‘No good evidence’ for gender care for youth, landmark UK review finds
Al Jazeera
Study commissioned by England’s health service says hormones should only be prescribed to teens with ‘extreme caution’.
The evidence behind medical intervention for youth questioning their gender is “remarkably weak”, with some doctors abandoning “normal clinical approaches” to prescribe hormones to teens, a landmark review in the United Kingdom has found.
The long-term health effects of masculinising and feminising hormones on teens are “limited and need to be better understood” and such interventions should only be taken with “extreme caution”, the long-awaited review commissioned by England’s National Health Service (NHS) said on Wednesday.
Puberty blockers, which are given to pre-teens to delay puberty, were not found to relieve gender dysphoria or improve “body satisfaction” and evidence about their effects on psychological wellbeing, cognitive development and fertility was insufficient or inconsistent, the review said.
There was also no evidence that puberty blockers “buy time to think”, since the vast majority of young people on them proceed to hormone treatment, according to the review.
Hilary Cass, the paediatrician who led the review, said that while doctors were usually cautious about implementing new research findings in fledgling areas of medicine, “quite the reverse happened in the field of gender care for children”.
