Gender critical campaigners demand puberty blockers trial be scrapped

Gender critical campaigners are threatening legal action against the UK government over the NHS puberty blockers trial, arguing it will be harmful to the children taking part.

The NHS Pathways trial, led by researchers from King’s College London, was commissioned in the wake of the controversial Cass Report and the government’s ban on puberty blockers for trans youth.

The 400-page review into the provision of healthcare for trans youngsters in England, carried out by paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, was published in April 2024 and made upwards of 32 recommendations to restructure the way in which trans young people received care.

A number of the recommendations, namely including calling for “extreme caution” when it came to the use of puberty blockers, have been subject to scrutiny by charities, not-for-profit groups, medical professionals and the British Medical Association.

The £10 million ($13.1 million) trial will study the effectiveness of the drugs by focusing on the physical, social and emotional wellbeing of 220 youngsters over a two-year period. Amid the ban on the medication for trans youth, this trial will be the only way to access puberty blockers through the National Health Service (NHS).

Puberty blockers are a type of medication given to young trans people to prevent or delay unwanted changes brought on by puberty, such as hair growth, breast development or voice changes. The medication is physically reversible and has been used in the UK for around 35 years.

Following the publication of information about the trial, legal letters have now been sent to medical regulators responsible for the trial, health secretary Wes Streeting, and NHS England by gender-critical campaigners who are opposed to trans youth accessing puberty blockers altogether.

The letter has been sent on Bayswater Support Group, a controversial group made up of parents and caregivers of trans young people and which has has been accused of promoting “conversion therapy”, alongside psychotherapist James Esses and Keira Bell, who took puberty blockers and then testosterone before detransitioning and subsequently launched legal action against the now-closed Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS).

They state state the trial “fails to safeguard the rights, safety, and wellbeing of its subjects, who constitute highly vulnerable children” and it is “unlawful given the limited known benefits of treatment with puberty blockers”.

They add the trial is unethical “because it violates the ethical principles of avoiding harm and demonstrating benefit which outweighs risks” and “will result in irreversible harm and substantial risk of harm to its vulnerable child participants”.

Sharing the letter on X, formerly Twitter, Esses wrote: “We have sent a pre-action letter to those responsible for the trial (including Wes Streeting).

“In it, we demand that this harmful and illegal trial is terminated immediately.

“If it isn’t, we will be bringing a Judicial Review.”

The gender critical campaigners are not the first to criticise the trial.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch – who served as Women and Equalities Minister in the last government and became known as the inequalities minister because of her history of opposing LGBTQ+ rights – published an open letter alongside shadow health secretary Stuart Andrew last month.

“This trial is borne of the discredited, yet still seemingly entrenched, belief in some quarters that a child can be ‘born in the wrong body’ or go through the ‘wrong’ puberty, and that a normal puberty can be ‘paused’ without causing irreparable harm to children,” the two Tories wrote in the open letter. “We reject this premise entirely.”

They went on to label the trial a “new experiment on a fresh group of physically healthy children”, telling Streeting: “You are no longer head of education for Stonewall, you are the Health Secretary. That change of job title should come with a change of judgment.

“Your job is to promote the health of the nation, not indulge an ideology that has permanently damaged so many children.

“This trial continues the shameful habit of treating normal childhood challenges as illness, or that psychological conditions are signs to young people that their healthy bodies are somehow wrong and must be corrected with drugs or surgery.

“The number-one rule of medicine is simple: do no harm. We call on the government to honour that principle and stop this trial from going ahead before more damage is done to children who are too young to understand what they are doing to themselves.”