NHS Englands kjønnsidentitetsklinikk for barn har avdekket at “det store flertallet” av unge mennesker som tar pubertetsblokkere går over til kryss-kjønnshormoner.
Forskere ved Tavistock og Portman NHS Foundation vurderte 44 pasienter i alderen 12 til 15 år for studien og som alle fikk behandling ved klinikken for kjønnsdysfori.
Resultatene fra den tre år lange etterforskningen, som startet i 2011, er bare nettopp publisert. Det skriver The Christian Institute.
De skriver videre:
Whilst the authors of the report acknowledged the small sample size had limited research “outcomes”, they did find that all but one participant had carried on to take cross-sex hormones.
According to the article, similar results were observed in an American study – where 55 children out of a group of 57 eight to fifteen year-olds ended up commencing sex-swap drugs after starting on puberty blockers.
Researchers also referred to a corresponding Dutch investigation at a gender clinic in Leiden, in which more than 95 per cent of ten to eighteen-year-old patients on puberty blockers started cross-sex hormones when eligible to do so.
Protection
Hormone blockers were originally developed to pause ‘precocious puberty’ – a condition which causes children to begin puberty much earlier than normal – with the intention of taking them off the drugs at the time when ordinary puberty is expected to start.
Until last year, NHS guidance stated that the drugs were “considered to be fully reversible”. This was eventually corrected to state: “Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria.”
In December, the High Court said that it was “highly unlikely” children 13 and under could ever genuinely consent to hormone blockers, and “very doubtful” 14 and 15-year-olds could do so.
Three senior judges ruled that children need to understand “the immediate and long-term consequences of the treatment, the limited evidence available as to its efficacy or purpose, the fact that the vast majority of patients proceed to the use of cross-sex hormones, and its potential life changing consequences for a child.”
Life-changing
The case against the gender clinic at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation was brought by detransitioner Keira Bell, after she was given hormone blockers and cross-sex hormones as a teenager.
Having returned to living as female, Bell said she wanted to protect others from experiencing the life-altering effects of the drugs.
Bell told the BBC last year: “It puts you on a path that changes your life forever. And when you are a minor you have no chance of understanding how that affects you and your adult life. If we put a stop to this it will allow people to grow naturally.”
