A High Court judge in the United Kingdom (UK) ruled Monday that the previous conservative British government’s emergency order safeguarding children and teens from experimental puberty blockers is lawful.
The LGBT activist group TransActual and an unnamed young person brought a challenge to the Tory order issued in May in the wake of the release of a report detailing a comprehensive independent review led by British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass.
Cass and her team conducted a systematic examination of studies and guidelines related to the use of puberty blockers and other procedures associated with so-called “gender-affirming care” for children suffering with gender dysphoria.
They concluded the so-called “gender-affirming care” model of medical intervention for young people is based on “remarkably weak evidence.”
“The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress,” Cass wrote, observing that puberty blockers were found in “multiple studies” to compromise bone density and fertility and lead to other harmful effects. THe majority of minors who receive prescriptions for puberty blockers move on to cross-sex hormones, the study also found.
Justice Beverly Lang noted in her decision that she is “satisfied that the decision to make the emergency Order on 29 May 2024, was a rational one”:
Parliament has entrusted the Ministers to exercise the powers in section 62 MA 1968, in the exercise of their discretionary judgment. This decision required a complex and multi-factored predictive assessment, involving the application of clinical judgment and the weighing of competing risks and dangers, with which the Court should be slow to interfere.
Lang also observed, “There was cross-party support for this approach as the then Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Mr Wes Streeting) said in response to the Statement: ‘I also welcome what she said about the justifiably cautious and responsible approach she is taking in relation to puberty blockers in the light of the Cass report.’”
The Labour Party’s Streeting said he planned to safeguard children against the controversial drugs “via any means, subject to the outcome of a legal hearing.”
Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), told CatholicVote the High Court’s decision is “very encouraging news.”
“Governments have the right and responsibility to protect citizens from danger and from crime,” Orient observed, adding:
Giving minors drugs that will interfere with their normal development and likely sterilize them is criminal. It is not possible for minors to give informed consent, even if a judge or counselor asserts that they are “mature.” Puberty blockers keep them from becoming mature, and it is deceptive to claim that the effects are reversible. The drugs have a long list of very severe adverse effects, including osteoporosis with frequent fractures.
In a statement reflecting TransActual’s reaction to the High Court’s ruling, the group said it “condemns” the decision and will decide whether to appeal it.
Chay Brown, TransActual’s director for healthcare, called the ruling “disappointing,” noting that it “leans heavily” on what the group calls “the widely discredited Cass review”:
We are seriously concerned about the safety and welfare of young trans people in the UK. Over the last few years, they have come to view the UK medical establishment as paying lip service to their needs; and all too happy to weaponise their very existence in pursuit of a now discredited culture war. It is essential that NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care now take urgent steps to reverse this perception.
In its statement, the group cited a white paper published in July by Professor Anne Alstott of Yale Law School and Dr. Meredithe McNamara, assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine – both co-founders of Yale’s activist Integrity Project, which tracks and attempts to “correct” and “oppose” efforts to protect children from life-altering transgender medical activists throughout America.
According to the Integrity Project:
Underserved and marginalized people are harmed most by the absence of sound science in law. U.S. states recently have adopted a number of measures based on scientific misinformation, in reproductive health, gender-affirming care and HIV prevention. The Integrity Project acts quickly to correct the scientific record and oppose these harmful measures.
The white paper that attempted to discredit the Cass report is co-authored by other transgender activist medical professionals such as Johanna Olson-Kennedy, M.D., professor of clinical pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and Jack Turban, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry & behavioral sciences at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco.
In a May 2018 paper, Olson-Kennedy recommended that girls as young as 13 with gender dysphoria be subjected to top surgeries (elective double mastectomies). Drawing that conclusion only from 136 “completed surveys” at her gender clinic, she and her colleagues determined:
Chest dysphoria was high among presurgical transmasculine youth, and surgical intervention positively affected both minors and young adults. Given these findings, professional guidelines and clinical practice should consider patients for chest surgery based on individual need rather than chronologic age.
Turban was found in January 2022 by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) to have authored a controversial study at Stanford University that concluded childhood hormone treatment was associated with “favorable mental health outcomes.”
The study was funded by the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), which opposes restrictions on gender-affirming care for children. AACAP, in turn, is supported financially by pharmaceutical companies Arbor and Pfizer, both of which manufacture hormonal drugs used for gender transitions, DCNF reported.
“This study is particularly relevant now because many state legislatures are introducing bills that would outlaw this kind of care for transgender youth,” said Turban in the press release about his study. “We are adding to the evidence base that shows why gender-affirming care is beneficial from a mental health perspective.”
Orient underscored in her comments to CatholicVote that “one effect” of hormone drugs to treat gender dysphoria “is to make the recipients life-long patients for a very lucrative industry.”
“Puberty itself is probably the best treatment for ‘gender dysphoria,’” she added. “After experiencing normal puberty, the vast majority of teens will accept their biological sex and escape from the pipeline leading to harmful cross-sex hormones, mutilating surgery, and life-long psychiatric care.”
In the UK, James Esses, co-founder of Thoughtful Therapists and co-ordinator of Declaration for Biological Reality, posted to X that the High Court’s ruling was “seismic.”
“We must never allow children to be irreversibly harmed in the name of an ideology again,” he added.
