A leading gender-care doctor in the U.K. has come out to issue a warning about the outcome of the puberty blocker trial. According to The Pink News, the clinical psychologist and director of Gender Plus, Dr. Aidan Kelly claimed that the analysis of puberty blockers commissioned by the National Health Service (NHS) is unlikely to give more understanding to the medication’s effects.
This analysis was ordered by the NHS following the government’s indefinite ban on puberty blockers, citing them as “unacceptable health (risks)” to the wellbeing of children—despite having been used in the U.K. for 35 years. This $13.1 million trial is now the only way to access the medication.
Puberty blockers are used as an early form of gender-affirming care for trans and nonbinary youths. It acts to delay or prevent altogether the biological changes brought about by puberty, and their effects are entirely reversible.
The trial is being led by King’s College London researchers, who will observe 220 youths who are on puberty blockers for two years and analyze the drugs’ effectiveness through their physical, social, and emotional wellbeing. During the trial, only half of the patients will receive treatment, and the other half will be forced to wait another year before accessing care.
“This trial is unlikely to provide a conclusive answer either way as to the benefits of so-called puberty blockers,” Kelly says in response to this approach.
The doctor is the director of Gender Plus, the only private gender healthcare clinic to be awarded an “outstanding” status from the Care and Quality commission, providing essential and safe healthcare to trans people.
Kelly argues that, “In reality, the real benefits of this treatment pathway are experienced after a patient has progressed on to gender-affirming hormones, allowing them to achieve the required puberty changes which will bring them into alignment with their gender identity.”
She adds that giving the youths puberty blockers alone will just force them to stay in a “suspended state, within the very body that has led to them suffering with gender dysphoria in the first place.”
Shel also warns further that the indefinite ban on puberty could create a “lost generation” of transgender youth who will likely turn to buying hormones online with no medical oversight, heightening already extreme levels of depression and anxiety.
