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Keira Bell argues that she was harmed by puberty blockers as a teenager<\/p>\n
LUCY YOUNG FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n
The field of gender medicine, bogged in controversy over recent years, is one where high emotion and vociferous assertions dictated terms for far too long. Frequently, they silenced vital questions about potential harms from recklessly prescribed treatments. <\/p>\n
Medical interventions such as puberty-blockers were promoted on the basis that they pressed a \u201cpause button\u201d in sexual development while unhappy children decided their future. In reality, their prescription signalled a virtual \u00adcertainty that a child would go on to take cross-sex hormones, as the overwhelming majority of young people who started on them did.<\/p>\n
Often \u2014 though not exclusively \u2014 the young people expressing the strongest wish to change gender have been same-sex attracted, autistic, or with a troubled family history. Parents have found themselves navigating a nightmarish path through a Wild West of treatments with their children. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Wes Streeting concerned at trial of puberty blockers for children<\/a><\/p>\n In one family court case reported recently by The Times, a father described his distress when his 15-year-old daughter was prescribed a dangerously high dose of testosterone by the online service GenderGP, which an independent expert, an endocrinologist, said had placed the child at risk of sudden death. His daughter, who had autism and previous anorexia, is now estranged from him: in the last update he was allowed to receive, it appeared she was scheduled for surgery.<\/p>\n It was on such troubled territory that Baroness Cass<\/a>, a distinguished paediatrician, led a courageous review which resulted in the NHS banning the use of puberty blockers last year. Her findings in April 2024 demolished much of the case for what had become widespread practice. <\/p>\n A form of global consensus had sprung up, she said, based on a single Dutch study which suggested improved psychological health for a narrowly \u00addefined group of children on the drugs. This had led some practitioners to abandon the \u201cnormal clinical approaches\u201d, such as counselling, which would usually apply to children in psychological distress. In fact, the report said, gender medicine was an area \u201cof remarkably weak evidence\u201d.<\/p>\n Dr Cass later said puberty blockers were \u201cpowerful drugs with unproven benefits and \u00adsignificant risks\u201d. Among those risks are dangers for bone density, neurodevelopment and \u2014 when they lead on to cross-sex hormones \u2014 fertility.<\/p>\n