Health secretary says emergency measures banning sale and supply for gender dysphoria will be made indefinite after expert advice

Puberty blockers for under-18s with gender dysphoria will be banned indefinitely across the UK except for use in clinical trials, the government has announced.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said that after receiving advice from medical experts, he would make existing emergency measures banning the sale and supply of puberty blockers indefinite.

The Department of Health and Social Care said the Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) had published independent expert advice that there was “currently an unacceptable safety risk in the continued prescription of puberty blockers to children”.

  • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
    91·
    18 hours ago

    I don’t know about the issue enough for me to comment on if she is biased or not, but I found this NYT interview (archive.org link) and she really seems to try to be playing both sides to me. Her main arguement seems to be don’t treat this as an issue to resolve gender, that makes you ignore mental health/depression/other things, but with there not being the best care of that nature available for trans individuals, what avenue is left for them?

    It sounds like she wants to go on about a lack of enough proof for her to stop treatment, but it also doesn’t sound like she has enough proof to say it’s harmful, but that doesn’t seem to discourage her helping eliminate it.

    • nonailsleft@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      Well her position doesn’t seem to be that she wants to eliminate it at all. She says the evidence is too weak for a general green light. She supports it being offered but as research:

      There are young people who absolutely benefit from a medical pathway, and we need to make sure that those young people have access — under a research protocol, because we need to improve the research — but not assume that that’s the right pathway for everyone.

      Also:

      I think there is an appreciation that we are not about closing down health care for children. But there is fearfulness — about health care being shut down, and also about the report being weaponized to suggest that trans people don’t exist. And that’s really disappointing to me that that happens, because that’s absolutely not what we’re saying.