The National Health Service of England (NHS) is slated to launch its first “detransitioning” service aimed at returning “transgender” individuals to physical conformity with their biological sex.
The move was prompted by the recommendations of a review of Gender Identity Services by pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, The Telegraph reported. Dr. Cass’ report found an “exponential” spike in the number of young people who were presented to the UK NHS Gender Identity Service (GIDS) beginning in 2014.
General Practitioners in England were found to be “pressurized to prescribe hormones” by patients who had not consulted with a private clinician, and Dr. Cass concluded that the current practice of so-called “gender medicine” in the U.K., involving the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, was built on “shaky foundations.”
Dr. Cass reportedly went so far as to recommend that GPs resist efforts by private practitioners to prescribe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, “particularly if that private provider is acting outside NHS guidance.”
NHS England has decided to fully adopt Dr. Cass’ recommendations, and on Wednesday published its plans to reform its gender services accordingly. Sir Stephen Prowis, medical director of the NHS, praised Dr. Cass’ work as “invaluable” and said the NHS would now embrace a “fundamentally different and safer model of care for children.”
According to Health Service officials, the NHS’ next step is to “define” a “pathway” for those who decide to detransition, since there is currently no official guidance on how to care for such individuals. Their work will involve examining the proportion of patients who detransition, and their reasons for detransitioning, The Telegraph reported.
The plan involves the creation of six new clinics by 2026 specialized to care for minors struggling with their biological sex.
Despite this impending reform, the NHS is set to begin clinical trials of puberty blockers for minors, since Dr. Cass’ report cited lack of long-term studies as a reason that puberty blockers should not be prescribed to minors.
Critics have warned that these trials are “ethically unjustifiable,” with the warning that they “pose the very real risk of the NHS sacrificing the otherwise good health of vulnerable children and causing them grave physical harm in the name of research.”
Lucy Marsh of the Family Education Trust has called upon the NHS to address the roots of gender dysphoria and has decried its planned trials of administering puberty blockers to teenagers as “unethical” and “dangerous.”
‘We do not need more gender clinics, instead the NHS should be looking at the root causes of gender dysphoria including mental health issues, autism, sexual abuse and issues within the family,” said Marsh, according to The Daily Mail.
“It is not ‘kind’ to lead children down a pathway that leads to irreversible harm and destroys families,” she said, adding that it is a “a huge waste of taxpayer’s money to roll out gender clinics to every area of England.”
Transgender hormonal and surgical interventions are known to cause lifelong mental and physical damage and to exacerbate psychological issues in those subjected to them.
Studies find that more than 80 percent 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.
Many oft-ignored detransitioners have attested to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion that “transitioning” is the best solution.