Children will no longer be prescribed puberty blockers at gender identity clinics, NHS England has confirmed.
The government said it welcomed the “landmark decision”, adding it would help ensure care is based on evidence and is in the “best interests of the child”.
The NHS England policy document, published on Tuesday, said: “We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of (puberty blockers) to make the treatment routinely available at this time.”
Puberty blockers have been used extensively in children for years for things like precocious puberty, or when a child is going through the “wrong” puberty (such as an AFAB friend of mine whose voice dropped and she started growing facial hair during puberty).
Whilst the way that they’d be prescribed is slightly different in each of these cases, the overwhelming amount of evidence we have indicates that puberty blockers are safe and that a child who stops puberty blockers will go through puberty normally, just a bit delayed.