Critics call for puberty blockers experiment to be abandoned

The puberty blockers trial is unethical and must be stopped, a columnist has warned.

Jenny Lindsey, writing in The Scotsman, rejected the claim that the puberty blockers trial is for “science”, arguing that it is ideologically driven rather than rationally based.

The journalist pointed out that 20 years ago such ideology did not exist, and the rapid rise of ‘gender incongruence’ is nothing more than a societal construct.

Science experiment

Lindsey identified three social factors required for children to mistakenly believe they have been born in the wrong body: a culture that prioritises gender stereotypes over biological sex, an insistence that children can be transgender, and medics who affirm the “‘transition’ of a child via social, medical, and sometimes surgical methods”.

She concluded: “Treating kids as a science experiment, given how the notion of ‘trans kids’ originated, is a devastatingly unethical response to what is psychological distress.

“The harm must end. This trial must be stopped. I don’t question the existence of kids who identify as trans. But I do question whether those backing the Pathways trial have lost their moral compass.”

James Esses, who co-launched a legal challenge to oppose the trial but was denied permission for a judicial review by the High Court, also criticised the decision to proceed. He noted that ‘gender reassignment surgery’, the next step along the ‘transition’ pathway after puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, is not a rarity. Every year, he observed, 1,000 women are sent “to have their healthy breasts amputated, on the NHS, for gender dysphoria”.

Indoctrination

NHS Lothian recently came under fire for publishing images to help people with learning difficulties understand ‘gender identities’ and transgender issues.

One image depicted a young person being given an injection bearing the caption: “puberty blockers or vaccination”. A spokeswoman for NHS Lothian said the images had been published in “error”, and that captions were being updated.

Susan Smith, from women’s rights group For Women Scotland, said it “should not be boiling down complex, life-altering drug regimes to cutesy pictures.

“They don’t for example, have an image to show ‘Jack’ suffering the effects of sterility, vaginal atrophy, osteoporosis, or any other consequences of a woman taking high doses of cross-sex hormones.”

“It appears that the funding for this project comes from NHS boards. Taxpayers will wonder if indoctrinating people with disabilities is really the best use of funds from our cash-strapped health service.”