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.”

  • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    You put my exact sentiment perfectly. I want full rights and freedoms for all LGBTQ, but messing with kids… Just doesn’t seem right to me.

    Does this mean that some kids will be worse off than if they had been given blockers? Yes… But until we have ways to actually fully determine and understand the brain and how self identity works we shouldn’t be messing with hormones.

    It’s kind of how I see the legal system, better to let a few criminals go free than ever jail an innocent person. The system isn’t perfect but we are limited with our knowledge and do the best we can.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      but messing with kids… Just doesn’t seem right to me.

      Does this mean that some kids will be worse off than if they had been given blockers? Yes…

      So your solution for “not messing with kids” is to mess with kids?

      They are puberty blockers, which are meant to delay the onset of puberty until the kid is old enough to decide themselves.

      They delay a choice, whereas denying them to a trans person is you forcing them to go through a puberty they might not want.

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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      8 months ago

      Puberty blockers have been used extensively in children for years for things like precocious puberty, or when a child is going through the “wrong” puberty (such as an AFAB friend of mine whose voice dropped and she started growing facial hair during puberty).

      Whilst the way that they’d be prescribed is slightly different in each of these cases, the overwhelming amount of evidence we have indicates that puberty blockers are safe and that a child who stops puberty blockers will go through puberty normally, just a bit delayed.

    • HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      So, I’d like you to make a prediction, based on what you currently believe. What percentage of people, who went by wpath/ current dsm diagnostic criteria and treatment logic, come to regret it?

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I was going to say the person you responded to had written the stupidest thing in the thread, but then I read your reply to it.