When Brad’s 11-year-old daughter said she was a boy, he made a decision that could have cost him everything. Now, a crucial question we must all ask: have our doctors been making a terrible mistake with our children?

The night before his 11-year-old daughter was to start puberty blockers, Brad* sat down with her for an important conversation.

He didn’t want that talk her out of it; he just wanted her to know what would happen to her developing body if she took the medication, which was prescribed to her by an Australian doctor after she began to question her gender identity.

It was a conversation that could have cost him everything.

By questioning the wishes of his ex-partner and the medical establishment, he risked being portrayed as the “bad guy” in his daughter’s story. Even worse, he could have lost custody for not supporting her.

For those unfamiliar with puberty blockers, they were initially developed to delay early puberty in children, but are now also prescribed to pre-teens with gender dysphoria so they can ‘have more time’ to better understand their identity .

The drug is controversial. It is still available in Australia, but Britain has just banned it from under-18s following an independent safety review. Several US states have also restricted trans care for minors, including puberty blockers.

Brad’s story is familiar to any parent of a tomboy. His daughter was “girlish” until she was about ten years old, when she withdrew and “became aware of her changing body.” She started wearing baggy clothes and then started saying that she identified as a boy and wanted a male name and pronouns. She eventually came out as trans.

When Brad asked without judgment why she felt that way, she said it was because she didn’t like the way women were treated and was afraid of being sexually assaulted.

Brad would do anything for his daughter, including accepting her as a son if she was truly transgender. But his little girl’s sad confession about her fear of men convinced him that she wasn’t suffering from gender dysmorphia, but was instead struggling with the terrible realization that all women face: that the world just isn’t safe for them.

Fearful of the effects puberty blockers could have on his daughter’s development, Brad knew medical intervention would be a terrible – even irreversible – step.

“My concern was that this wasn’t about gender identity; it was a response to learning what it can mean to be a woman,” he says.

But his daughter’s The mother, with whom he shares joint custody, believed they needed to confirm their child’s new gender to avoid the risk of self-harm and suicide.

The family went to the gender clinic at the Adelaide Women’s and Children’s Hospital, where after two 45-minute psychiatric interviews with all three attendees, they were diagnosed with gender dysphoria. At a second appointment – ​​from which Brad was excluded, he says without explanation – puberty blockers were prescribed.

Brad says he filed a written objection, but the hospital’s ethics committee chose to provide the drugs without his consent.

‘I should have gone to family court to prevent my child from being involved in what is essentially a medical process. I was just amazed,” Brad tells me.

‘All the literature here would indicate that both parents should agree, but a A lawyer who works in this area said puberty blockers are now considered so routine that you have to appear in court to get them stopped.

“And if you do that, the court will simply order a second opinion, and that would come from another children’s hospital, and it probably won’t be any different to what the hospital in Adelaide said.

“My legal advice was that I would be wasting my time and tens of thousands of dollars.”

So in a last-ditch effort to get his daughter to at least consider delaying treatment, he sat her down and together they read – “line by line” – a clinic-provided information sheet about puberty blockers and the instructions for use from the drug manufacturer, Lucrin.

The fact sheet produced by the South Australian government warns that taking puberty blockers such as Lucrin can have irreversible effects and the risks are still not fully understood.

“The short- and long-term effects of puberty blocking on social and cognitive development are unknown,” the report clearly states. ‘There may be risks of puberty blockers that are not yet known.’

However, the pamphlet says that most side effects are reversible, and puberty will restart if treatment is stopped, although there are “possible irreversible effects on height and unknown long-term effects on bone density.”

“Research has shown that bone density does not increase while taking puberty blockers as would normally happen during puberty,” it says.

‘This may be partially reversible with treatment with gender-affirming hormones (phase 2), but long-term data are limited and the full effects are not known.’

It goes on to warn about the risk of osteoporosis later in life, and the need to ‘support’ bone health with diet, exercise and supplements while taking puberty blockers.

The fact sheet also warns that puberty blockers will slow growth and as a result ‘your final height may be different from what it would have been if you had not had treatment’.

The reversible side effects mentioned include nausea, vomiting, dizziness, hot flashes, fatigue, mood swings, decreased libido and absence of menstruation. The clinic recommends considering egg or ovarian tissue banking before starting puberty blockers because of the possible effects the drugs have on menstruation. fertility.

Brad says he was also shocked to discover that gender dysphoria, a condition in which a person believes they are stuck in a body that does not match their gender, is not listed by the maker of Lucrin as a condition that the drug can treat treated.

According to Lucrin’s Consumer Medicine Information, the drug is used to treat prostate cancer in men and unusually early puberty in children, and lists bone loss as a serious side effect for those being treated for precocious puberty.

“There has never been a controlled study of the use of puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria, and the drug company does not list gender dysphoria as one of the conditions the drug is intended to treat,” says Brad.

‘The use for this is off-label and therefore experimental.’

Brad also explained to his daughter that she was at risk of losing sexual function and never being able to have an orgasm, which he said was a “very uncomfortable” conversation..

Although the discussion was difficult, his daughter ultimately decided not to continue with the treatment. He says her decision not to take puberty blockers was “like dodging a bullet” and that, much to his relief, she immediately became happier afterwards.

“Within a few days, her sleep and anxiety levels improved, and the conversations and talk of suicide stopped,” he tells me.

“At the end of last year, she identified as a girl again and took her birth name again.”

Brad says the two clinic consultations were not in-depth enough to properly explore the root causes of his daughter’s anxiety.

“I didn’t believe deep down that her feelings wouldn’t change when she hit puberty, if she was allowed to hit puberty, because I think when you hit puberty you discover a lot about yourself,” he says. .

‘In the eyes of the gender clinic we were in a race against time and when she was twelve years old, puberty was just around the corner.

“The fact that my daughter had gone from identifying as a boy to gender fluid to non-binary and was undergoing a name change for the third time was immaterial.

“There was no effort made to explore the family dynamics, the developmental history and pre-existing mental health issues and all that other stuff – the clock was ticking.”

Brad feels vindicated by his daughter’s progress after deciding to stop taking puberty blockers. He says this is proof that the medical establishment’s “gender-affirming” approach to treatment could be a terrible mistake.

‘[My daughter] recently said to me, “When I hit puberty, you said I might feel different. You were right.’

Brad is now calling for a parliamentary inquiry, saying Australia is at least three years behind Britain, where puberty blockers have been banned indefinitely by the NHS, and Sweden, which has started restricting gender reassignment for children.

‘As much as every medical body is going to say ‘we’re going to do our own research’ if they don’t look at Britain and the Scandinavian countries, which are ahead of the US, are the terms to reverse this, it’s quite irresponsible I think ‘ he says.

“I think it’s normal for there to be anxiety around puberty and we say ‘we’ve got a pill for that’ – but 11-year-old girls can’t make those decisions.”

A spokesperson for the South Australian Women’s and Children’s Health Network, which runs the clinic, said without details the father was unwilling to provide them. comment on the matter.

Overall, the spokesperson said services for gender diverse young people in South Australia are provided by clinicians in accordance with international and national clinical practice guidelines.

“The care is provided by experienced physicians in a multidisciplinary setting with appropriate safeguards,” the spokesperson said.

‘Guardians are also consulted throughout the process. Informed consent is obtained before any medical treatment.

‘All young people undergo initial assessment and care as directed by the mental health team, prior to medical assessment or care.’

*Not his real name