British High Court Rules in Favor of Keira Bell: Restricts Use of Puberty Blockers and Cross-Sex Hormones

I applaud this recent decision by the British High Court, reported by The Guardian:

Children under the age of 16 considering gender reassignment are unlikely to be mature enough to give informed consent to be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs, the high court has ruled.

Even in cases involving teenagers under 18 doctors may need to consult the courts for authorisation for medical intervention, three senior judges have ruled in an action brought against the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust, which runs the UK’s main gender identity development service for children.

An NHS spokesperson welcomed the “clarity” the decision had brought, adding: “The Tavistock have immediately suspended new referrals for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the under 16s, which in future will only be permitted where a court specifically authorises it. Dr Hilary Cass is conducting a wider review on the future of gender identity services.”

Now it’s time to stop this mass child abuse on this side of the pond too, given that most girls move from “puberty blockers” to taking 10 to 40 times the natural female amount of testosterone, usually leading to infertility. How did it get to the point where the once-vocal anti-clitoridectomy crowd got so quiet when something comparable comes to our own communities? 12, 13, 14 and 15 year old girls have been allowed to make permanent “decisions” of this sort, without the need for any official medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

Instead of getting real diagnoses, they are cheer-led into drugs, hormones and surgery through social media, peer pressure and even Planned Parenthood (which supplies testosterone to many of these girls. All of this under the guise of “civil rights.” The “decisions” of these girls to use “puberty blockers” are being made without the benefit of long-term studies as to dangers, physical and psychological. It’s about time we got real adults into this conversation. There is a LOT of buyer’s remorse out there, but it’s being suppressed by left-leaning news media (you can find hundreds of cases on Reddit/detransition), It makes me wonder when the lawsuits will start flying over here.

The judgment handed down today has established the salient facts about puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones:
– Puberty blockers are not ‘fully reversible’.
– Puberty blockers do not ‘buy time’, they are the first stage of a medical pathway very few children come off.
– There is no evidence that puberty blockers alleviate distress.
– The pathway of blockers and cross-sex hormones has serious physical consequences, including the loss of fertility and full sexual function, with profound long-term risks and consequences.
– The treatment is experimental.
The most damning evidence of complacency in the service is the fact that the GIDS offers troubled adolescents no alternative therapeutic treatment pathway. Far from being a last resort treatment, blockers and hormones are the only treatment for children with complex histories and mental health conditions. This is the result of a service that operates on the basis of ideology in place of clinical standards. The judgment raises the issue of medical negligence and our immediate concern is for the children who have already been through this medical system.
This case has shone a light on the worst and most unforgivable result of the institutional capture throughout society by the gender lobby: the medical experiment on children’s healthy bodies, with serious irreversible and lifelong consequences.
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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth December 7, 2020 Reply

    How will we look back at 2020. Did we protect our teenaged girls? Jonathan Kay is spot on with this Tweet:

  3. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth December 9, 2020 Reply

    From Matt Taibbi’s Substack interview of Abigail Shrier:

    TK: Do you think what happened with your book, in terms of the problems with digital promotion and distribution, will have an impact on book publishers? Will they stay away from controversial topics? You say you haven’t been harmed and will write more books, but has this experience made that harder?

    AS: Publishers are already shying away from controversial topics. I’ve known so many authors who’ve tried to write anything to do with gender ideology and been dropped by their publishers or otherwise shut out. So, yes, they’re already staying away from controversial topics. In other words, the areas of American life in most dire need of investigation are precisely the areas that have been declared off-limits.

    This is why the current medical scandal of poor health care for trans-identified teenagers persists. It’s because no one is allowed to weigh risks and benefits. No one is allowed to question basic medical protocols. This is an area of experimental medicine where scientists and doctors should be taking a hard look at the protocols to ensure that those susceptible to regret do not undergo irreversible procedures. And yet, instead, we’re so busy congratulating and celebrating medical transition for young people who trans identify, that we’re practically guaranteeing that many of them will regret their choices.

  4. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth May 2, 2021 Reply

    Psychiatrist whistle-blower at Tavistock, David Bell, retires and tells his story of censorship. Many at Tavistock don’t want to know or discuss critically important facts regarding puberty blockers and transgender treatment:

    But whatever the court’s verdict, it cannot change the fact that the organisation to which Bell devoted the greater part of his working life did not respect his rights as a whistleblower. Nor has it taken the heat out of the debate about the medical treatment of trans children – if anything, the discourse has only grown more entrenched – which is why he’s talking to me now. This is the first time he has spoken in detail about his experiences: about how he came to write his report and the grave consequences that doing so had for him. His retirement means that the threats of disciplinary action against him are over. He is free, at last, to say what he likes.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/02/tavistock-trust-whistleblower-david-bell-transgender-children-gids

  5. Avatar of Bill Heath
    Bill Heath May 3, 2021 Reply

    The most common observation in medicine is “When you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras.” The meaning is clear. When acquiring a new piece of information, first check whether it fits into current medical thought and practice, instead of insisting on going to a novel or thinly-supported hypothesis. Those of us who pause to think first of horses are called anti-trans or transphobic because we won’t jump immediately to Zebras.

    This is a conservative view, but it’s medically conservative, not politically conservative. Which gets us to another point. When one’s views on a topic are conservative, that may not be inconsistent with being a political liberal. Most libertarians are social liberals and fiscal conservatives. All that is heard out of that is “conservative,” and the authoritarian left sets out immediately to destroy the speaker. The idea that a woman has control over her body isn’t inconsistent with a parent’s intercession in their eleven-year-old daughter’s pregnancy.

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