The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is poised to move ahead with a clinical trial on the effects of puberty blockers on children with gender issues – despite a deluge of criticism over concerns for the safety of the young people who will take them.

The trial is anticipated despite last year’s ban on the experimental drugs following the release of the Cass Review, a systematic analysis of research and guidelines on so-called “gender-affirming care” for children and teens.

In their review, British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass and her team found “remarkably weak evidence” of positive effects of the blockers as well as damaging effects such as compromised bone density.

Despite supporting the ban on puberty blockers, Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s spokesman said the secretary is in favor of the trial so that decisions about their use can be “evidence-led.”

The move has met with a firestorm of criticism.

Psychiatrist Dr. David Bell, one of the whistleblowers who exposed the “grave dangers posed by the rush to medicalise childhood gender distress” at the now-closed Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust’s gender clinic, wrote in a recent op-ed at The Telegraph that “the Government, responding to the findings of the Cass Review, has rightly banned the prescription of these drugs.”

The announcement of a clinical trial, however, he said, “raises a fundamental question: can a clinical trial of puberty blockers on children experiencing gender distress be done ethically?”

“The answer, upon scrutiny, is a resounding ‘no,’” Bell asserted, adding, “What we uncovered was a service driven more by ideology than by robust clinical reasoning.”

Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch also told The Telegraph it is “hard to believe there could ever be an ethical way of trialling these irreversible drugs for this purpose.”

Others are equally disturbed that the study plans to follow the children on puberty blockers for only two years.

“A two-year follow-up will tell us nothing at all about risks or benefits of puberty blockers,” Dr. Louise Irvine, co-chairwoman of the clinical advisory network on sex and gender, said, according to The Times. “I am shocked they are putting children through the known risks of puberty blockers for no gain in knowledge and I consider it totally unethical.”

READ more at The Lion: “Experimenting on kids: UK’s clinical trial on puberty blockers draws firestorm of criticism.”