Reports of a new trial of puberty blockers on children are deeply alarming (covered here in The Times and the Daily Mail.) After years of mounting evidence and whistle-blower testimony, this country should be facing an honest reckoning for what has happened to vulnerable children, not embarking on another set of medical experiments on them.
We are witnessing one of the most serious safeguarding failures in modern NHS history. Instead of transparency, accountability and a full independent inquiry, the response is to continue experimenting on children. This is indefensible.
We have repeatedly warned that the children with so-called gender incongruance who are placed on medical pathways are among the most vulnerable in our society: autistic children, children with complex trauma, children struggling with identity, distress or sexuality. These children will be propelled towards interventions that could adversely impact their adult bodies, fertility and future before they are able to understand the consequences.
This decision means that autistic children will be sterilised, sexually abused children further abused and mutilated by the state and that children who grow up to be gay or lesbian will be subjected to conversion therapy. Around the world, countries that once embraced “gender-affirming” models have reversed course after seeing the outcomes for their own children. These were experiments on vulnerable children that should never have happened, and they must not be repeated here. The public will not forgive a government that ignores these warnings and allows further harm to fall on children who most need protection by allowing another puberty blockers trial.
Child safeguarding is not optional. It must be the foundation of every institution that works with children. We do not need to experiment on more children to confirm what is already known: that halting healthy puberty carries profound and potentially irreversible consequences. What we need is principled leadership willing to say, clearly and without equivocation, that this must stop.
Yet political parties, government departments, charities and even organisations responsible for protecting children have avoided confronting the reality of what has taken place. Too many have prioritised institutional reputation, ideological alignment or “balancing rights” over the most basic duty of care. The erosion of safeguarding norms has been systematic and allowed to continue for far too long.
This failure transcends party politics. Protecting children is not a left- or right-wing issue; it is both a moral and a statutory duty. Those in positions of authority who allowed these practices to continue despite warnings must be held properly accountable, wherever they sit within our political, medical or regulatory systems. Accountability is essential not for punishment alone, but to ensure that such profound failures can never recur.
Serious questions must now be answered:
- Why have safeguarding principles been set aside once again?
- Why has the testimony of whistle-blowers been ignored?
- Why has scrutiny been directed at those raising concerns instead of at the systems that enabled harm?
And the big question:
- who ultimately, stands to gain when distressed children are medicalised, ignoring all evidence-based, non-invasive alternatives on the basis they are “transphobic’’?
These proposed trials must not go ahead. Any attempt to restart interventions that the Cass Review warned against represents a continuation of the very failures already identified and will expose yet another generation to avoidable harm.
Silence in the face of this is not neutrality. It is complicity.