There was to have been a mass lobby of Parliament to-day in support of Trans Rights. It has been cancelled due to the hot weather. I confess that I was not looking forward to it.
Some of the advocates have been amongst the nosiest and most unpleasant activists who seek to deny a hearing for anyone who disagrees with them.
Coincidentally, on Tuesday the Commons debated the Government’s proposals for a clinical trial of the effect puberty blockers on children, the Pathways trial.
I believe that children need to be protected from adults who might do them harm, be they clinicians, politicians or whomsoever.
The trial will take 226 children, some as young as eleven, who are physically healthy and inject them with powerful drugs to delay puberty in a way that may weaken their bones, affect their ability to think, damage their sexual function -perhaps even denying them sexual pleasure for life, and leave them unable to have children of their own.
The purpose of this trial is to assess the blockers as an effective treatment for ‘gender incongruence’ (defined as “a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual’s experienced gender and the assigned sex, which often leads to a desire to ‘transition’”).
The condition is ‘subjective’ in that it depends on a child telling us how he or she feels. There are no tests to confirm a diagnosis. We know from the Cass review that the vast majority of children with gender incongruence will get better on their own.
It is not possible for clinicians to determine which children with gender incongruence will persist with trans identity into adulthood, and which will not. So, clinicians cannot possibly know if they are injecting potentially harmful drugs into children who would have got better without them.
The reality is that the trial is unnecessary because the NHS already has the case histories of Children treated with puberty blockers at the (now closed) Tavistock Clinic. That data should be analysed before any assessment of the need for further trials is considered.
How can a child of 11 understand what it means to lose sexual function, to be unable to have children when they are older? This expectation is quite at variance with the recent government decision to restrict children’s access to social media under the age of 14
Before the trial commences, participating children will be asked “In the last year have you had oral sex with another person? (This is when they put their mouth or tongue on your penis/vagina or you put your mouth or tongue on their penis/vagina)”.
This, of course, would be against the law at that age!~
We are dealing with vulnerable children. In all conscience, can we really expect them to make informed consent to participate in this clinical trial.
For them, childhood is being abolished.
It is a cruelty, and a madness.
I expect that future taxpayers will pick up the bill when the children harmed by the trial sue for compensation on the ground that it was unreasonable to have expected them to have given their ‘informed’ consent.