The UK Department of Health and Social Care has implemented an emergency ban on prescribing and supplying puberty blockers to ‘transgender-identifying’ children. The new legislation targets a loophole that permitted access to these drugs through private clinics despite a ban on their use by the National Health Service (NHS). The regulation will take effect from June 3 to September 3.
“During this period, no new patients under 18 will be prescribed these medicines for the purposes of puberty suppression in those experiencing gender dysphoria or incongruence under the care of these prescribers,” states the regulation. Nevertheless, patients already on these drugs prescribed by a UK prescriber can continue their use.
The emergency measure follows revised NHS clinical guidelines issued in March. These guidelines advised against providing puberty blockers to children due to insufficient evidence of their safety. The guidelines were informed by the findings of the Cass Review into gender identity services, led by Dr. Hilary Cass. The review concluded that current clinical practices involving hormone treatments for minors were founded on insufficient evidence and lacked demonstrable safety and efficacy.
This legislative action reflects growing international caution concerning irreversible medical procedures and treatments for children who identify as transgender. Despite these growing concerns, however, the United States still advocates the prescription of harmful puberty blockers to children, a position recently condemned by liberal broadcaster Bill Maher.
“Most of the countries in Europe now — England, the Scandinavian countries… they’ve all reversed themselves on this. They don’t do the puberty blockers anymore, they don’t do this stuff,” Maher continued. “America is just doubling down on this stuff, so we are the outlier country on this stuff.”
