Baroness Cass has long been hailed as a figure who restored sense to the battle over child transition. Her report on NHS gender identity services, The Cass Review, led to the puberty blocker ban and the closure of the Tavistock gender clinic.
But her work has also contributed to one of the most dangerous, unnecessary medical trials proposed in recent history. On 1 August, researchers at King’s College London will begin recruiting children as young as 11 to a clinical trial ‘that will explore how puberty-suppressing hormones impact the physical, social and emotional wellbeing of young people with gender incongruence’.
Participants judged to possess a ‘good understanding of the intervention and its possible benefits and risks’ will be prescribed gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues – drugs initially developed to treat advanced prostate cancer but now used off label to chemically castrate sex offenders and stop puberty in gender-questioning children.
One has to assume that the researchers who devised this study have never actually met an 11-year-old. Otherwise, it is hard to imagine how they have concluded that someone so young is able to provide informed consent for a lifetime of fertility problems, the inability to achieve sexual function or osteoporosis, all possible side effects.
