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After the High Court ruled that an emergency ban on puberty blockers was legal, the Health Secretary has said the NHS will go ahead with a clinical trial to confirm the evidence on puberty blockers.
On Monday, Ms Justice Lang rejected challenges by the previous Conservative government which argued that the emergency ban on puberty blockers was unlawful.
Campaign group TransActual and a young man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, launched a bid to challenge then-Health Secretary Victoria Atkins’ decision on drugs that suppress the natural production of sex hormones to delay puberty.
Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting welcomed the ruling, adding that “Children’s Health Services must give evidence”.
He added: “Dr Cass’s review found that there is insufficient evidence that puberty blockers are safe and effective in children with gender dysphoria and gender nonconformity.
“Therefore, we must act carefully and cautiously with this vulnerable group of young people.
“I am working with NHS England to improve children’s gender identity services and set up a clinical trial to confirm the evidence on puberty blockers.
“I want trans people in our country to be safe, accepted and able to live in freedom and dignity.”
The Cass Review, commissioned by NHS England and published in April, concluded that gender equality is currently an area of ”remarkably poor evidence” and that young people are caught up in a “stormy social discourse”.
Research by the University of York, which ran alongside the report, found evidence that puberty blockers and hormone therapy had severely reduced effects, and found that the majority of clinical guidelines did not follow international standards.
In her 62-page judgment, Ms Justice Lang wrote: “This decision required a complex and multi-factorial prognostic assessment, involving the exercise of clinical judgment and the weighing of competing risks and dangers, and the court should have been slow to intervene. “
She added: “In my judgment, the Cass Review’s findings of very significant risks and very narrow benefits associated with the use of puberty blockers and the recommendation that NHS puberty blockers should only be used in children and young people in future. A clinical trial provided strong scientific evidence for restrictions on the grounds that, not generally, puberty blockers may be harmful.
“While the Cass Review did not state that puberty blockers pose a ‘serious danger to health’, that was not the issue the Cass Review was asked to consider.
“It was a matter for the defendants to decide on all the evidence before them. Doing so before the final report is published would be premature.
In a hearing on 12 July, the High Court in London ruled that secondary legislation prevents European or private prescribers from prescribing the drugs and limits NHS provision to their use in clinical trials.
The group and the lawyers representing the young man had argued that the order made by the previous government on May 29 was illegal.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Department of Health in Northern Ireland defended the claim.
According to the previous Conservative government, the emergency ban will last from June 3 to September 3, 2024. The court held that it could be fixed by labor ministers.
The ban currently applies to gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues – drugs containing or containing buserelin, gonadorelin, goserelin, leuprorelin acetate, nafarelin or triptorelin.
“This is a disappointing result,” TransActual’s director of healthcare Che Brown said after the decision. Defense evidence makes it clear that they first decided to impose an emergency ban and secondly sought ways to justify it.
He added: “We are deeply concerned about the safety and welfare of young trans people in the UK.
“Over the last few years, they have come to regard the UK medical establishment as paying lip service to their interests. All are happy to weaponize their existence in pursuit of a now discredited culture war.
“It is imperative that NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care take urgent action now to reverse this perception.”
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