England’s National Health Service (NHS) announced this week that children will no longer be given puberty blocker prescriptions after experts concluded that there were serious safety concerns.
The NHS’ decision comes after it commissioned the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to review the published evidence on Gonadotrophin Releasing Hormone Analogues (GnRHa), also known as puberty blockers, which prevent the body from making sex hormones that are needed for an individual to growth and develop into a healthy adult.
“NHS England has carefully considered the evidence review conducted by NICE (2020) and has identified and reviewed any further published evidence available to date,” said an NHS England policy document released on Tuesday. “We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of PSH to make the treatment routinely available at this time.”
The investigation was launched after there was a massive uptick in the number of children who were being referred to the Gender Identity Development Service, a national health clinic in the U.K. The number went from 250 children in 2012 to more than 5,000 in 2022 as the transgender movement gained steam as a social trend and experts warned that it was having a contagion effect.
Fewer than 100 children in the U.K. who are already on puberty blockers — and are being monitored by endocrinologists at Leeds and University College London Hospital — will be allowed to continue to have access to the drugs through NHS. Moving forward, however, no children will be prescribed puberty blockers through NHS.
Last June, the NHS said that it was planning on blocking puberty blockers for minors because there was a significant correlation between gender dysphoria and other developmental issues, according to the Washington Examiner.
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“A significant proportion of children and young people who are concerned about, or distressed by, issues of gender incongruence experience coexisting mental health, neuro-developmental and/or personal, family or social complexities in their lives,” according to the June policy guidance. “The relationship between these presentations and gender incongruence may not be readily apparent and will often require careful exploration.”