signed off on plans to halt new prescriptions for puberty blockers<\/a> for young people with gender dysphoria from mid-December, pending the results of a major clinical trial in the United Kingdom, expected in 2031.<\/p>\nThe drugs – known as gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues – would remain available for people already using them for gender dysphoria, as well as for other medical conditions such as early-onset puberty, endometriosis, and prostate cancer.<\/p>\n
‘Banning their use will lead to profound distress’<\/p>\n
The Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA) issued a statement, warning that the “ideologically driven” decision would have a “devastating impact” on gender diverse youth.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Midday Report, PATHA president Jennifer Shields said she had been shocked by the announcement, calling it an “act of discrimination”.<\/p>\n
“Nothing in the Ministry of Health’s evidence brief published last year indicated a need for action this significant or severe”.<\/p>\n
Shields said people would experience a “significant deterioration” in quality of life and mental health as a result of the decision, and pointed to the consequences in the UK.<\/p>\n
“We are seeing increased rates in suicidality, a reduction in young people’s ability to participate in public life,” she said.<\/p>\n
“They stop going to school, they stop engaging with their social engagements. It really is just a huge limit on trans young people’s ability to thrive.”<\/p>\n
Shields pushed back at the claim there was a lack of evidence surrounding puberty blockers, saying that was the case in many areas of medicine.<\/p>\n
She said if every intervention given to young people was required to have a “high quality of academic evidence” there would be “no such thing as paediatric care.”<\/p>\n
“The medications will continue to be used by other children of precocious puberty, by young people with endometriosis, by adults with endometriosis and cancer.<\/p>\n
“If there were significant risks associated with the medication, these restrictions would apply to everyone, not just this population.”<\/p>\n
Shields said a social media post by NZ First leader Winston Peters, proved the decision had been made on “political agenda” rather than medical expertise.<\/p>\n
PATHA Vice-President and GP specialist in gender affirming care, Dr Elizabeth McElrea, said puberty blockers were always prescribed with the “utmost care and consideration”.<\/p>\n
“They have been prescribed safely for decades for transgender children and banning their use will lead to profound distress in this already vulnerable group.”<\/p>\n
‘We don’t know enough… we could be harming a lot of kids’<\/p>\n
Speaking to RNZ, public health expert and Otago University Emeritus professor Charlotte Paul said she supported the extra restrictions, noting that the drugs were being prescribed for an “unapproved use”.<\/p>\n
She said there were “substantial uncertainties” about the harms and benefits of puberty blockers, as well as “who should be treated, and why.”<\/p>\n
“It’s not just the uncertainty about the balance of benefits and risks,” Paul said. “It’s that we don’t know enough about the population that we’re treating and that we could be harming a lot of kids.”<\/p>\n
However, Paul said the government’s announcement did not give her any confidence about the “care of these young people”, and acknowledged young people with gender dysphoria were “distressed.”<\/p>\n
She said many young people had other underlying conditions like autism, a family history of trauma, or mental health disorders: “it ought to be clear that those need to be addressed.”<\/p>\n
“We have to concentrate better than we have, actually, on these underlying conditions. And also, we need to have some therapeutic approach to kids with dysphoria.”<\/p>\n
Paul said New Zealand needed to follow the UK in “trialing and developing psychological therapies and educational therapies” to help young people.<\/p>\n
She said gender dysphoria “on this scale” was a “new phenomenon” with diagnoses in the UK increasing 50 times over a decade.<\/p>\n
Paul said it was a “false argument” to suggest a higher standard of evidence was being demanded for puberty blockers than other care.<\/p>\n
“There are quite a lot of therapies, treatments for children where we have evidence from adults for the same condition, but we don’t have it for children.”<\/p>\n
She said the use of these drugs for gender dysphoria was for a “completely different indication” so we “just don’t have evidence.”<\/p>\n
“Behind that is my general worry about why we are treating, and do we know what we’re doing anyway?”<\/p>\n
Paul said it would have been preferable if the Ministry of Health had made the decision, rather than it being left to the politicians.<\/p>\n
Other reactions<\/p>\n
Family First was quick to welcome the decision, saying the use of puberty blockers had “never been appropriate” and was effectively the “trialling of experimental drugs on children”.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Bob McCoskrie said the move was “long overdue” and brought New Zealand in line with other countries who had either “restricted or banned the experimental use of puberty blockers on children suffering gender dysphoria.”<\/p>\n
“With this decision, New Zealand is no longer an outlier when it comes to accepting scientific evidence and ensuring the protection of vulnerable children.”<\/p>\n
Other groups, like Speak Up for Women and the Women’s Rights Party, also added their support.<\/p>\n
And Resist Gender Education’s Fern Hickson labelled it a “red-letter day” for those who advocate for the “human right of children to go through a natural puberty.”<\/p>\n
Hickson said the decision was a “welcome recognition” that puberty was a “crucial developmental pathway into adulthood that should not be disrupted.”<\/p>\n
On the other side, Rainbow Wellington decried the decision, calling it “deeply upsetting” especially during Trans Awareness Week.<\/p>\n
Chair Sam French said the fact that the minister believed the medicines were safe for “cisgender young people, but not trans young people” suggested the reasoning was ideological, not “medical or logical.”<\/p>\n
French encouraged young trans people to seek out information from Gender Minorities Aotearoa, stressing: “there are still treatments available to you”.<\/p>\n
“There are other medicines which block sex hormones, and other hormone therapies available which are not affected by this ban.”<\/p>\n
Senior Clinical Lecturer at the Christchurch School of Medicine Dr Sue Bagshaw said she was saddened that young people would face “more problems” getting the help and time they need to work through any gender identity issues.<\/p>\n
“Safeguards are important but to ignore the protective effect on mental health is not a safeguard.”<\/p>\n
Bagshaw said more research into the effects of the drugs would be “welcome and necessary” before further actions from the government were taken.<\/p>\n
A sexual health physician, Dr Massimo Giola, said the “surprise” announcement appeared to be “purely political” without consultation with professionals.<\/p>\n
“In my work, I see gender diverse youth after the age of 16. I am very worried about the state of their mental health at that point, and I’m worried that they might have significantly self-harmed because of allowing biological puberty to happen, rather than pausing it using these medications.”<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: 123RF The imminent pause on puberty blockers has provoked strong feelings on both sides of the debate:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[48,47,134,524,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-144249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-medication","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-podcasts","17":"tag-public-radio","18":"tag-radio-new-zealand","19":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}