\n<\/p>\n
The health secretary, Wes Streeting, has called on the Conservatives to maintain the cross-party consensus on gender identity services built before the last election in a letter to Kemi Badenoch.<\/p>\n
Streeting wrote to opposition leader on Friday urging her to \u201ctake the heat and the ideology\u201d out of debate amid controversy over a puberty blocker trial for children.<\/p>\n
Both parties committed to implementing the recommendations of a report by the leading paediatrician Hilary Cass focused on gender identity services for under 18s in England, published in April 2024 when the Conservatives were in government. Cass recommended a puberty blocker trial as part of a wider research programme and supported a more \u201cholistic\u201d approach to care.<\/p>\n
Badenoch and the shadow health secretary, Stuart Andrew, wrote to Streeting on 25 November, however, saying they were concerned NHS England was supporting a clinical trial involving drugs that halted natural puberty.<\/p>\n
Cass found \u201cremarkably weak\u201d evidence the drugs were effective in treating gender-related distress, adding that there was no good evidenceon long-term outcomes.<\/p>\n
She has said a trial is the only way forward in the attempt to understand if there are beneficial effects. The government has since banned the treatment for children outside clinical trials.<\/p>\n
The new trial will study the effects of puberty blockers on more than 200 children presenting with gender identity conditions as part of a wider research project on possible treatment pathways. The \u00a310.7m study is being carried out by researchers at King\u2019s College London.<\/p>\n
Streeting\u2019s intervention came despite admitting he is \u201cdeeply uncomfortable\u201d about medication which affects \u201ca natural part of our human development\u201d.<\/p>\n
Puberty blockers stop the body from producing certain hormones, including oestrogen and testosterone. They were traditionally prescribed to children who entered puberty too early, but were later given to young people diagnosed with gender dysphoria and incongruence.<\/p>\n
Badenoch and Andrew told Streeting the trial was based on the \u201cdiscredited, yet still seemingly entrenched, belief in some quarters that a child can be \u2018born in the wrong body\u2019 or go through the \u2018wrong\u2019 puberty and a normal puberty can be \u2018paused\u2019 without causing irreparable harm to children\u201d. They cited infertility and loss of sexual function as possible side effects.<\/p>\n
Streeting expressed his own doubts about the trial in an LBC interview on Friday. \u201cThere\u2019s something about the opposition to this. Medication that delays or indeed stops a natural part of our human development, which is puberty, I am deeply uncomfortable with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said, however, that he planned to follow clinical advice to go ahead with the trial. \u201cIt\u2019s gone through rounds and rounds of ethical approvals to approve this kind of study. So that\u2019s the basis on which we are proceeding,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In responding to Badenoch and Andrew, Streeting said some children were going to great lengths to source puberty blockers despite the ban and that gender incongruence was a \u201creal and internationally recognised disorder\u201d, but that the condition was distinct from \u201cgirls and boys experimenting with gender norms, which for many children is a normal part of growing up\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly a clinical trial (and longer term follow up) can isolate which outcomes can be ascribed to these treatments, supporting evidence-based decisions for future care,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also said the cross-party consensus on the Cass review when it was published last year was \u201ca key moment for taking some of the heat out of what is an extremely sensitive issue without stifling debate, where the wellbeing and safety of children must remain paramount\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cDr Cass said, on publishing her review, that \u2018toxic, ideological and polarised public debate has made the work of the review significantly harder\u2019 and it will hamper the research that is essential to finding a way forward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is incumbent on us as public representatives to take the heat and the ideology out of this issue, and make sure that children\u2019s health is always led by evidence and medical expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Badenoch and Andrew said in their letter to Streeting that the trial would have no proper control group \u201ccreating obvious bias\u201d.<\/p>\n
In his reply, Streeting said that was incorrect and that a group of young people not in receipt of puberty blockers would also be studied by researchers. He said these children would be \u201ccompared to trial participants with respect to outcomes\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The health secretary, Wes Streeting, has called on the Conservatives to maintain the cross-party consensus on gender identity services built before the last election in a letter to Kemi Badenoch. Streeting wrote to opposition leader on Friday urging her to \u201ctake the heat and the ideology\u201d out of debate amid controversy over a puberty blocker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[505,19342,680,6693,16957,4170,4171,19684,1225,2131,1224],"class_list":{"0":"post-37256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-ahead","9":"tag-blocker","10":"tag-calls","11":"tag-consensus","12":"tag-crossparty","13":"tag-gender","14":"tag-identity","15":"tag-puberty","16":"tag-streeting","17":"tag-trial","18":"tag-wes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}