Hundreds of gender-confused children are having their health put at risk by NHS-prescribed puberty-blocking hormones, a leading doctor has said.
Dr Lucy Griffin, a consultant psychiatrist at Bristol Royal Infirmary, said she is “extremely worried” about the adverse effects the drugs are having on adolescents.
Puberty blockers were developed to halt a rare condition causing the premature onset of puberty in children younger than eight or nine – but they are now being prescribed to healthy teenagers.
Side effects
Dr Griffin said: “Puberty blockers are not designed for the blockage of puberty in healthy adolescents.
“Now they’re being used for something that’s a psychological presentation without a body of scientific study behind it.”
The ‘treatments’ have been known to cause osteoporosis, while some have linked the drugs with causing breast cancer, liver disease, thrombosis, cardiovascular disease, disfiguring acne, high blood pressure and weight gain.
Last year, 800 children in England were given puberty-blocking injections after they said they were unhappy living as the sex they were born, some as young as ten years old.
Irreversible
The effects of the drugs are typically reversible when patients cease taking them at the usual onset of puberty. However, in cases of prescriptions for gender-confused young people, progressing on to cross-sex hormones almost always follows.
This means giving oestrogen to boys and testosterone to girls, and Dr Griffin warned that the ‘medication’ had irreversible effects with “lifelong implications”.
She said: “Cross-sex hormones are associated with permanent infertility”, adding that women who use testosterone are at increased risk of male pattern baldness, abnormal fat redistribution and potentially heart disease.
Politically incorrect
Dr Griffin said she was speaking out because patients’ health is being put at risk by hospitals trying to appear politically correct.
She said she had other colleagues who were concerned about giving children the drugs but fear speaking out for accusations of bigotry or practising ‘conversion therapy’ on gender-confused people.
She said: “Children can’t vote and they can’t leave school, but we are allowing them to make decisions about their fertility and sexual function.
“My own feeling is I can’t see how young people’s health can be anything but harmed by these treatments”.
The consultant recently attended a women’s meeting on transgenderism in Bristol. According to The Daily Mail, the meeting descended into violence and intimidation with 30 masked trans activists attempting to storm the venue.