Puberty blockers rob children of the human right to mature from childhood to adulthood.

They have been falsely labelled a “pause” for gender distressed children while the serious and irreversible harms have been ignored. 

Australian clinics and politicians must now sit up and take notice. They must act in the best interest of vulnerable children. The UK has paused a clinical trial of the harmful chemical castration drugs due to safety concerns.

It is already known that the experimental treatment includes risks of infertility, reduced bone density and impacts on brain development. There are many more issues starting to surface as children who were placed on the drugs up to ten years ago are displaying horrible effects.

Puberty blockers continue to be prescribed through the public health system in every Australian jurisdiction except Queensland and the Northern Territory, where they remain available privately.

This compares with bans or significant restrictions in the UK, New Zealand, more than half the states of the US, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark.

The UK Labour government legislated an indefinite puberty blocker ban two years ago, following the world’s largest systematic review of pediatric gender medicine, led by former Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health president Dr Hilary Cass, now a baroness.

Baroness Cass found a “remarkably weak” evidence base for medical interventions in gender care, and the now-paused King’s College London trial was established to examine whether evidence could be found to justify the use of puberty blockers.

One reason for the pause is to enable health practitioners to harvest eggs and sperm from vulnerable children who cannot consent to the sterilisation effects of the drugs. At this stage children as young as 10 years old have been included in the study but that is too young to harvest the sperm and eggs.

Overseas studies have revealed that children who are placed on puberty blockers will also go on to cross sex hormones which can cause catastrophic harm. Incontinence, early onset menopause for females, baldness and cholesterol problems are just some of the negative consequences of robbing children of the right to puberty.