this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024

92 points (90.4% liked)

United Kingdom

4034 readers

105 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in [email protected] or [email protected]
More serious politics should go in [email protected].

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Trans youth will no longer be prescribed puberty blockers, NHS England says (www.thepinknews.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

47 comments fedilink hide all child comments

all 49 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Go check the UnitedKingdom subreddit if you want to see the celebratory bloodlust of the average Briton, the blatant alternative truths and so on, and this is of the young progressive sort, the average 40+ boomeroid probably no longer bothers with that mask even.

I am so tired. I've fought the good fight for so long for my people but in the end it's like it was all pointless.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

As MLK stated "The moral arc of the universe is long but bends towards justice " stay fighting for good!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

An arc so long it looks flat I guess...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

That's a perspective... zoom out.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Go check the UnitedKingdom subreddit if you want to see the celebratory bloodlust of the average Briton

urgh, remind me to never follow that advise again. What a bunch of hateful, clueless assholes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Are they real though, or bots? It's increasingly difficult to tell these days.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

As much as I'd like to think they are all Ivans and Vlads from Kamchatka doing this for 50 kopecks, I feel like there can't be that many and with such authenticity, dedicated so hard to that sub.

Like how important is demoralising the already inactive disengaged progresvives really to political power and who has so much time and resources?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

The one thing AI LLMs seem to be actually quite good at is generating lots of quite 'real'/'genuine' sounding comments and replies, so it really could be bots. It probably doesn't actually take that much effort either in relative terms, if you decide you want to AstroTurf an online space.

It's a shame because it could basically kill discussion on the internet as we know it. It's mad to think it, but in a few years we could be telling younger generations of a time when we wrote words to each other online and it was reasonable to assume that we were talking to a real person...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (3 children)

There’s been a noticeable shift on r/UnitedKingdom since around the time of the Reddit protests. I no longer participate there but I’ve seen quite a bit of extra unpleasantness the few times of taken a curious look at it.

Not that it was ever a great place to discuss trans issues, but the nastiness seems to be spreading to all manner of topics now.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

There may have been an organized effort by the far right to take over various national subreddits. It gives the impression that their views are overwhelmingly popular in the country, when really they're not. The subreddit /r/Canada also got dominated by the far right, which led to the creation of /r/onguardforthee. At least one of the mods of /r/Canada was shown to be an active neo-Nazi, and another declared himself a white supremacist. There is still too much support for the far right in Canada (and we're looking at a big lurch to the right in the next election), but it's not as dominant as you'd think from that subreddit.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Tbf, leftists did this also. r/northernireland had a big bunch of American IRA larpers who never set foot in the country, and edgy youth from the Republic.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

r/Canada is very similar

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

There’s always been that undercurrent of hate. The first few comments on any immigration story was enough to see that.

But yeah, I think the demographic did shift a bit in the last year or so

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Haven't they always been like that?

r/GreenAndPleasant split off from them for a reason

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

A big FUCK YOU to all Tories, Terfs and similar asshats.

Edit: I'll donate money to Gender GP even harder from now on.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm not particularly well educated on the subject but according to the BBC:

Fewer than 100 young people in England are currently prescribed puberty blockers by the NHS. They will all able to continue their treatment.

So why such a big fuss?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Blocks any future access to trans kids

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Can puberty blocking be reversed at a later date?

Or can blocked puberty be reverted later?

I could agree with a ban whole heatedly if blocking can't be reversed and blocked cannot be reverted, but I would likely to oppose a ban it if blocking can be reversed and blocked could be reverted.

Gets a little fuzzy if it's one or the other though.

Wouldn't want someone to miss their only chance to block puberty, but also wouldn't want someone to make a permanent choice at 13-14 which can't be reversed if they want to later on.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

You just stop taking them, and your body will start going through puberty. Like the other response said, they're used for cis children as well when they start too early for their body to be able to handle. As with any medicine there can be side effects.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

You can't get any trans care that isn't reversible until you're an adult who can legally consent to it. Puberty blockers are reversible, you just stop taking them and go through puberty. This change is completely anti-scientific and pro-bigotry. It's indefensible.

[–] OneWomanCreamTeam 4 points 6 months ago

When you stop taking them you go through puberty like normal. The idea is to protect trans kids from the irreversible effects of going through the wrong puberty, but not cause any irreversible effects if they're one of the <1% that later turns out to not be trans.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

When you stop taking them puberty continues as normal.

We've been using them for a long time on people who start puberty too early. And know they are effective and safe.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

All 83 of them?

Really that is the total for the entire country. Ya, it's a "serious" problem. .... Sure

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I think they were hoping to make more

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Glyndŵr, os ydych wedi gorffen cael te yn y bryniau hynny, gallem ddefnyddio llaw.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Scientist have collected all the data and decided the experts on Lemmy are wrong.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Complete miss characterisation. It is lack of data the NHS is arguing with. Not scientific evidence.

The article is bluntly stating that the NHS has made this choice because no evidence of the long term safty exists. Not because scientists say it is unsafe.

[+] [email protected] -21 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Good, there's not enough scientific evidence to claim it's safe for children, hence the ban....

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

We have decades of studies. You do not know what you are talking about.

[–] C126 -1 points 6 months ago

I For someone interested in reading the studies, can you point some out on the long term effects?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Clearly NHS based their decision on different studies, but by all means feel free to share

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Why should I bother trying to educate you when you won’t even leave the article you’re arguing over?

Puberty blockers have been well-studied and widely-used since the late 1980s. They have been routinely used to pause puberty in adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria, treat children who enter puberty too early and help adults living with a range of other medical conditions.

Links included in the article btw. Go nuts. But please, by all means, tell me how we don’t have almost 40 years of research on this proving this policy is unnecessary.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Doctors used to regularly treat patients with mercury and blood letting. Then more data came out to say it was bad so they stopped doing it. That's how medicine works.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Those weren't evidence based treatments to begin with. When we got evidence we stopped using them.

Puberty blockers already have evidence. They've been used since the 80s.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But they don't do it for everything because things they did use it for they found out were bad, just like puberty blockers.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Both the health service in Sweden and Britain has recommended a complete stop to hormone blockers to children, citing lack of evidence to support the procedure.

And yet here you are, with studies and shit, saying the complete opposite. Maybe you can take your 'evidence' (and no, the linked article is not an unbiased source) to them; they might change their minds. Seems to me the right course of action since you are so invested.

[–] southsamurai 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Nah, you made the claim here, you have the onus of providing sources to back your claim first.

Or, you can just refuse to, but it makes your claim weaker.

That's the way it works homie. If you make a claim, it can be challenged. If challenged, you're supposed to back your claim up before saying "no, you". If you can't/won't do that, you're going to end up being ignored.

Which is fine, nobody has to play by the rules of public discourse, but you can't act surprised when you get dismissed out of hand after refusing to do so.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

NHS recommendation (British health/social services):

https://www.engage.england.nhs.uk/consultation/puberty-suppressing-hormones/

Socialstyrelsen recommendation (Swedish health/social services):

https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/om-socialstyrelsen/pressrum/press/uppdaterade-rekommendationer-for-hormonbehandling-vid-konsdysfori-hos-unga/

They each provide sources that they base their decision on. Took me five min to find.

And your sources?

[–] southsamurai 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You misunderstand, I wasn't objecting to you having made the claim, nor the claim itself. I have zero interest in debating online, particularly when the person has been a dick in the rest of the thread.

But I do enjoy pointing out things that people might not be aware are expected so that they can be less of a dick and start engaging in good faith.

That being said, you can't use the NHS to support NHS decisions. Also, that isn't a link to a study or experiment at all. So it isn't a valid source for online debate (and you'd get laughed offstage for trying that at an actual debate. Same with any given secondary source. That's just making an appeal to authority, which can only be useful if and when the authority is being recognized as an authority for the purpose of the specific debate. Since the NHS' decision is what's being questioned, you just linking to their opinion isn't useful. And I can't read Swedish, so I can't say anything about the other link, but I suspect it's the same thing.

There's methodology to a proper online debate. You aren't following it, so you're gong to keep running into people dismissing you, regardless of any validity or lack thereof in your attempts.

What you need to do to debate in good faith is to provide either links or correct citations for what you're using to make your opinion a claim that others should listen to.

Basically, to sum up, a post that brought about objections to the decision was made. You said "but the NHS is an authority to listen to". Others then said, "bullshit, they're using bad science". You then rebutted with, "nuh-uh this is their opinion, look at it again."

That's fine if your entire goal is to just keep saying that you trust the NHS and stand behind their opinion. That's perfectly fine, we all gotta make choices like that sometimes. But you can't pretend that doing so is a good faith effort at debate and discussion. You can actually state that directly, though, and then anyone wishing to argue with you can be told to piss off without any need for anything else. But it isn't how you change minds.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 6 months ago

Holy fuck, lots of word for 'zero interest', especially seeing as you have damn no sources for your claims, lmao

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Given the drug has been used for almost 40 years. Lack of evidence it is safe. Is just a political way of saying we have no evidence it is dangerous.

After 40 years of clinical use. With many patients benifiting from its application. And the medications passing the medical trials standards of the 1980s. Pretty much any other medication the NHS has banned or restricted use of. Was because of new evidence. Not the lack of it. I say pretty much. Because cost and politics has been used in the past. The NHS was just more open about the reasons.

Restricting a long used medicine with a lack of evidence. Is a political not a scientific choice.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 6 months ago

I have no idea what you source those beliefs on but research dome in Sweden just last year concludes:

Data on the effects on psychosocial health are lacking but there is some evidence that hormonal treatment may impact on bone maturation.

https://news.ki.se/systematic-review-on-outcomes-of-hormonal-treatment-in-youths-with-gender-dysphoria

So no, I would not claim it is risk free, especially when given to children.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Funny that international studies show otherwise...

Welcome to my blocked list.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I believe there are exceptions to the ban in the case of studies that are actively taking place. This isn't a complete halt on their use; just the general prescription has been paused.

The side effects like the effects on bone density and brain development do seem concerning and merit more investigation.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago

Yes, stated as a recommendation until supporting evidence of its benefits can be found. The thing is that the side effects as you mentioned are well known and can unediably be linked to the therapy, thus warranting caution.