Puberty Blockers

Emily Yoffe explains on The Free Press what happens when a child is put on puberty blockers. The scene took place in St. Louis, at the Washington University Transgender Center at the St. Louis Children's Hospital. Via Maggie's Farm.

Caroline’s son, Casey checked in to the hospital and was put on a puberty blocker. How did the physician persuade parents that this was a proper treatment? Of course, he said that if the boy did not have the puberty blocker he would commit suicide.

When he was 14 years old, Caroline’s son got a pharmaceutical implant in his arm that was supposed to help relieve his psychological distress. It was a puberty blocker called Supprelin, and it would continuously release a drug for about the next two years that would arrest further sexual development. Caroline, 43, had been queasy about approving this, but she was assured by the psychologist at the The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital that this was what her son needed—that it was the standard treatment for young patients experiencing discomfort with their sex.

How effective was the treatment? Apparently, not very effective at all. 

Instead of providing relief, Caroline told The Free Press, her son experienced a devastating decline in his mental and physical health after this intervention. Among the side effects of Supprelin, according to a handout from the Transgender Center, are “mood changes, and weight changes.” The manufacturer’s website also lists “depression, including rare reports of suicidal ideation and attempt.” 

Casey (not his real name) soon experienced all of these. Within a semester, Casey went from all As and Bs to a report card dotted with Ds and Fs. Many days he found it impossible to get out of bed. He missed so much school that it triggered an official meeting about his truancy that included a circuit court judge. He gained more than 30 pounds. 

How did Casey figure out that he was transgendered?

Casey expressed no discomfort with his sex as a child, but when he turned 13, he said, he discovered through friends and online that “transgenderism was a thing.” He started researching this and felt, “Holy crap! You can do that?” Soon he declared he was “gender fluid.” Casey explains, “This means that my gender changed based on the day. Then it got to the point where I was never feeling masculine or like a boy.” After about six months of being gender fluid, Casey says, “I decided that I was a fully transgender girl. Like I wanted to present as a girl and I wanted people to see me as a girl. So, I started to socially transition. I was going by a different name and using she/her pronouns.”

As for the side-effects of treatment, they are drastic:

The parents were given a two-page handout describing the possible side effects of the treatment. These included long-term effects on bone density; body aches and sleep disturbance; abnormal heartbeats and seizures; mood and weight changes. There were two sentences about fertility: “Blocking pubertal hormones and transitioning on to gender-affirming hormones may have long-term effects on fertility. If a patient is interested in fertility preservation, a meeting with a fertility doctor should ideally be done prior to hormone blockers and/or gender-affirming hormone therapy.” (Emphasis in the original.)

Children-- and we are dealing here with a child-- who begin with puberty blockers normally advance to medical transition.

She was aware that kids diagnosed as transgender, after having their puberty blocked, generally go on to transition medically. This means getting hormones of the sex they wish to be, and possibly surgery. But as she told the group, “I’m not going to approve him getting a feminizing hormone, and the blocker only lasts about a year and a half, so then he will have to go through puberty anyway. Why would we do this?”

The rhetorical ploy is quite simple. Transition or die!

In a video interview with The Free Press, Jamie Reed said clinicians at the center commonly warned parents—in front of their child—that refusing to give consent for gender transition could lead to that child’s suicide. Normalizing, even glorifying suicide by saying it is a common outcome for young people who are not allowed to medically transition, violates all established rules for how to talk safely about a subject known to have a substantial element of social contagion.

The threat is largely exaggerated:

This medical journal article by Oxford University sociologist Michael Biggs illustrates how hyperbolic this threat is. Between 2010 and 2020 he found that 0.03 percent of patients at the UK’s Gender Identity Development Service committed suicide. He writes, “The fact that deaths were so rare should provide some reassurance to transgender youth and their families. . . . It is irresponsible to exaggerate the prevalence of suicide. Aside from anything else, this trope might exacerbate the vulnerability of transgender adolescents.” 

And then, children who have puberty blockers advance to cross-sex hormones. They are effective poison:

Dr. William Malone says, “We know that more than 95 percent of kids on puberty blockers go on to cross-sex hormones.”