The National Health System in the U.K. will no longer prescribe puberty blockers to children for gender dysphoria.
These are drugs were developed to treat child cancer patients whose chemotherapy brought on precocious or very early puberty. They were never intended to pause development into adulthood but they have been used for that at alarming rates in recent years.
The NHS made this decision in the absence of clinical trials. There is no research that shows that they are safe for children, nor is there research that shows that it alleviates symptoms of gender dysphoria. There is however decades of research that shows gender dysphoria resolves itself after puberty, which means that the puberty blockers are blocking the one thing that would help these young people.
Recently published documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) showed that doctors know that pre-pubescent children do not understand what they are doing when they sign up for puberty blockers.
“It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year-old, but I know I’m talking to a blank wall,” one doctor said in a discussion about getting informed consent for these experimental drugs.
