By Breitbart News Network | Created at 2024-12-12 13:39:02 | Updated at 2024-12-25 12:59:50
1 week ago
The left-wing Labour Party government announced it will uphold a ban on prescribing puberty blocking drugs to children, following warnings of “unacceptable” risks from the medical community in Britain.
In a significant blow to the transgenderism movement, puberty blockers will remain outlawed in the United Kingdom indefinitely, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Tuesday.
“Children’s health care must always be evidence-led. The independent expert Commission on Human Medicines found that the current prescribing and care pathway for gender dysphoria and incongruence presents an unacceptable safety risk for children and young people,” Streeting said according to The Telegraph.
Highlighting the landmark Cass Review, which shed significant doubts about claims that puberty blockers benefit supposedly transgender children while presenting “significant risks”, Streeting said that the government needs “to act with caution and care when it comes to this vulnerable group of young people, and follow the expert advice.”
However, the government will continue to allow puberty blockers to be administered to children in clinical trials, which the Health Secretary will be conducted as soon as next year with the aim of establishing a “clear evidence base for the use of this medicine”.
Streeting also said that the government will be working with NHS England to open up new gender identity services after the infamous Tavistock Centre was ordered to close its child transgender operation over safety concerns.
Puberty blockers were banned from being given to children by the National Health Service in March and the former Conservative government followed suit in May, introducing emergency legislation to ban prescription from under 18-s in both public and private healthcare.
Activists from the left-wing campaign group TransActual UK launched a legal challenge against the prohibition, claiming that it was unlawful for the government to use emergency powers to enact the ban. However, Britain’s High Court shot down the challenge and upheld the legality of the ban.
The decision to ban puberty blockers for children was prompted by the findings of a review from leading pediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, whose near 400 page report undercut many of the main tenets of the transgenerism movement.
The Cass Review found that the supposed evidence for puberty blocking drugs helping children with gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health was “weak” and that the “effect on cognitive and psychosexual development remains unknown.”
Following the government’s decision to uphold the ban, Dr Hilary Cass said: “That is why I recommended that they should only be prescribed following a multi-disciplinary assessment and within a research protocol.
“I support the Government’s decision to continue restrictions on the dispensing of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria outside the NHS where these essential safeguards are not being provided.”
