As macabre as it is irrational

man guinea pigs. This study cannot be allowed to proceed….

Originally developed to treat prostate cancer, and occasionally used in the chemical castration of male sex offenders, puberty blockers act on the pituitary gland to shut off the natural production of sex hormones. They have never been licensed for use by children suffering feelings of cross-sex identification, but little in the way of medical expertise is needed to imagine their potential harms.

Puberty is not an optional extra in a healthy human being’s biological life plan. It is a extended physiological process involving a range of fundamental cognitive and psychological changes. Suppressing it is a disaster for the individual concerned. The notion that an ethical trial should be undertaken to establish the possible downsides of chemically sterilising children is as macabre as it is irrational. That research could be conducted over a long enough time-scale to establish informative results, while remaining experimentally well-controlled, is just as dubious.

Recent data from GP records suggests the number of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria has increased 50-fold over ten years. That trend, however, bears all the hallmarks of a social contagion, one aided and abetted by social media. Confronting such developments, adults, not least doctors, have a responsibility to prevent, rather than collude in, the mistaken choices children are liable to make about their own best interest.