There is “not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness” of puberty-suppressing hormones, according to England’s National Health Service (NHS), which has stopped prescribing them for children and young people with gender dysphoria or gender incongruence.
NHS England said it made the decision, which was widely condemned by LGBTQ2S+ organizations, after it “properly considered” an information examine it commissioned in 2020. In a scheme report released on Tuesday, it stated that it also reviewed data that had been released since then.
According to a report released by UK’s PA Media on Tuesday, puberty blockers may now only be administered to younger people in some private hospitals and medical research tests. More than 100 younger people are currently receiving puberty blockers through the NHS, and they will be able to continue receiving the medication, it added.
Some personal gender identity clinics will even offer puberty blockers.
The NHS’s medical policy states that therapy for young people “focuses on mental and psychological assistance.” Later in life or in age, hormones that affirm identity and surgeries may be available.
LGBTQ2S+ proponents claim that in recent years, gender-affirming care for younger people in England has faced legal and political attention. This has coincided with rising anti-trans speech in the nation.
Some American officials welcomed NHS England’s news. Victoria Atkins, the health and social care director of the UK, stated on X that “worry that affects our family’s health and wellbeing so deeply must always be based on scientific evidence.”
Health secretary Maria Caulfield even welcomed the scheme, calling it a “groundbreaking alter as children’s safety and wellbeing are fundamental”.
Stonewall, a LGBTQ2S+ battle group in the UK, criticized Tuesday’s statement, writing in a speech that “all transgender young people deserve access to high quality, proper care”.
“For some, an important part of this treatment comes in the form of puberty blockers, a removable care that delays the onset of menstruation, prescribed by expert doctors, giving the young man extra time to evaluate their next methods”, it wrote.
We worry that NHS England will hold off on putting fresh prescriptions until a study protocol is ready and operational at the end of 2024, the organization added.
The NHS news, according to Mermaids, is “deeply unsatisfactory, and a more restraint of support offered to transgender children and young people through the NHS, which is failing trans youth,” and supports non-binary, gender-queer children and young people.
Gender-affirming treatment is medically necessary, evidence-based treatment that uses a comprehensive strategy to assist a man move from their natural sex, which is the female that they want to be known, to their affirmed gender.
A non-invasive method of preventing puberty is known as puberty blocking. Doctors inject or use an implant that mimics the actions of a gonadotropin-releasing hormone, which is released into the brain. The substance reduces the pituitary gland’s tolerance to that hormone and, as a result, it effectively stops puberty. After the drugs are stopped, puberty resumes.
Every major medical association in the US agrees that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for both children and adults, where several Republican-led states have banned gender-affirmative healthcare for young people. This includes the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
Gender-affirming care can include puberty blockers, which may not be a part of every association’s treatment.
The AMA and LGBTQ2S+ advocates emphasize the potential value of gender-affirming care for trans youth. According to a 2022 survey by the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ2S+ youth, transgender and nonbinary youth are twice as likely to have attempted suicide in the US as their cisgender peers.
