Children will no longer be prescribed puberty blockers at gender identity clinics, NHS England has confirmed.
The government said it welcomed the “landmark decision”, adding it would help ensure care is based on evidence and is in the “best interests of the child”.
The NHS England policy document, published on Tuesday, said: “We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of (puberty blockers) to make the treatment routinely available at this time.”
Prepare to get decimated for a thought out opinion not in line with the teachings… I agree with you though.
I firmly believe that any adult has the right to do and live with their body as they please, and is their own business and nobody else’s.
But allowing kids, who often can’t even get a piercing or tattoo before being 18, to seriously mess with their hormones in a critical stage of development seems way more irresponsible than getting some earrings. The latter can just grow shut over time.
Discovering one’s own sexual orientation and how to fit into this confusing maze of personal relations and interactions we call society is a process that I don’t believe any teenager can grasp or properly comprehend fully, that isn’t completed until some years later. Many things change, many certainties are utterly irrelevant a moment later.
Permitting them to permanently mess with their physiology in such a critical phase of development seems wildly irresponsible to me.
All puberty blockers do is pause puberty. Once you stop taking them, puberty resumes.
They are used on children for reasons other than the child being transgender. For example, precocious puberty where a child starts developing before a standard puberty age.
Should we not allow kids at that critical stage of development have their hormones messed with?
Should we also not be trying to prevent child suicide?
I know you didn’t read the article, but that’s still allowed and the 100 kids on this treatment will continue to do so.
I came to Lemmy to get away from people going off titles alone. You’re automatically arguing in bad faith if you don’t even read What’s being changed.
And don’t give me this bullshit of “it just resumes!” Because that’s not how bodies work. There’s a reason puberty should happen at the right age, the entire reason for this medication btw.
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here. So don’t waste it by coming back and shouting nonsense about medical research, something neither of us is qualified enough to understand. (And I worked for nhs mind you)
Hmm…
…
Seems like you think you’re qualified enough…
I’m not qualified but I know when I don’t know everything and can smell bullshit from people underplaying a serious aspect.
The first step to knowledge is realising you don’t know anything as they say. As i said, i used to work for nhs and my parent comes from a medical background. To say anything they deal with is simple or easy to understand is laughable.
“I know when I don’t know everything but I know this is bullshit” is not an especially scientific attitude when approaching a scientific subject.
I lack the words to sift out emotional responses.
Is the meaning of my words truly lost?
I would say declaring something to be bullshit without evidence and while admitting it is not your area would be the emotional response here.
Then my point has indeed been missed. Feel free to discard it as it hasn’t come across as intended.
And do you think all these scientists and doctors haven’t thought about all the problems and side effects and why it might still be necessary before they think about giving children a drug like this? Do you think it is not being closely monitored? We have many years of experience with this, not only with children with gender dysphoria.
All you see is “messing with their physiology at such a critical stage of development”, what you don’t see is the “mess” of watching a child go through the wrong kind of puberty and the damage it does for a lifetime, and you haven’t confronted yourself with that or the corpses of young people who have killed themselves because they just couldn’t take it any more.
This is something that requires knowledge, not emotion. I understand that you are uncomfortable with this process, nobody can take that away from you. Either do not think about it and leave it to the specialists, or get the knowledge to understand what you are talking about.
To take away a life-saving drug because some people who are not affected by it, do not want to face the damage and loss of life, or do not want to learn about the procedure, feel uncomfortable, is the stupidest and most evil thing I can think of. Guess who I think ist the irresponsible person here.
Well said. My daughter’s best friend is trans and his parents do support him to an extent, but not enough to have gotten him puberty blockers. So now he wears a what must be uncomfortable tight chest binder every day just so that he can look at himself in the mirror and not hate himself because he sees breasts.
This boy is 13 and he already vapes and smokes weed and he cuts himself. Would puberty blockers have prevented all of that? Probably not. I’m sure things like being forced to use the girl’s bathroom and girl’s locker room in school and the teachers being forced to deadname him (hooray Indiana) contribute as well. But I can’t help think that his mental health would at least be more improved if he didn’t have to spend his days in discomfort just to avoid hating himself whenever he sees his reflection.
“The most stupid and evil thing you can think of” is being about 98% supportive?
I’m well aware of what the treatment entails. Doesn’t change my belief that we are selectively ignoring risks and possible issues here that we don’t for less ideologically charged subjects teenagers dabble in.
We don’t allow kids to get tattoos, piercings, don’t allow them to skip school, don’t allow them to go out late at night. We keep them from talking to strangers, from opening bank accounts, from doing any real business actually. We keep them safe from drugs and alcohol, in many parts from the concept of sexuality in general.
Why? Because teenagers are idiots in the most confusing and uncertain stage of their lives. And we know they can’t grasp many of those choices yet, so we keep them from making them before they are fully grown.
Why is something that goes way beyond the scope of those minor transgressions we shield them from considered a choice someone at that age can make without the risk of severe, lifelong regrets?
You admit that anything to do with gender dysphoria is more important than a minor transgression. You are right, it is more important than a tattoo, because the stakes are higher if you refuse help.
a long-standing and intense pattern of gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria emerged or worsened with the onset of puberty.
Coexisting psychological, medical or social problems, if any, are stable enough to begin treatment.
The adolescent has given informed consent.
Many health professionals and, where possible, parents are involved in the process.
Delaying puberty does not mean that the child has to change gender, it means giving them more time to think about it until they are of age, giving them the time to live as their preferred gender and find out if it is the right one or if they want to stay with their birth gender. At any time the child can decide to stop taking the medication and will go through puberty like any other child, just a bit late (which happens naturally for some children).
It is exactly the opposite of what you say it is. It avoids the damage of a false puberty, gives time for decision making and time to “grasp the choice and consequences” and gives them time to grow up and make the permanent decision later. Everything you say is basically pro puberty blocker.
You’re mostly comparing legal and financial ramifications to self-identity. I trust a teenager more to tell me who they are than to pay back a car loan.
From the little research I’ve done, puberty-blockers don’t have long-term effects and most kids aren’t on them more than a few years. This is widely agreed upon in the medical community. There is non-biased research done on this for decades you can read up on.
Yes, being a teenager is weird and confusing. Even more so, if you feel like you live in the wrong body, I imagine. That’s the exact reason puberty blockers are effective, by giving a teen a little more time to figure out their identity, without it being rushed or compounded by the effects of puberty.
Bwahahahah thanks for the laughs.
Google what puberty blockers are
They don’t permanently “mess” with anything. Taking puberty blockers is just delaying the onset of a puberty one might not want to go through. They only work as long as you’re on them and you can’t keep taking them for the rest of your life.
So it’s literally just delaying a decision until the child is old enough to make it. There’s nothing irreversible or permanent about it.
“thought out opinion” “not in line with thr teachings” you sound worse than a flat-Earther ruahahahahhshah
Puberty blockers do not permanently mess with physiology. That’s the point: they’re like the temporary tattoos kids can stick on themselves, not permanent inn. Life-altering transition is reserved for when they’re older.