World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Files

Personally, I think you're being overly generous in trying to be fair to the doctors who first prescribed puberty blockers. They were well aware of the effects as they had witnessed the effects of puberty blockers in children being treated for precocious puberty. Those effects are not reversible and to suggest as much would be like me claiming that stopping at a red light means I'm going in reverse. Clearly it does not, what's happening is that the process of reaching my destination is delayed for however long I am stopped at the traffic lights. The same was always the intention of puberty blockers - to delay the onset of puberty with the destination being adulthood. The effects on bone mass density weren't occluded either - they just weren't well studied in the population of patients undergoing treatment using the drugs. As it transpired - the effects on children being treated for precocious puberty, and children being treated for gender dysphoria (as it was called at the time for a cohort which were then known as juvenile transsexuals), were not the same. That's what was swept under the carpet. The BMD thing is often overstated and would have an effect in later life, like pensioner age later life when issues like osteoperosis could arise. The medical profession, and the general public have been aware for quite some time that 'dem bones need calcium' as the jingle used go. The risk is similar to those people who, for whatever reason, choose a vegan diet. A balanced diet is required to maintain a healthy body, it's not rocket science.

It wasn't only reckless to have failed to examine the issues more closely, it was reckless to provide the parents of children experiencing gender dysphoria with the idea that puberty blockers would give them more time to make decisions around the trajectory of their children's development. I've never seen it acknowledged in medical and scientific literature, or in the many fearmongering articles, books and more recently online media published by opportunistic grifters that prior to 2017, while the opportunity to be recognised in law as their preferred gender did exist, it was only on the precondition of undergoing sterilisation that anyone would be able to avail of the opportunity to exercise this right, or avail of it's protection. This law was in place at the time when what became known as the Dutch Protocol were developed, and it was against this backdrop that parents would also have to choose between whether or not they wished to become a grandparent, so to speak, as the implications were obvious… apart from the idea that the fear of their child coming home pregnant would no longer be a concern! There was no medical justification for forcing anyone to undergo the procedure to be sterilised, it was entirely social, in order to remove a person's reproductive capacity so that even if they wished to, they could neither bear, nor sire offspring.

Modern society does not care to be aware of the history and development of medical and scientific breakthroughs; people care more about whether such a convenience is available to them, and the same as this is true of puberty blockers, so it is true of the history and development of the hormonal contraceptive pill. In short, a devout Catholic doctor who intended to treat infertility in women, developed a means to give women the illusion that they could control their fertility. He was probably struck off The Vatican's Christmas List for that one, although he was not acting alone, with both men choosing to forego the ethics of their respective professions and skirt around the legal impediments to the development of a contraceptive pill in the jurisdiction in which they practiced, in order to experiment on a vulnerable population (not the first time in medical or scientific history that's happened either) and develop a pill for the US market.

Is it also cruel and inhumane to not let kids have sex, drive, take drugs, get married, get tattoos, cosmetic surgery, or do any number of things that we understand that kids can't consent to? It hasn't been that long that these drugs have been used to "give kids time" to decide whether they are actually trans or not and given that most do desist then the permanent harms they cause are in no way justified. Similarly, its only in recent years that children have been given surgical interventions like double mastectomies, and we are only just starting to see the regretters and lawsuits now

I'm at an age where very little surprises me, but this is really shocking. 

Wow! I have to confess I'd never heard of Lush. They sound like a dystopian 21st century version of the Body Shop.

Lads yiz are gas, and I mean that in the nicest possible way, it’s obvious ye’re not familiar with Lush, no reason ye would be to be fair cos as plodder suggests - they really are a dystopian version of the equally dystopian Body Shop, for a number of reasons aside from the fact that they sell cheap, low-quality tacky products and attach themselves to all sorts of social justice causes in order to promote their brand and sell their wares, no different than many other organisations then that engage in exactly the same sort of behaviour. Having said that, I get the distinct impression from the circumstances described by the parent involved that it was a setup, similar to the “gay cake controversy” a while back. The type of customer that Lush appeals to would be well aware of their campaigns and would be supportive of them… well, apart from this wee gaffe -

https://news.sky.com/story/boycott-israel-sign-at-dublin-store-leaves-lush-facing-backlash-12982068

That being said though, I couldn’t get through the linked articles without wondering whether they had been written by ChatGPT with the settings turned up to ‘Mary Whitehouse’, such was the level of hand-wringing and feigned horror. Outside of their incredibly loyal customer base (one which they hope to expand on, as all organisations do), very few people are interested in giving a damn about Lush and whatever they’re campaigning about this month.

It is well known in the U.K. that children and adolescent mental health support with psychiatry medical input takes years to access. It is tier 3 service refused unless kids have attended and gone through tier 1& 2 support, but bottom tiers have lengthy waiting lists. Autism diagnosis has anywhere between 2-5 year waiting list (depending on county provision) and the horrible aspect of this for many families is that key support services are unavailable unless you have an official diagnosis.

So how on earth did the needs of trans children and teenagers by-pass all these crucial stages of assessment, diagnosis and medical understanding to access puberty blockers and surgery? Was it a case of you can’t get that type of mental help, but we have a better approach to help you out?

At some point there must be a call for an investigation to find out an exact time-line re the interventions on how many kids and by whom? Were key NHS mental health professionals involved prior to transitions or not at all? Was there private funding available for kids to access private medical support for transitioning? I have read info on this in dribs and drabs over the years, but certainly not aware of any overview on it yet?

Rotten to the core - almost like a creepy idea for a Stephen King novel.