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It also depends what you're testing and why. Is it efficacy, side effects or treatment paths?
It strikes me as a layman that the test is; a. puperty blockers at <18yo Vs 18yo for young people who choose to transition, b. puperty blockers at <18yo vs no blockers for those who choose not to transition. Rather than any double blind stuff.
But TBH having worked adjacent to clinical trials in a previous life this whole area is frought with technical terms with specific meanings that the media and laypeople are generally totally ill equipped to understand.
Here is a link someone posted to the Yale Law School review that I found interesting and useful
https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/report-addresses-key-issues-legal-battles-over-gender-affirming-health-care
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hugo7
Thanks to you and @Velocio for the info and perspectives on this. It's not something that has been in my circle of experience.
I will keep my thoughts on any rights or wrongs out of this as I'm not sure it would be helpful but I struggle to see how a trial could be run fairly.
From a process viewpoint, it would be interesting to know is how many prepubescent people are currently on these blockers in the uk compared to the number of people in the average mass clinical trial, I would imagine small.
Another problem from a trial pov is how do you find minors to take part in a clinical trial like this where they don't have personal agency to make a decision and those who can get parental permission would they then be willing to be given placebos?
I would expect the NHS or drug companies have data for all sorts of stuff including standardised bone and brain development for the general population so why does a trial have to be double blind if you have baseline data to work from?