The momentum appears to be growing, at least in Europe. Just last week, Norway announced that medical intervention for transgender minors would be halted except for the purposes of clinical trials. Now the National Health Service in England has made an almost identical announcement. They are specifically calling out the prescription of puberty blockers for trans youths. Similar to Norway, they are saying that more research is required into the “potential benefits and harms” resulting from the administration of these drugs to children. They also announced that a new clinical trial to determine these matters will begin by next year. If someone could forward this to the American Pediatric Association and the AMA, I’d appreciate it. (NY Post)

The publicly funded health service in England has decided it will not routinely offer puberty-blocking drugs to children at gender identity clinics, saying more evidence is needed about the potential benefits and harms.

The National Health Service said Friday that “outside of a research setting, puberty-suppressing hormones should not be routinely commissioned for children and adolescents.”

People under 18 can still be given puberty blockers in exceptional circumstances, the NHS said, and a clinical study on their impact on kids is due to start by next year.

As usual, the Associated Press jumps in to defend the practice without direct criticizing the medical professionals in Great Britain. They write, “Transgender medical care for minors has been available in the United States for more than a decade and is endorsed by major medical associations.”

That is, unfortunately, a true statement. But it also doesn’t begin to address the question of how or why this is being allowed. Both the American Pediatric Association and the American Medical Association have endorsed all of the drugs and procedures involved in the transgender movement. But they remain completely silent about the fact that none of these “treatments” are actually fully reversible (particularly the surgery). And they fail to note that the FDA has never approved any of these “puberty-blocking” drugs for that purpose.

How is it that Europe is so far ahead of us in this field? In the United States, the topic quickly became so overtly politicized that it was almost immediately verboten on the left for anyone to even raise the questions. Some doctors have bravely come forward and pointed out that the policies put forward by the APA were developed by a very small cadre of doctors who were already firmly aligned with the transgender movement before they even began deliberating. Of course, those doctors were quickly silenced.

I can’t think of any other examples where a medical question became this divisive this quickly. At this point, more than a dozen red states have banned these sorts of ghoulish experiments on children, with Louisiana being the latest. Simultaneously, blue states such as California are declaring themselves “havens” for trans children to be doped up or mutilated even if their parents don’t consent. We never saw this type of internecine warfare over the treatment of cancer, diabetes, or anything else along those lines. Even when it comes to other forms of mental illness there has largely been unanimity inside of the medical profession.

But when it comes to gender dysphoria, the American medical profession suddenly took something that had long been recognized as a mental illness and began treating it as a badge of honor. How did that happen? Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but the fact that each transgender patient that is “treated” to the point of surgery becomes a very lucrative funding stream for the rest of their lives can’t be ignored. Of course, it’s 2023 and the world is going completely crazy in so many other ways that I fear this critical issue is being swept under the rug in America.