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Puberty blockers for under-18s with gender dysphoria will be banned indefinitely across the UK except for use in clinical trials, the government has announced.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said that after receiving advice from medical experts, he would make existing emergency measures banning the sale and supply of puberty blockers indefinite.
The Department of Health and Social Care said the Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) had published independent expert advice that there was “currently an unacceptable safety risk in the continued prescription of puberty blockers to children”.
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So puberty blockers are not legal until puberty is over? Makes complete sense /s
Puberty blockers to be banned indefinitely for under-18s with gender dysphoria across UK
I fixed the title. Of course, they’re still available for other medical conditions, they’re just singling out gender dysphoria.
“Medical Experts”
I don’t know about the issue enough for me to comment on if she is biased or not, but I found this NYT interview (archive.org link) and she really seems to try to be playing both sides to me. Her main arguement seems to be don’t treat this as an issue to resolve gender, that makes you ignore mental health/depression/other things, but with there not being the best care of that nature available for trans individuals, what avenue is left for them?
It sounds like she wants to go on about a lack of enough proof for her to stop treatment, but it also doesn’t sound like she has enough proof to say it’s harmful, but that doesn’t seem to discourage her helping eliminate it.
Well her position doesn’t seem to be that she wants to eliminate it at all. She says the evidence is too weak for a general green light. She supports it being offered but as research:
There are young people who absolutely benefit from a medical pathway, and we need to make sure that those young people have access — under a research protocol, because we need to improve the research — but not assume that that’s the right pathway for everyone.
Also:
I think there is an appreciation that we are not about closing down health care for children. But there is fearfulness — about health care being shut down, and also about the report being weaponized to suggest that trans people don’t exist. And that’s really disappointing to me that that happens, because that’s absolutely not what we’re saying.
She makes it hard to feel out what her actual position is, which in a way is probably what she should do, but is also very frustrating because being on neither side feels disingenuous as a default these days. I don’t know enough about her to really feel I know for sure.
We had decades (centuries?) of people not getting this care. There were definitely negatives to that. We’ve had maybe now a couple decades of increasing HRT/puberty blocker stuff. I’ve heard positive stories. Everything makes it sound reversible should the need arise. Everything against it seems to not be evenly distributed across the political spectrum so walking it back feels political based on what I’ve heard cumulatively.
Keeping it as research seems it would greatly reduce its availability, and if it causes people to suffer or die, that’s not something that can be taken back, unlike stopping hormone treatment or puberty blockers seems to be. That’s the part that concerns me.
I don’t know much about the issues, but I try to stay informed, so I don’t want to go trashing this lady’s report. From all I’ve read though, a lot of doctors already have to sign off on patients before it comes to these treatments, so canceling that now seems to overrule a wide range of medical and mental doctors for a dubious position.
Keeping it as research seems it would greatly reduce its availability, and if it causes people to suffer or die, that’s not something that can be taken back, unlike stopping hormone treatment or puberty blockers seems to be. That’s the part that concerns me.
Well I can certainly recommend reading the interview then. One of the things mentioned is that she considers, after her research, this hormone treatment as having irreversible effects.
That’s something I always see people dancing around, sometimes saying ‘mostly’ reversible or something… Being (‘mostly’) irreversible has an enormous ethical impact. She also mentions having taken into consideration the long term psychological effects but that the research on that just isn’t strong enough to give a clear-cut advice
I read the interview as a 380 page paper on a subject I don’t really understand seemed a bit ambitious. I linked it, as I didnt know who did the report, and I wanted to hear her summary in her own words.
The comments here are full of people defending one side or the other, but no one seems to be providing any sources. This seems to be a difficult subject to approach if one isn’t seeking to affirm an existing stance. Both sides just seem to say “show me the proof” back and forth because neither will acknowledge the other.
You seem to be at least leaning in favor of the report. If you have any noob appropriate links to supporting info, I’d look at them.
Full-fledged hormone blocking + replacement certainly is about as much reversible as puberty, that is, not really. E.g. once boobs grow having tons of testosterone in your system won’t make them go away, only surgery will (did you know that the most common cosmetic surgery for cis men is breast reduction, btw?). Some stuff self-medicating enbies are doing should be reversible, like not blocking testosterone and taking oestrogen for smoother skin.
Anyhow the earliest anyone is going to get hormone treatment is 16, and that’s in Germany for clear cases with a judge having a second look at everything. Generally it’s 18. Puberty blockers don’t even need to be reversed you just stop taking them and the puberty comes, side-effects from late puberty are benign and/or manageable. Like, in a risk weighting we’re talking about being 2cm smaller than you could have been vs. suicide, it’s not even a competition.
Here’s the biography and credentials of the primary expert: https://cass.independent-review.uk/about-the-review/the-chair/
I can understand being angry with what’s happening but I don’t believe there’s any question about that persons medical expertise and credentials.
Credentials sure, but Cass has also been found to follow anti Trans groups, threw out any positive study that wasn’t blind (which would have been unethical to run) and the report itself was influenced by a similar report originally done in Florida under Ron DeSantis. This is a biased report that started with a conclusion and ignored any evidence that disagreed.
Well, they have lost the credible part.
Wes Streeting is pro child self-harm, at least as long as those children are trans. Fucking scum
Unacceptable safety risk in trans kids feeling comfortable with who they are as human beings.
WTF puberty blockers aren’t used for only trans kids. They are also used to treat precocious puberty.
That’s still legal. Only banned for gender dysmorphia.
*dysphoria
different word, common mistake
That is messed up as heck.
These monsters just hate trans kids so much. TERF island strikes again.
Next they’re gonna make Harry Potter mandatory reading.
Care to elaborate on the safety risks there, Wes?
While I don’t agree with it’s findings, there is a 388-page report this decision is based on.
that was debunked numerous times
link the debunking pls
What was the debunked? That a report exists?
The report exists, but it has so many errors, misinterpreting its own data to bend to the conclusions its authors decided they wanted to find, lots of cherry picking, and ignoring any fact inconvenient to its conclusions.
Imagine a paper that concludes that dowsing or homeopathy is good science. It’s about that accurate.
If you manipulate the data, a lie will sell itself.
Also it was commissioned by the Tories, to be done by a woman who before even starting her research for the report, was clearly biased against trans people.
the entire points of the report were debunked… like a lot
K…I started my original comment with, “While I don’t agree with it’s findings,” and was responding to a comment asking for elaboration on the safety risks. I was just providing context, not stating the report was gospel-truth or anything.
Wait… are you saying you are a messenger? GET HIM!!!1111
Can you highlight the main errors of the report?
well considering the author, herself, backpeddled
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/dr-cass-backpedals-from-review-hrt
A review of the infamous CASS report:
Results from 5 uncontrolled, observational studies suggest that, in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, gender-affirming hormones are likely to improve symptoms of gender dysphoria, and may also improve depression, anxiety, quality of life, suicidality, and psychosocial functioning. The impact of treatment on body image is unclear. All results were of very low certainty using modified GRADE
Safety outcomes were reported in 5 observational studies. Statistically significant increases in some measures of bone density were seen following treatment with gender-affirming hormones, although results varied by bone region (lumber spine versus femoral neck) and by population (transfemales versus transmales). However, z-scores suggest that bone density remained lower in transfemales and transmales compared with an equivalent cisgender population. Results from 1 study of gender-affirming hormones started during adolescence reported statistically significant increases in blood pressure and body mass index, and worsening of the lipid profile (in transmales) at age 22 years, although longer term studies that report on cardiovascular event rates are required. Adverse events and discontinuation rates associated with gender-affirming hormones were only reported in 1 study, and no conclusions can be made on these outcomes.
This document was prepared in October 2020
Evidence review (.PDF): Gender-affirming hormones for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220726_Evidence-review_Gender-affirming-hormones_For-upload_Final.pdf
Other reading:
Fact Check: New York Times Publishes Misleading Story On Puberty Blocker Study
Watching:
Exposing the Dangers of Anti-Trans Fascism | RE: The Cass Review & Labour’s Downfall
What do they think puberty blockers do?
think
I’m gonna stop you right there, no useful thought process was involved here at all.
evil fucking bastards
That’s not for them to decide, they’re not the experts.
They are acting upon the recommendation of the largest systematic review of the evidence in the UK to date.
The plan is " to set up a clinical trial into the use of puberty blockers next year and to recruit the first patients by spring. Streeting said the study would help “establish a clear evidence base for the use of this medicine”."
Essentially, the research on this has been so polarized, the results so conflicting and the science riddled with terrible methodology etc that the government is saying “fuck it, we’ll establish our own gigantic study.”
Ouch.
Removed by mod
