Health secretary says emergency measures banning sale and supply for gender dysphoria will be made indefinite after expert advice

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”.

  • nonailsleft@lemm.eeEnglish
    3·
    10 days ago

    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

    • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 days ago

      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.

    • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      10 days ago

      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.