In a development that shows just how far behind American clinicians have become when it comes to treating gender dysphoria, Great Britain’s National Health Service will stop giving puberty blockers to young people except for children enrolled in clinical trials.
It’s a bittersweet victory considering how many children were permanently damaged by the NHS in the rush to treat minor children for what may or may not have been gender dysphoria.
The Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM) points out that a “dearth of research” into gender dysphoria presenting in young people is the primary reason for the ban. Indeed, the NHS cites the lack of scientific evidence for the move.
“[T]here is not enough evidence to support their safety or clinical effectiveness as a routinely available treatment,” said an NHS document accompanying the announcement.
The NHS recognizes an even greater uncertainty regarding youth with what they call "late-onset gender dysphoria" (alternative names for this presentation include "ROGD"). This signals that the NHS may take an even more cautious approach to this (now ubiquitous) patient cohort./7 pic.twitter.com/oidoQ3ZP19
— SEGM (@segm_ebm) June 9, 2023
It’s an extraordinary reversal — one that the American medical establishment needs to take note of. The scandal at the NHS’s Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service called into question the clinical effectiveness of puberty blockers and whether giving them to children resulted in putting kids on an unalterable path to gender transition.
“The most difficult question is whether puberty blockers do indeed provide valuable time for children and young people to consider their options, or whether they effectively ‘lock in’ children and young people to a treatment pathway,” Dr. Hilary Cass, the pediatrician overseeing the independent review of the NHS gender service, wrote last year.
The change is part of a broader push in several countries to limit gender-related medical treatments for young people.
After conducting evidence reviews, Finland has begun limiting who can access gender-related treatments and Sweden has restricted the use of puberty blockers and hormones to clinical trials. A Norwegian health body and the French National Academy of Medicine have also urged caution.
In the United States, more than 20 Republican-led states have passed laws banning the use of puberty-blocking drugs and hormones, with some making it a felony for doctors to prescribe them. Hundreds of clinicians across the country — including some who have raised concerns about which adolescents should receive gender-related treatments — have denounced the bans, saying such decisions should be made by patients, their families and their doctors.
Whatever happened to “First, do no harm”? Doctors are allowing ideology to determine treatment for sick children — treatments that are largely untested and despite being sold as “reversible” — the jury is still out on that.
There’s not likely to be any pullback from treating gender dysphoria with puberty blockers in the United States. Hundreds of doctors and clinics would be wide open for lawsuits given the mounting evidence in Europe about puberty blockers’ ineffectiveness and the damage done to children by prescribing them.
Dr. Cass says that the growing body of evidence on gender dysphoria in young people points to “co-morbidities” — other issues that children may be suffering from that would preclude the use of puberty blockers and any gender transition treatments at all.
Dr Cass said many children referred to Gids* have complex needs that can be sometimes overlooked and around a third have autism or other types of neurodiversity.
The NHS says a “significant proportion” of young people with concerns related to their gender can also experience other complexities related to mental health, neuro-development and family or social matters.
The new service will take a new “holistic” approach, focusing on the needs of each child individually with “careful therapeutic exploration”.
*=Gender Identity and Development Service
The politics of gender dysphoria as practiced by many advocates in the United States is damaging young people’s bodies and minds. And those responsible need to be held fully accountable.
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