Updated Study Proves Puberty Blockers Are Still Fine
A study update about puberty blockers commissioned by the New South Wales government proves what we’ve all been saying for ages: Puberty blockers are “safe, effective and reversible.” Eat your heart out, Ben Ryan!
Opinion by Alyssa Steinsiek
Oh, great! Here we go! I gotta talk about puberty blockers again. You know about puberty blockers, right? That scary, unsafe, recently created medicine explicitly designed for transgender kids to make them infertile and harm their bodies forever?
Hold on a second. I’m receiving news over the Assigned Media news headset that only relays ironically timed information… What's that, Pingle the Assigned Media news dog? Puberty blockers aren’t scary or unsafe? We’ve been using them on cisgender children experiencing precocious puberty since the 1980s without any health concerns or permanent changes to their bodies?
Tim Allen grunting noise dot MP3?!
Enough of my shenanigans. It’s not even Friday.
This is actually great news: We’ve got another study (sort of?) to throw on the pile of studies that prove puberty blockers are, as far as we can tell, harmless to the kids who take them. The New South Wales government (they’re a state on Australia’s east coast, if you aren’t savvy) commissioned an independent review of existing research published regarding the use of puberty blockers in gender-affirming care, and that review turned up… absolutely nothing to worry about, actually!
The Sax Institute, on behalf of New South Wales Ministry of Health, updated a review they had already published in 2019 regarding research into the use of puberty blockers between 2000 and 2019. Now, they’ve dug up any research they could find that’s been published between 2019 and 2024, and come to exactly the same conclusion: Puberty blockers are “safe, effective and reversible,” but there could still stand to be more research done about their use as part of gender-affirming care.
Less thrilling is the cause of the commissioned review. In the last few years, Sydney’s Westmead Children’s Hospital has seen a serious collapse in services as a result of internal issues regarding a study that supports the bogus concept of “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” or ROGD; the idea that gender dysphoria is socially contagious, and children (chiefly young AFAB people, proponents suggest) can start identifying as transgender very quickly as a result of exposure to other trans people, typically via social media.
If that sounds asinine and gross, that’s because it is!
Westmead has seen significant staff resignations as a result of this internal conflict, and their services have slowed to a crawl as a result. At the time the review was commissioned in 2023, Westmead had only seen three patients that year, with 115 patients on their waiting list. If you keep up with UK news, I’m sure you’re very familiar with the story of pseudoscientific studies being used to slow gender-affirming care to a crawl at a national level, rile up anti-trans activists, and ban puberty blockers.
That’s right, there’s a temporary ban on puberty blockers in private care in place in the UK, and the new Labour Minister for Health Wes Streeting would like to make that ban permanent. Blockers were already banned from the National Health Service, the UK’s free healthcare program, and the temporary ban has been extended to November 26th. Plenty of Britons are making it very clear that they don’t agree with this ban, but it’s unclear whether or not the Labour Party intends to listen to the vast majority of their constituents, or if they’ll favor a thoroughly debunked review.
What is clear is that trans youth deserve access to gender-affirming care and the support of understanding doctors who are actually up to date on the most recent findings regarding trans health. Anybody who can fight these legislative attacks on trans youth, whether through demonstration or monetary support, should be doing so.
Here’s hoping we can find a path back to decency in the near future.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
