January 23, 2025 - 4:15pm

Yesterday, there was a Women and Equalities Select Committee (WESC) hearing on evidence around the safety and effectiveness of puberty blockers. Three professors were asked for their advice, and they claimed that there were potential benefits to giving puberty blockers to children.

Paediatric endocrinologist Professor Gary Butler, bioethicist Professor Simona Giordano and Oxford Professor Emeritus Ashley Grossman all took part. Yet these expert witnesses are every bit as blinkered by their belief in gender ideology as the trans activists on TikTok, only with more clout. Their commitment to the idea that some children are innately trans, and that their cross-sex identity ought to be affirmed with drugs, shone through every answer.

The WESC session was held to examine the medical evidence for an indefinite ban on puberty blockers and how a research trial, as recommended by the Cass Review, should be set up. Rather than sitting within the remit of a health committee, the meeting was hosted by the WESC, as if a discussion about clinical treatments for children was a matter of inclusion and equality.

When asked about the safety of puberty blockers, Butler dismissed “anxiety around bone density” and claimed that the drugs are “recognised as a reversible treatment”. Yet this is at odds with NHS guidance which was updated in 2020, warning that it’s “not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children’s bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations.” In March 2024, NHS England went further and stopped prescribing the drugs.

The paediatric consultant went on to claim that he was aware of hundreds of young patients across the country who had been prescribed puberty blockers without ill effects. Yet, the Cass Review is clear that the outcomes of patients treated with the drugs since 2011 are unknown due to poor records and a lack of follow-up. This went unremarked upon by WESC chair Sarah Owen.

Butler had an ally in Giordano, who denied knowledge of any studies showing that puberty blockers reduce bone density or have a psychological impact. She then referred to the restriction of their use to a trial as “draconian”.

Meanwhile, Grossman was at least a little more circumspect, acknowledging that there were risks to putting children on a “medical conveyor belt to transition”. He admitted that there was no way to distinguish between those who he believed “might benefit” and those who grow out of their trans identities as they head toward adulthood.

Independent MP Rosie Duffield was the only WESC member to ask probing questions. “It was a shame the panel of witnesses was not more balanced in their views,” she said afterwards. “Dr Hilary Cass’s serious and expert review took four years and I’m not certain the session today added anything at all to the debate. One witness even appeared not to know that the NHS had actually banned puberty blockers, and not Parliament.”

Duffield was correct to point out the partiality of the panel. Giordano sits on the ethics board of the World Professional Transgender Health Association (WPATH). The most recent guidelines from the trans lobby group recommend that men who identify as eunuchs ought to be supported to remove their testicles. Treatments and surgeries for individuals who believe they are “non-binary” are also promoted as best practice with no lower age limit — aside from for phalloplasty surgeries. Cass criticised WPATH’s international guidelines for transitioning as lacking “developmental rigour”.

Meanwhile, at an address to WPATH’s European arm EPATH, Butler gave a speech in which he complained that NHS gender identity services (Gids) had been the subject of “lies” in the media, publicly questioning the need to change how the now-closed facility at the Tavistock operated.

In the audience was a woman who will bear the weight of such expert opinions for the rest of her life. Detransitioner Keira Bell, who took on Gids in court, was watching proceedings. Today, she has scars across her chest, a deepened voice and is uncertain about her fertility, because professionals chose to believe that some children are innately trans. Despite Duffield pointing out Bell’s presence, the professors did not turn around. We should not be surprised that they still won’t face up to their mistakes.


Josephine Bartosch is assistant editor at The Critic and co-author of the forthcoming book Pornocracy.

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