England’s National Health Service Pauses Puberty Blockers for Children

England’s National Health Service (NHS) announced that it is pausing its distribution of puberty blockers for minors.

“NHS England has carefully considered the evidence review conducted by NICE (2020) and has identified and reviewed any further published evidence available to date,” a report states. “We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of PSH to make the treatment routinely available at this time.”

The withdrawal of puberty blockers comes as an investigation revealed that the drugs are effective treatments for gender dysphoria.

“In January 2020, a Policy Working Group (PWG) was established by NHS England to undertake a review of the published evidence. As part of this process, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) was commissioned to review the published evidence on Gonadotrophin Releasing Hormone Analogues (GnRHa). Nine observational studies were included in the evidence review (NICE 2020),” the report explains. “Overall, there was no statistically significant difference in gender dysphoria, mental health, body image and psychosocial functioning in children and adolescents treated with GnRHa (2020). The quality of evidence for all these outcomes was assessed as very low certainty using modified GRADE. There remains limited short-term and long-term safety data for GnRHa.”

“We have always been clear that children’s safety and wellbeing is paramount, so we welcome this landmark decision by the NHS,” Health Minister Maria Caulfield said. “Ending the routine prescription of puberty blockers will help ensure that care is based on evidence, expert clinical opinion and is in the best interests of the child.”

LGBT organizations criticized the NHS announcement.

“All trans young people deserve access to high quality, timely healthcare,” a Stonewall spokesperson said, according to Yahoo News U.K. “For some, an important part of this care comes in the form of puberty blockers, a reversible treatment that delays the onset of puberty, prescribed by expert endocrinologists, giving the young person extra time to evaluate their next steps.”

Former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss celebrated the policy announcement.

“[T]his is a massive step forward in Britain that these drugs will no longer be prescribed by the National Health Service,” Truss told Fox & Friends. “We know that being a teenager is difficult enough as it is, but what I really worry about is the pressure, particularly on teenage girls, to take these drugs, but also to conform to this crazy ideology, which all of us know just isn’t true.”

The policy follows a 2023 review that found that thirty-four percent of minors’ mental health “reliably deteriorated,” while 29% of minors’ mental health “reliably improved” with the introduction of puberty blockers.

The review allowed the authors “to look at how a treatment is performing in terms of the percentage of patients improving, deteriorating and showing clinically significant change.”