England bans most puberty blockers, says little evidence it is safe for children

Originally published in CBN News

England’s National Health Service (NHS) announced it will not routinely offer puberty-blocking drugs to children at gender identity clinics, saying more clinical evidence is needed about “the safety, potential benefits, and harms of medical interventions.”

In a notice posted Friday, the NHS officially stated that outside of a research setting, “puberty-suppressing hormones should not be routinely commissioned for children and adolescents who have gender incongruence or dysphoria.”

It added that there isn’t enough evidence to support their safety or clinical effectiveness as a routinely available treatment.

As CBN’s Faithwire reported, England’s NHS issued a draft guidance in October recognizing that gender dysphoria could be a “transient phase” and young, pre-pubescent children should be treated based on “evidence that, in most cases, gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence.”

Now the agency has officially banned the distribution of puberty blockers except for in clinical trials. The policy will go into effect later this year.

“We are now going out to targeted stakeholder testing on an interim clinical commissioning policy proposing that, outside of a research setting, puberty-suppressing hormones should not be routinely commissioned for children and adolescents who have gender incongruence/dysphoria,” reads the updated guidance.

As CBN News reported recently, Norway, Finland, and Sweden are halting or changing policies on gender-altering drugs and procedures for minors in an effort to safeguard children.

Most recently, The Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board has announced it will be revising its guidelines on the use of puberty blockers and gender-reassignment surgeries because there is a lack of medical research to support the use of those protocols.

And one of Australia’s largest medical insurers is now refusing to cover private practitioners who are prescribing gender-transitioning procedures.

“An existing body of research shows that most kids with gender dysphoria grow to be comfortable in their bodies upon undergoing puberty and that those wishing to transition suddenly post-puberty may be experiencing a social contagion. These studies have been dismissed because they don’t fit the preferred activist narrative,” Dr Debra Soh, a sex neuroscientist, wrote in the Washington Examiner.

Dr Michael Laidlaw, an endocrinologist based in Rocklin, California says chemical puberty suppressant agents can cause irreversible damage. 

“What these medical societies have created is an institutionalized childhood pathway toward sterility,” Laidlaw explained in an interview with The Christian Post.

In the U.S., there has been a cultural push to blindly accept gender dysphoria as proof that confused children are transgender. And a recently proposed California amendment would label parents as abusive if they do not endorse their child’s gender confusion.

“If a parent or guardian is unwilling or simply not ready to affirm their 7-year-old’s new identity — as they transition from Spongebob to Batman to Dora the Explorer — they can be found guilty of child abuse under AB-957 if it passes into law,” Nicole Peterson, founder of Facts Law Truth Justice, told the Daily Signal.

Meanwhile, parents of transgender children petitioned the US Department of Health & Human Services to stop ignoring that introducing these hormones to children has damaging side effects.

“These puberty blockers are powerful. They’re synthetic hormones. We know synthetic hormones can increase cancer risk,” psychiatrist Dr Karl Benzio, founder of Lighthouse Network, said.

“They interfere with our bone and muscle development. They also interfere with our thinking – during puberty there is significant brain development that goes on,” he continued.

Laidlaw warns, “Understand that mega-doses of testosterone are being given to teenage girls, some 10 to 40 times higher than what is normal for their body. Is it any wonder that follow-up studies in adults have shown an increased risk of myocardial infarction and death at these doses?” 

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