High Court Clears Puberty Blocker Trial on Children — Without Ever Testing If It's Safe
A UK High Court judge has cleared the way for 220 children to be enrolled in a puberty blocker trial that is designed so that every single one of them ends up on the drug — and it was decided without letting the safety and ethics concerns about the trial be properly heard.
A Trial Designed So Every Child Ends Up Medicated
On the 31st of July 2026, Mr Justice Chamberlain refused permission for a judicial review of PATHWAYS, a trial run by King's College London that will give puberty-suppressing hormones to around 220 children with “persistent gender incongruence”. Boys from age 12 and girls from age 11 are eligible. Half will start the drugs immediately; the other half will begin in 12 months’ time. Every participant will be tracked for two years using brain scans and other monitoring methods.
Notice what's missing: an untreated comparison group. A study that delays treatment by twelve months for half its subjects, while guaranteeing every one of them the drug eventually, isn't designed to ask whether children should be put on puberty blockers. It's engineered to ensure a specific outcome. That is precisely the objection that Bayswater Support Group, psychotherapist James Esses, and detransitioner Keira Bell brought to court, and precisely the objection the court refused to test.
This is not the first sign that PATHWAYS was in trouble. The trial has already been quietly paused once before, in February 2026, when its protocols were rewritten before this legal challenge. A study that needs its own design changed mid-flight is not the rigorous, carefully controlled programme King's College London claims it is.
The Court Wouldn't Even Let the Safety Case Be Heard
The claimants weren't asking a judge to rule on whether puberty blockers are safe. They were asking for permission to have that question properly examined at a full judicial review hearing. Mr Justice Chamberlain refused that request, ruling that none of the claimants' arguments were strong enough to justify a full hearing, and describing the decision to approve the trial as “quintessentially a question of judgment” for the regulators who signed off on it.
In other words: the court's answer to serious, documented concerns about a trial of puberty blockers on children was to defer entirely to the judgment of the same public bodies being challenged. The Health Research Authority and the Department of Health and Social Care approved this trial and then defended it in court. The court then decided their judgment didn't need to be tested any further.
An Ethics Committee Kept in the Dark
Central to the claimants' case was a specific, serious allegation: that the ethics committee which approved PATHWAYS was not shown all the expert evidence raising concerns about the study before it signed off on it. They also argued that children could be left on puberty blockers for years with no clear next step, since the National Health Service (NHS) England has separately paused prescribing cross-sex hormones to under-18s pending its own review. This means that a child could start this trial with no guarantee of what happens after the trial ends.
None of this appeared by accident. PATHWAYS exists because the 2024 Cass Review found the evidence behind puberty blockers “remarkably weak.” NHS England's own medicines regulator went further, finding the drugs too risky for routine use outside a trial setting, which is exactly why prescribing to under-18s is now banned everywhere except inside PATHWAYS itself. Ministers carved out an exception for the very treatment their own regulator considered too dangerous, then built a study that hands it to every participant.
Also read: South Australia Moves to Protect Children From Irreversible Puberty Blockers
The Money Only Flows One Way
King's College London received £10.7 million to run PATHWAYS in late February 2025. Compare that to what happens to clinicians who ask for more caution, not less. Queensland psychiatrist Dr Jillian Spencer spent three years fighting termination and an AHPRA investigation for the “offence” of insisting that gender-distressed children should receive a full mental health assessment that rules out anxiety, trauma, autism or depression before being placed on any medical pathway. She was later vindicated when Children's Health Queensland dropped its case against her and conceded her concerns were grounded in her clinical training.
That's the pattern: institutions fund and defend the affirmation model in line with trans ideology, while clinicians and parents who ask for an alternative in line with common sense get investigated, stood down, or dragged to court instead. The Bayswater parents made a related point in their own statement after the ruling, that the scale of the study, the known and potential harms involved, and the thinness of the evidence for any benefit raise serious doubts about whether the safeguards meant to protect children in research were followed here at all.
What You Can Do Now
Australian state laws prevent any sort of treatment that doesn’t follow the “affirmation model” and makes any treatment that helps gender confused children identify with their biological sex a criminal offence.
Family in Danger is running a petition to change these laws so that children with gender confusion can receive treatments that align with biological reality. If you want to help us change these laws, you can sign the petition here.
References
1. ITV News, “High court clears way for clinical trial on puberty blockers for children,” 31 July 2026.
2. The Christian Institute, “High Court refuses to stop puberty blocker trial despite child safety concerns,” 31 July 2026.
3. AOL News (Kevin Rawlinson), “High court clears way for clinical trial giving puberty blockers to children,” 31 July 2026.
4. Clinical Trials Arena, “High Court gives go-ahead for UK puberty blocker trial to continue.”
5. GB News, “High Court gives green light to NHS puberty blocker trial for children.”
6. PinkNews, “Puberty blockers trial can go ahead as court throws out challenge,” 31 July 2026.
7. Family in Danger, “VINDICATED: Dr Jillian Spencer Cleared After Standing Up for Vulnerable Children,” 23 July 2026.