Reacting to today’s announcement of a permanent ban on puberty blockers, TransActual Strategy Director, Keyne Walker said:
“Banning medicines with no evidence of serious harm, only for trans people, using powers designed for contaminated and life-threatening drugs, is discrimination plain and simple. To do so in order to coerce young trans people into a delayed and currently unspecified research trial which both the BMA and Council of Europe have described as potentially a violation of the patient’s rights, is an unconscionable act that will have severe ramifications for a generation of trans people. Evidence of the harm of the temporary ban continues to emerge, and will grow now that it has been made permanent.
“Meanwhile evidence of actual harm from the past 40 years of puberty blockers’ use remains elusive.
“That the UK government pursues such an approach while counterparts in France, Germany, Australia and elsewhere have rejected this approach in favour of trans people’s access to healthcare, demonstrates just how out of touch with evidence the Secretary of State for Health is. When the UK is an outlier used to try to restrict people’s access to healthcare elsewhere, then questions ought be asked how can we be so different.
“You can see our recent open letter for deeper dissection of the problems with the Cass Review on which this decision is based. Wes Streeting’s claim that he is doing this in the best interests of the trans young people (and adults who remember being a trans child) who uniformly tell him otherwise is at best paternalism, at worst the smiling face of bigotry being passed off as concern.
“We will be closely monitoring the ban and will have further updates as details of the legislation and the ‘research trial’ are released.”
TransActual previously challenged the temporary ban in court by means of a judicial review.
For further info, contact press@transactual.org.uk
TransActual is also a signatory to a joint response to the announcement from the LGBTQ+ sector.