NHS loophole means children wanting to change sex can get the powerful drugs, despite doctors banning them from handing them out
Gender-questioning children can still get powerful puberty blockers from the taxpayer despite an NHS ban.
Campaigners, including former Prime Minister Liz Truss, have now urged ministers to close the ‘loophole’.
NHS England withdrew use of the drugs last month after a review found there was insufficient evidence about their ‘safety or clinical effectiveness’.
Puberty blockers stop the physical changes during adolescence, such as the development of breasts or the growth of facial hair.
Experts have been concerned about its possible side effects for years.
Campaigners, including former Prime Minister Liz Truss, are calling on the NHS to close this ‘loophole’. Mrs Truss pictured here in February
Puberty blockers, medically known as gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues, halt the physical changes of puberty in teens who are questioning their gender. Pictured here is an example of these medications called Triptorelin
Although banned by the NHS, healthcare practitioners may still be able to hand them out to young people asking gender questions under a ‘special circumstances’ clause.
NHS doctors can get around the ban by making a so-called ‘individual funding request’ for a child who has questions about his or her gender to get the medicine.
This is not a policy unique to puberty blockers. Such requests can be made for any medicine that is not routinely available on the NHS.
Campaigners argue that such a puberty blocker policy goes against the spirit of the NHS ban and that in these circumstances the loophole should be closed.
Mrs. Truss told it The Telegraph: ‘Extremist activists have exploited loopholes in the law time and time again in schools, hospitals and courts.
‘Without primary legislation, the practice of prescribing puberty blockers to children will continue, despite the harmful consequences.’
The ex-prime minister is campaigning for legislation that would completely ban the prescription of puberty blockers, including in private ‘cowboy clinics’.
Dr. Caroline Johnson MP, a pediatrician and Conservative member of the health select committee who supports Ms Truss’s call, added: ‘If the NHS plans to admit children on an individual application basis – the question is how high the is the threshold for the benefit that must be granted. be satisfied? How well should risk be understood? What is the burden of proof?’
Campaign group the LGB Alliance, which has long campaigned on the risks of puberty blockers, told MailOnline that more must be done to prevent private clinics stepping in to fill the gap left by the NHS ban.
The calls come ahead of the publication of a highly anticipated report on the sector.
Kate Barker, CEO of the LGB Alliance, said: ‘LGB Alliance is calling for a blanket ban on a treatment rightly deemed unsafe by NHS England.
“We have written to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, urging her to follow best practice, not private practice.”
Dr. Michael Biggs, professor of sociology at the University of Oxford and board member of the charity Sex Matters, added: ‘Private gender clinics are a law unto themselves and should be banned.
‘These cowboy clinics should not continue to provide medicines to children for which NHS England says there is insufficient evidence to support safety or clinical effectiveness.’
Puberty blockers, technically called a gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogue, were previously much more easily handed out by the NHS to gender-questioning young people.
The now defunct NHS guidelines state that its use allowed children suffering from gender dysphoria to ‘explore their developing gender identity’ before potentially starting more permanent forms of treatment such as cross-sex hormones.
Dr Hilary Cass’s final report on NHS care for gender issues is published this week
Doctors working in transgender care praised how the drugs were reversible and safe to use.
But other specialists cast doubt on these claims, highlighting fears about how the powerful drugs could affect adolescent development.
A 2022 interim study led by pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass raised fears about the long-term use of puberty blockers, especially for children’s brains.
“To date, there has been very limited research examining the impact of puberty blockers on neurocognitive development in the short, medium, or longer term,” she wrote at the time.
Dr. Cass added that the NHS had not collected routine and consistent data on the use of the drugs ‘which means it is not possible to accurately track the outcomes and pathways that children and young people take through the service.’
The finding prompted the NHS to ban the new use of puberty blockers in the NHS last month, outside a planned clinical trial.
Dr Cass’s final report on NHS care for gender issues will be published this week.
Recommendations on children’s ‘social transition’, which involves treating children to fit their new gender identity, such as using a new name or buying clothes of the opposite sex, are also expected to be looked at.
It comes amid a growing body of research into the potential dangers and irreversible changes that puberty blockers can have on children.
Just last week, US experts warned that the drugs could wither testicles and cause infertility or cancer in boys who take them.
And earlier this year, a world-renowned expert found that the drugs can harm children’s IQ.
Neuropsychologist Professor Sallie Baxendale from University College London alarming study revealed cases where young girls apparently lost between seven and fifteen IQ points while taking the drugs.