The British National Health Service (NHS) is formally ending the prescribing of puberty blockers to children with gender confusion, in a major policy shift representing a victory against transgender ideology.
The i Paper reports that the change follows the recommendation of a multi-year independent review led by consultant pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass. The underage use of puberty blockers will now be limited to clinical research trials. The change does not apply to Scotland, whose government says blockers will only be considered for minors “after close psychological and endocrine assessment,” per the report.
“We have always been clear that children’s safety and wellbeing is paramount, so we welcome this landmark decision by the NHS,” said Health Minister Maria Caufield. “Ending the routine prescription of puberty blockers will help ensure that care is based on evidence, expert clinical opinion and is in the best interests of the child.”
Reconsideration of NHS’s standards for chemically “transitioning” young people was bolstered by years of concern over the lax standards at the scandal-ridden Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), operated by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. In January, it was revealed that the facility had seen almost 400 children younger than six years old and more than 70 aged four or younger over the past decade.
The GIDS had long been a source of controversy, from its backing of a discredited study used to justify giving puberty blockers to 11-year-olds, to a case last August in which it approved a “sex-change” procedure for a 22-year-old suffering from over a dozen mental health disorders.
Cass’s report found that the GIDS had failed to consistently collect follow-up data on the long-term outcomes for children who received puberty blockers, “which means it is not possible to accurately track the outcomes and pathways that children and young people take through the service.”
Puberty blockers, which are used to chemically castrate sex offenders, have been shown to devastate bone density in children, putting them at risk of osteoporosis, fractures, and other injuries. Other side effects associated with the drugs include emotional disorders, pseudotumor cerebri, paralysis, renal impairment, sudden cardiac death, and stroke in men, as LifeSiteNews has reported.
The Tavistock clinic is closing at the end of the month, and on Cass’s recommendation, NHS will be opening a pair of regional clinics in April, which it says will employ a more “holistic approach to care,” including neurodiversity, pediatrics, and mental health.
A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Some physicians heavily involved in transitioning minors have been caught on video admitting to more old-fashioned motives for such procedures, as with an exposé last year about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health in the United States, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money.”