The Reform UK leader and his MPs have written a letter to Prime Minister calling for the clinical trial to be stopped
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage (Image: Getty)
Nigel Farage has demanded the immediate halt of an NHS trial into puberty blockers. The Reform UK leader and the insurgent party’s four other MPs have written to the Prime Minister raising concerns about the long-term harm to children.
Around 226 youngsters could be recruited as part of the controversial Pathways clinical study. In a letter to the PM, the five Reform MPs said: “This trial will expose already vulnerable children to life-changing and irreversible consequences, the full extent of which is unknown.
“Children will be given powerful puberty blocking drugs, despite the absence of robust evidence on long-term physical, psychological, sexual and reproductive outcomes.
“Using children as experimental subjects in this way is ethically indefensible. The Pathways 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.
“Allowing this trial to proceed will place children at foreseeable risk while offering no credible justification that any potential benefit outweighs the harm.”
Their intervention comes after Health Secretary Wes Streeting admitted he is “not comfortable” with a trial.
The trial follows a recommendation by the Cass Review into children’s gender care, which concluded that the quality of research claiming to show the benefits of puberty blockers for youngsters with gender dysphoria was “poor”.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting (Image: Getty)
Speaking to LBC radio last Friday, the Health Secretary said the Cass Review uncovered “utterly shocking levels of unprofessionalism, lack of proper clinical oversight and the prescription of puberty blockers without evidence”.
He added: “But Hilary Cass also recommended that we do a proper study.
“The Pathway study involves a whole range of treatments and care, including therapeutics or mental health support, but it also included a trial on this puberty blockers thing. I’m not comfortable, candidly, about it.”
Campaigners have argued the trial could harm young people and have called for it to be stopped.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch last month warned the trial must be scrapped “before more damage is done to children”.
A spokesperson for the Department for Health and Social Care said: “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.”
