2024-03-14 12:30:52
The National Health Service (NHS), the British public health organization, has just announced that puberty blockers will no longer be prescribed to children suffering from gender dysphoria, outside of therapeutic trials. In question, the safety and effectiveness of these drugs: “There is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of puberty-suppressing hormones to make the treatment routinely available at this time”declared the spokesperson for the institution.
Great Britain is following in the footsteps of Sweden which, from 2021, put the brakes on the prescription of puberty blockers to children suffering from gender dysphoria. Karolinska University Hospital, soon followed by other Swedish hospitals, had just made public its decision to no longer prescribe this type of medication outside of clinical trials. Swedish researchers suspected that puberty blockers carry risks of adverse effects “important and irreversible diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, infertility, increased risk of cancer and thrombosis”.
Adolescents’ capacity for informed consent debated in Britain.
The use of these drugs, and more generally the treatments used to achieve gender transitions in children and adolescents, have been questioned in the United Kingdom for many years. The ability of too young people to make informed decisions on protocols that could have irreversible consequences on their body and their health is discussed.
Furthermore, doctors are suspected of pushing, without any caution, young people to begin a “transition” presented as the only panacea for a malaise with multiple causes. The historian Mari-Jo Bonnet and the gynecologist Nicole Athea recently denounced these imprudent prescriptions, in a context of an epidemic of transitions followed by numerous requests for detransitions, in an interview granted to France-Soir on March 5.
On December 1, 2020, the High Court of London ruled in favor of a young “detransitioner” who sued the Tavistock center and accused it in particular of having prescribed puberty blockers after only 3 one-hour interviews. English justice had notably considered “that it was highly unlikely that a child aged 13 or under would be competent to give consent to the administration of puberty blockers.”
“Care must be based on evidence, expert clinical advice and in the best interests of the child”
Following this legal decision which had been the subject of numerous controversies across the Channel, the British National Health Service asked Doctor Hilary Cass, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, to carry out an independent study on the services of sexual identity for those under 18. Three years later, the doctor published a provisional opinion warning of the dangers of systematically prescribing puberty blockers.
The British NHS has therefore just decided to ban the prescription of puberty blockers to children and adolescents outside of therapeutic trials which should be launched soon.
The decision of the institution in charge of public health is welcomed by Maria Caufield, former Minister of Health and now Under-Secretary of State for Mental Health and Women’s Health Strategy:
« We welcome this historic decision by the NHS to end the routine prescribing of puberty blockers, and this guidance which recognizes that care must be based on evidence, expert clinical advice and in the best interests of the patient. the child. »
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