The NHS’s new puberty blockers trial is unethical, will harm children, and not add anything to existing medical knowledge, critics have warned.
The health service has announced details of a puberty blocker trial by King’s College London, which will give the banned drugs to children, and monitor them for two years with brain scans and tests. Funding of £10.7 million has been allocated to the trial, which is jointly run by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR).
Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced an indefinite ban on the drugs last year due to evidence that ‘the current prescribing pathway’ posed an “unacceptable safety risk” to children and young people.
‘Remarkably weak evidence’
Baroness Cass is author of the Cass Review, which identified that there was “remarkably weak evidence” for puberty blockers, and said the drugs “may permanently disrupt the brain maturation of adolescents, potentially rewiring neural circuits that cannot be reversed”.
But she suggested a study might “address some of the uncertainty about the impacts and efficacy of puberty suppressing hormones”.
The NHS National Medical Director for Specialised Services Prof James Palmer claimed the trial would be subject to “strict ethical and regulatory approval and follow stringent safeguards in scientific research.”
‘Unethical experiment’
However, psychiatrist Dr David Bell, who famously exposed what was going on at the NHS Tavistock gender clinic, criticised the trial, stating: “how can we justify conducting a trial when we know that a significant number of children will be harmed?”.
He said: “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.”
Director of Advocacy at Sex Matters, Helen Joyce, stated: “We have good reason already to think these drugs are harmful, and that the benefits are limited or non-existent.”
She added: “It seems that £10 million of public money is going to be spent on this unethical experiment.”
‘No gain in knowledge’
Dr Louise Irvine, the Co-Chairman of the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, said: “The Cass Review said there was a lack of long-term outcome studies and this [two year trial] is just more of the same.
“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”.
She warned: “They are going to test for harms to cognitive development – but by the time they discover any harm it may be too late to do anything about it.”
A spokesman for Bayswater Support, a group helping parents with gender-confused children, said: “A two-year time frame for assessing the impact of puberty blockers is meaningless given that almost every child will progress to cross-sex hormones, which have lifelong implications including likely loss of fertility and sexual function. Our question remains: how can a child possibly consent to this?”
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