Wes Streeting defends puberty blocker ban decision after Labour criticism | Wes Streeting

9 comments

1. I don’t usually like the Guardian too much when it comes to topics like this, but this is an unusually excellent article, covering the criticisms from Creasy and others, and Streeting’s responses to each point is very well argued and delivered, even covering the difference in the drugs’ use for gender dysphoria vs. precocious puberty.

   It’s nice to see clarification that a trial is being set up (loads of people on the last thread were theorising that this would never happen). Maybe we will end up knowing definitively one way or the other in due course.

2. Honestly in disbelief, for the party who spent the last few months going on about taking the heat out of this and focusing on stuff people care about, they’ve immediately switched to engaging in a full scale culture war fight on the same side of the objectively bigoted previous health secretary (who in the court case this week it came out refused to meet any trans people at all before bringing the act in) trying to enflame everything and hurt minorities within weeks of the election.

   Don’t even see what the benefit of this was to wes outside of personal hostility, he was perfectly in a position to wreck trans healthcare as health secretary if he so wanted, but he’s immediately gone full guns blazing and continued the tory culture war crusade “classify blockers as so bad you could be jailed for possessing them” even going further than what cass recommended, why?

   Is starmer fine with this? He sucked in a lot of ways but he wasn’t obsessively hateful, can’t see otherwise how it benefits anyone in labour to be getting in a huge fight over this now. It would have ticked over on it’s own if they’d let it.

3. So before we get all the “children/teenagers are too young to make these decisions”

   First thing first Puberty Blockers save lives, no if no but’s they save lives.

   You have to understand for some trans people going through puberty is literally torture, think how you think about other conditions like Parkinson’s, Cancer, or chronic pain. For some trans people that is what puberty is, something so painful and awful they will do anything to stop it including killing themselves.

   Since puberty blockers were unofficially banned the trans children suicidal rate went up 1600%.

   [Source](https://goodlawproject.org/rise-of-deaths-young-trans-people/)

   Now is there some semi-permeant side effects? Yes.

   Are these minor or mostly not that bad in comparison to other treatments? Also Yes.

   Are any side effects far better than the child killing themselves? 100% Yes

   Also it’s important to note that the regret rate for transitioning is extremely low, at roughly 1-3% with 2% of the 3% being from external factors (transphobic abuse or social pressures) with only 1% actually saying they were wrong to transition.

   To add even before the ban there was less than 100 people on puberty blockers, so the numbers of people who regretted it (based on above figures) has already been eclipsed, by the amount of children that have committed suicide due to being denied it.

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   So we have a medicine that we have decades of experience using (early 90’s in the UK) that has a history of providing if not physical at-least mental relief to the patients, on-top of one of the lowest regret rates for any medicine in all medical science.

   *Edit: Clarification, when i say early 90’s in the UK i mean the initial use of puberty blockers originally, not specifically for trans healthcare.*

   Also we have a documented dramatic increase in deaths when this medication has been denied to patients.

   So all together the simple question is, do you want to ban them when none of the evidence says to do this (even the Cass Report says not to ban them) and see further increase in dead trans children?

   Or do you want our politicians to stay out of healthcare and leave it to the patients, their families and medical EXPERTS to decide what is right/wrong for their patients.

   If you are willing to see children die just cause you think it’s “wrong” when the majority of the medical evidence says it helps the patient and is the current best form of treatment? Is that really where we are as a nation? Denying care because we just think it’s wrong?

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   Edit: love how i get downvoted within a minute of posting this before anyone could of actually read my full comment.

   Let alone actually offer any counterpoints or rebuttals.

4. Streeting is undeniably the worst person in the new Labour government by a country mile. Odious little weasel who’d gladly sell out the NHS, and anyone else along the way, if it meant making a quick buck. Was truly tragedy that he didn’t lose his seat

5. Morally, his stance is reprehensible. 

   Politically it is just silly. 

   Tory politicians could just state they hated trans people and the press would lap it up.

   Labour politicians have to pretend to care, which then makes them look hypocritical and the press are in a noticing mood.

   And then all this pandering to Rowling and other bigots – it’s stupid, you’ll never manage to be bigoted enough to placate the terfs. And you’ll piss off all the decent people on your way to trying.

6. Who the heck is critical of this is Labour? I bet it’s hard left nut jobs

7. Outside of the internet most people strongly agree with this I’d guess.

8. I don’t like the man but unfortunately this is the correct step. Evidence based medical evaluation is the correct way to go. If all the findings come back positive (or inconclusive) with a wealth of evidence to back up these findings? Excellent news, it can no longer be used in the culture war.

   Until then? Sorry, it sucks, but better it is done now rather than in 20 years time when people could potentially start having real-world issues.

9. It really baffles me, truly.

   It smacks of the idea that he thinks he knows better than the people living it everyday and who actually do their research.

   “This review (commissioned by tories, who absolutely push agendas in these things as much as possible) backs my opinion, therefore, I’m more important and know more about the people who have spent, in many cases years, to get to the point where they can get the blockers prescribed”

   And this way of thinking does not just harm the people that this particular decision may affect.

   We need doctors to be listening to their patients and while not necessarily always believing them 100% of the time, taking them seriously, hearing what the issues are helping with a way forward medically as much as they reasonably can, regardless of skin colour or gender or sexuality or religion, and decision like this, that seek to override the decision of multiple professional experts they tell doctors not to bother, keep assuming that the woman is exaggerating her pain, keep assuming the man is telling you everything about his, or that the gay person might have aids, or that the fat persons issue is probably because their weight, after all, Wes Streeting knows better than you, and everything fits exactly into his world view and if you don’t then it’s because you aren’t trying hard enough and not because he’s wrong.