who embarked on the path of puberty blockers and inexorably progressed to cross-sex hormones and surgery, leaving them physically and psychologically damaged.

That ‘inexorably progressed’ is key here. It was one of the Cass Review’s problems with puberty blockers, too. You see, the trans kids that get put on puberty blockers kept growing up to be trans adults. The normal reaction to this phenomenon would be: ‘Ah, we’re identifying which kids are trans very stringently before they’re put on a medical pathway’.

If the opposite was true, the children placed on the medical pathway would have often turned out to be cis. Then, the likes of Badenoch and Cass would have used that as a reason to shut down gender care for under-18s. The outcome is the same either way because Badenoch and Cass are motivated by ideology, not science or compassion.

Badenoch and her ilk praised the Cass Review when it first concluded, because it could be used as a bludgeon against trans kids. Now, they seek to move the goalposts even further. They will never be satisfied, because they are not seeking to protect children, nor are they seeking sound scientific conclusions.

They simply believe that trans people do not exist, adults or children, and rage against anything that begins from any other assumption.

Featured image via the Canary