Carys Moseley analyses the news that puberty blockers will be banned indefinitely across the UK, and examines the inconsistencies and dangers of allowing a clinical trial for children
Finally, the UK government has decided to make the ban on puberty blockers for children under 18 indefinite. The Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting made a statement to Parliament on 11 December. The Welsh Parliament agreed with the ban and rejected a backbench motion objecting to it. The Scottish government has accepted the ban and won’t object. All parties in Northern Ireland voted unanimously to make the ban permanent.
Unacceptable safety risk
The Health Secretary had asked the Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) to advise the government on the safety or otherwise of puberty blockers. The CHM reported back recommending that the emergency ban currently in place should be made indefinite. However, ‘indefinite’ only means until the three (unspecified) structures recommended by the CHM were put in place for the ‘safe’ use of puberty blockers. The nature of these structures was not detailed in the government announcement.
The reason for all this was that the Commission on Human Medicines had found that children faced ‘an unacceptable safety risk’ from puberty blockers provided under prescription.
Sale and supply of puberty blockers for private prescriptions banned
In March 2024 the NHS stopped routine prescription of puberty blockers for children. This was in response to the publication of the Cass Review. The Cass Review showed that the supposed benefits of puberty blockers had been disproven. However Hilary Cass did not recommend a total ban at the time.
In May 2024 ministers in the previous government passed an emergency temporary ban. Last week, the present government made that ban indefinite. As a result, puberty blockers can no longer be sold or supplied even for private prescriptions. In doing this, the government has closed a loophole. The legislation comes into effect on 1 January 2025.
The impact of the Cass Review
The publication of the Cass Review had a major impact on the UK government, which accepted its findings. Wes Streeting MP, then a backbench opposition MP, tweeted saying he had been wrong to say ‘trans women are women’, and pledged that Labour would accept the findings. Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England, also welcomed the Cass Review, having previously stayed silent on transgender issues. Some say that the downfall of Humza Yousaf as First Minister of Scotland was due to him refusing to accept the Cass Review.
The Cass Review’s recommendations struck a chord internationally as well. Doctors in Belgium and the Netherlands called for restriction of puberty blockers after it was published. More recently the Charity Commission rebuked Mermaids for peddling disinformation about puberty blockers, citing the Cass Review due to its report of a lack of clear evidence in favour of puberty blockers.
Clinical trial to begin in 2025
The ban on sale and supply of puberty blockers in the private sector is to be welcomed, as it aligns private healthcare providers with the existing ban in the NHS. This means all children are now legally protected against the risks of puberty blockers. Or are they?
The Cass Review recommended a clinical trial of puberty blockers; this would be the only context in which children would be allowed to use them. Last week the government said that the purpose of the clinical trial would be to ‘determine the effectiveness of puberty suppression and the safety of prolonged treatment’. The government says that NHS England and the National Institute for Health and Care Research aims to recruit children (‘patients’) by spring 2025.
House of Lords members enthuse about clinical trial
In Parliament, Baroness Merron (Labour) applauded the clinical trial as ‘a world first’. Is this a good thing?
Baroness Walmsley (Liberal Democrat) asked whether the government had considered the criteria for children participating in the clinical trial:
“What assessment have the Government made of the recent Council of Europe report, which raises the ethical and rights implications of offering participation in the trial to only a small group of patients? If the only way to continue access to these drugs is through participation in the clinical trial, whose scope, length and start date have yet to be announced, this lays the Government open to accusations of coercion and breaches of human rights.”
In other words, she doesn’t think the government should have banned puberty blockers at all.
Baroness Merron responded to her by saying that the number of children in the clinical trial would be ‘uncapped’. The government has yet to explain the reason for this.
Baroness Jenkin (Conservative) was more critical. She asked why the trial could not simply look at children who have taken or are taking puberty blockers, rather than studying a brand-new cohort. Baroness Merron verbally replied to her but ignored her question. Baroness Fox (non-aligned) then also said that ‘uncapped’ sounded ‘scary’. Eventually Baroness Merron replied, saying coldly that the reason was that it was ‘the way to gather the widest amount of relevant evidence’.
The inconsistency of allowing a clinical trial
I warned back in March this year about the inconsistency of the developing situation, having previously warned as far back as August 2022 that Hilary Cass wanted new research on the grounds that not enough was known about the effect of puberty blockers on hormone surges in teenagers.
A mother has spoken to the press on condition of anonymity, saying that the clinical trials amount to using children as guinea pigs. She was supported by a former Tavistock doctor. The BBC has reported on the deepening debate among clinicians around the clinical trials. The trans activists at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) object to the clinical trials because they claim that puberty blockers are good for children’s mental health. Dr Louise Irvine who co-chairs the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, argues that there are significant risks to the children involved and that permitting a clinical trial prioritises adults’ political considerations over ‘clinical, ethical and scientific concerns, and the health and well-being of children’.
The BBC twists the debate
The BBC then cites Canadian clinician Gordon Guyatt, who brushed aside these concerns by saying this:
“With only low quality evidence, people’s philosophies, their attitudes or their politics, will continue to dominate the discussion…If we do not generate better evidence, the destructive, polarised debate will continue.”
The BBC presented this as a ‘third view’. However, it sounds suspiciously like saying that because adults are uncomfortable with ‘polarised debate’ amongst themselves, more experiments on children are required. The ‘evidence’ generated by more experimental treatments on children will then supposedly settle things. This appears to echo aspects of the Cass Review.
Genspect, a group of sceptical therapists, is campaigning to stop the clinical trials from going ahead. Genspect points out that Gordon Guyatt recommends a clinical trial comparing children who are prescribed puberty blockers with children who socially transition, i.e. cross-dress and use names and pronouns of the opposite sex. Genspect says that this is not how a trial should run; that it should compare the former group with children who are not given any transgender ‘treatment’. The reason is that most children naturally desist from wanting to change sex if they are not encouraged during puberty to live as members of the opposite sex.
Up to eight new gender centres for children
Originally the government said there would be two new gender hubs in NHS England to see children who were previously on the waiting list for the GIDS. Now there are three and the number is set to rise to eight according to the government.
Back in June 2023, I pointed out that the new gender hubs in the NHS would be obliged to take part in these clinical trials. Thousands of children have been on the waiting lists for these hubs. Presumably some of these will be ‘persuaded’ by adults who know them and by researchers running the clinical trials to take part. As a result, some children will continue to be more protected from puberty blockers than others.
Most people disapprove of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones
It may seem hard for some to believe now, but seven years ago when the trans movement started a huge avalanche of news stories based on its own propaganda, it became extremely difficult for people to speak out against puberty blockers and suchlike. A huge stigma was created in the press and on social media, and therefore across society, against anyone who would speak up. Many people have either lost their jobs or been at risk of losing them because of this.
Survey evidence collected more recently shows most people disapprove of the provision of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children. However, had it not been for people making objections on principle, regardless of what public opinion turned out to be, there might never have been any level of success at all.
How Christian Concern has opposed puberty blockers
Christian Concern has consistently opposed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as well as cross-dressing as harmful to children and adolescents. We have consistently advocated for psychological treatment for children, which fits with the Biblical and scientific truth that we are all male or female as God created us.
The trans children’s charity and campaign group Mermaids was a very early supporter of puberty blockers in the UK. In May 2019 Mermaids refused to listen to a Christian school teacher’s objection to puberty blockers, in a trans training session for primary school teachers. The Christian Legal Centre defended the teacher in court.
We have exposed the problem of NHS trusts approving guidelines for puberty blockers and the disingenuous nature of the supposed backtracking on puberty blockers by the NHS. We also warned that Mermaids was disingenuous in backtracking over its ‘born in the wrong body’ narrative after the Department for Education in England said no child should be told he or she is ‘born in the wrong body’.
However, Mermaids was not the only organisation pushing puberty blockers. In 2021 Christian Concern’s Head of Education Steve Beegoo revealed how Educate and Celebrate published materials for schools which normalised puberty blockers. In January 2022, Christian Concern wrote to the then Secretary of Education for England warning that the proposed conversion therapy ban could silence teachers and harm children on several fronts, including promoting and normalising puberty blockers. Christian Concern has called for Mermaids to be taken off the charity register and banned from all schools.
It is good to see that there has been a chorus of disapproval of puberty blockers across all sectors of society. However, whilst all the debate was raging, many people feared for their jobs and livelihood, due to a campaign to smear critics as hateful and bigoted. In June 2023 Christian artist Victoria Culf was banned from her own exhibition and reported to the police after saying to a Watford Council staffer that it is harmful to try to ‘change the sex’ of a child. The council employee had told her that her own child was on puberty blockers and engaged her in conversation on the subject. The case was launched after the ban on puberty blockers in the NHS. Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre are supporting Mrs Culf.
The Christian view supports children’s health and well-being
Whilst it is good to see that the routine prescription of puberty blockers is now banned across both the NHS and the private sector, serious concerns remain about the planned clinical trial on children. Whilst there are clinicians who prefer to prioritise adults’ professed concerns about ‘polarised debate’, Christians must continue to oppose all use of puberty blockers for the purpose of facilitating deception as to a child’s sex. It is good enough for every child that we are all created male or female. Healthcare should be fitting with this reality and not allow any loopholes to oppose it.
