'NHS to launch network of local clinics amid a doubling in demand
The United Kingdom National Health Service is closing the gender identity clinic at the Tavistock and Portman Trust, the London-based facility whose practices have faced considerable scrutiny in recent years.
[...]
Cass stated in a July 19 report that there was a need to move away from the sole provider model and develop services regionally to meet the needs of patients. The report was also critical of using experimental puberty-blocking drugs to treat gender dysphoria.
"The rationale for use of puberty blockers at Tanner Stage 2 of development was based on data that demonstrated that children, particularly birth-registered boys who had early gender incongruence, were unlikely to desist once they reached early puberty; this rationale does not necessarily apply to later-presenting young people, including the predominant referral group of birth-registered girls," Cass wrote.
[...]
"We do not fully understand the role of adolescent sex hormones in driving the development of both sexuality and gender identity through the early teen years, so by extension we cannot be sure about the impact of stopping these hormone surges on psychosexual and gender maturation. We therefore have no way of knowing whether, rather than buying time to make a decision, puberty blockers may disrupt that decision-making process."
[...]
The Cass review also detailed that the evidence base for using drugs to arrest natural puberty in gender dysphoric children is poor and highlighted their impact on brain development, noting that "brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by puberty blockers, which could have significant impact on the ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences."
In February 2021, research published in PLOS One revealed that the use of blockers notably stunted bone growth in children who were given puberty blockers. The study followed a cohort of 44 youth who had undergone the experimental treatment in the U.K.'s NHS gender clinic.
"In both cases (height and bone strength) there was some growth but less than would be expected during those years without hormonal suppression," the research found, according to NHS. The research was published nine years after the study began. Of the 44 children that the study tracked, 43 went on to take cross-sex hormones.
The Tavistock clinic was also the subject of considerable scrutiny in 2020 when Keira Bell, a young woman in her 20s, alleged in a judicial review that she was incapable of understanding the risks of puberty blockers when she was treated at the clinic as a teenager with mental health issues. Bell went on to take opposite sex hormones and underwent a cosmetic double mastectomy only to later regret those decisions and detransition.
[...]'
-Brandon Showalter
https://www.christianpost.com/news/...istock-gender-clinic-after-formal-review.html
'[...]
Keira Bell, who was prescribed puberty blockers at the centre when she was just 16 years old but later stopped the transition process, welcomed the decision.
Now 25, she said: “I’m over the moon. It means many children will be saved from going down that path that I went down.
“It’s a long time coming.”
She added: “I thought that that was the way I needed to go (transition) but really I just needed some support... mental health support and some therapy really.”
She said medics at the Tavistock moved to prescribe puberty blockers for troubled youngsters far too quickly and instead should have given mental health support first.
“We are talking about children here, medicalising children based on the fact that you know they feel a certain way,” she said.
She added that children in that position should have been offered mental health support, rather than puberty blockers, in order to get them back to “reality”.
“They are messing with children’s lives,” she added. “People at the Tavistock should be ashamed.”
[...]'
-Mark Reynolds
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1647475/tavistock-centre-child-gender-identity-transgender-nhs
'The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently added a warning to the labeling of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists—also referred to by many as puberty blockers—saying the drugs may cause a series of symptoms in children that include headaches, pressure buildup around the brain, and vision loss.'
-ZeroHedge
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/f...ss-children?ref=biztoc.com&curator=biztoc.com
Last edited by Creamu,
