Puberty blockers ban imposed by Tory government is lawful, high court rules

>She said: “This decision required a complex and multi-factored predictive assessment, involving the application of clinical judgment and the weighing of competing risks and dangers, with which the court should be slow to interfere.”

There is (yet another) false meme about this going round. The Cass Review commissioned multiple peer reviewed studies. The review took several years. At the end of which the Cass Report was published. The report was not peer reviewed as that is not what peer review is there for, it summarised those and a large body of other studies and offered recommendations.

Hopefully this heads of people posting deliberately dishonest misinformation from certain quarters in the US and lowers the temperature of these discussions.

>At the heart of Hilary Cass’s review of gender identity services in the NHS is a concern for the welfare of “children and young people” (doi:10.1136/bmj.q820).1 Her stated ambition is to ensure that those experiencing gender dysphoria receive a high standard of care. This will be disputed, of course, by people and lobbying groups angered by her recommendations, but it is a theme running through the review. Cass, a past president of the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, seeks to provide better care for children and adolescents on one of the defining issues of our age. Her conclusion is alarming for anybody who genuinely cares for child welfare: gender medicine is “built on shaky foundations” (doi:10.1136/bmj.q814).2

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>**That verdict is supported by a series of review papers published in Archives of Disease in Childhood**, a journal published by BMJ and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health**** (doi:10.1136/archdischild-2023-326669 doi:10.1136/archdischild-2023-326670 doi:10.1136/archdischild-2023-326499 doi:10.1136/archdischild-2023-326500).3456 The evidence base for interventions in gender medicine is threadbare, whichever research question you wish to consider—from social transition to hormone treatment.

[https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj.q837](https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj.q837)

The BMJ, chief medical officer Chris Witty and several medical societies have come out in support of the review and report. From that point the courts are not going to over rule the medical establishment without a very substantive reason.

The banning of a medical intervention is an extreme position. Medical decisions should be between patient and doctor.

This ban is being justified by a level of scrutiny that, if we applied it to all medical interventions, would ban the majority of interventions we use today. And it is being credulously believed by people who do not know the realities of how medicine is practiced.

Just saying, people can cheer now since classifying medication used for decades worldwide as literally on the same level as hard drugs that require jailing parents working with doctors using international best practice for possession based on a report that didn’t recommend doing anything of the sort and not consulting with any of the affected groups is apparently what people want.

But watch in 10 years as some anti abortion and birth control nut gets put in charge of the health service and suddenly the entirety of womens’ birth control and abortion access evaporates and they get jailed for possessing anything related, you wanted it to be this easy.

[It’s exactly what happened with the Section 35 order as Westminister now has a president for just randomly blocking whatever Scottish legislation they feel like, hope it was worth screwing over trans people](https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scotlands-bottle-deposit-return-scheme-westminster-set-to-block-upcoming-deposit-return-scheme-4042378)

Not necessarily a surprising one, but I think this will have some consequences if Streeting continues the ban as he intends to.

Puberty blockers are, bluntly speaking, the compromise option. For an adolescent with gender dysphoria, between experiencing a potentially extremely distressing natal puberty and transitioning at the same age peers would be developing, pausing puberty for a few years is the middle ground.

Estradiol in particular is pretty easy to get online as of the last few years and far cheaper than blockers – off the top of my head you can get a year’s supply of injections from as trustworthy a supplier as you can find on the grey market for about 80 quid. Desperate teenagers (and their parents) are suddenly in a very different position. Absent clinical trials or any timely access to any sort of effective medical care whatsoever, it would not be surprising if we see an uptick in DIY HRT.

This might end up being another case of abortions-as-healthcare; ban them and people will do their own. God knows I’d have done my best as a teenager if it were available back then.