Reform UK leader Nigel Farage accused the leftist Labour government of enabling “state-sponsored child abuse” by allowing clinical trials of puberty-blocking drugs on children.
Last year, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) said that in the wake of a landmark report from top paediatrician Dr Hillary Cass, it would stop prescribing puberty blockers to children. However, the NHS left the door open to clinical trials of such drugs on children to study their effects.
This has paved the way for King’s College announcing last month plans to study 250 children who are alleged to be transgender. The children, aged between 10 and 15 years old, will receive puberty blocking drugs over a period of two years while clinicians study the impacts on their physical and mental development.
Professor Emily Simonoff, who will lead the study, has said that parents will need to continually provide consent on behalf of their children throughout the process. However, critics have noted that the children themselves are not in a position to give consent to the potentially life-altering drugs.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has called on the left-wing Labour Party government to shut down the study, while vowing to do so himself if his party takes power at the next general election, The Telegraph reported.
In a letter to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Farage wrote that the “trial represents state-sponsored child abuse, dressed up as research, and is wholly incompatible with the NHS duty to safeguard children and do no harm.”
A Department of Health spokesman defended the study, saying: “This trial will help provide the evidence that is currently lacking.
“Its approval came only after extremely rigorous safety checks and with multiple safeguards in place to protect young people’s wellbeing – including clinical and parental approval.”
However, Health Secretary Wes Streeting admitted last week that he was “not comfortable” with the puberty blockers trial.
“The two overriding concerns that I have, the only two really are: firstly, how do we keep these children safe? And how do we make sure they receive effective and evidence-based care?” the government minister questioned.
Last week, Streeting received a legal letter from Keira Bell questioning the ethics of allowing the trial. Bell, who sued the now infamous Tavistock Gender Identity Clinic after having received puberty blocking drugs and other hormones from the clinic as a teenager.
Bell said that “children are essentially going to be harmed from this trial”, warning that fertility and sexual function could be harmed.
Speaking of her own experience with puberty blockers, she told the BBC: “I didn’t know that I was essentially trapping my own mind from developing, because puberty doesn’t happen in a vacuum – it’s your whole body, it’s your brain sending signals to your body. So I didn’t understand any of that.
“There are children who have already been down this pathway – I’m one of them. Why aren’t we doing follow-ups with people like me?”
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