Fact Check: Pediatric Endocrine Society Falsely Claims Puberty Blockers Are ‘Reversible’

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Dr. Susan Berry

The Pediatric Endocrine Society has released a new statement that claims puberty blockers are a part of “gender-affirming care” for children with gender dysphoria and are a “reversible treatment that decreases the distress of having the ‘wrong’ puberty.”

The Society’s claim of reversibility may be a defensive statement in response to the increasingly vocal uprising against administering puberty blockers to children who suffer from a sense their gender is not compatible with their biological sex.

The Pediatric Endocrine Society touts that “the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the largest academic organization of pediatricians in the US, has released a Policy Statement supporting the approach to gender-affirming care” that is consistent with that of the Society.

“Gender identity can be different from the gender that is presumed based on the sex assigned at birth and interventions intended to change one’s gender identity are not only ineffective, but harmful,” the Society states.

The group adds that “gender-affirming care” includes allowing a child or adolescent “to explore their gender identity freely, and in some circumstances allow for a social transition (change of name, pronouns, attire).”

The Society clearly states “gender-affirming care” may include:

Puberty suppression once puberty has started. This is a reversible treatment that decreases the distress of having the “wrong” puberty. This treatment alone does not cause infertility.

More physicians and analysts of the transgender movement, however, are publicly asserting the Society’s claim that puberty blockers or suppressors are a “reversible treatment” is blatantly false. One of the primary reasons all agree the claim is false is that no long-term studies have been conducted on children who have had their normal puberty suppressed with drugs.

Idaho-based endocrinologist Dr. William Malone told Breitbart News puberty suppression is “frequently called reversible, but it’s not.”

Malone explained:

Normal bone density development is interfered with and probably brain development too. Almost all children placed on puberty blockers go on to cross-sex hormones—meaning puberty blockers solidify and sometimes intensify dysphoria.

It’s hard to call these impacts reversible. There have been no long-term studies done on children who have had normal puberty blocked. In no other area of medicine would a medical society be so cavalier about treatments with unknown consequences. Caution is the rule in such situations, and always has been. This departure from the typical standard of care deserves more scrutiny.

“It is also not clear why the Pediatric Endocrine Society has abandoned the previous standard of care for gender dysphoria – which was supportive, exploratory counseling,” Malone added:

There are approximately ten studies in the literature showing that, on average, 85% of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria have resolution or significant lessening of their dysphoria by early adulthood, without hormonal or surgical interventions. There is no scientific justification for departing from that established standard to the current affirmation-based approach.

Dr. Michelle Cretella, executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, said emphatically the Pediatric Endocrine Society’s claim that puberty suppressors are a “reversible treatment” is “a bald-faced lie.”

“There are no long-term studies of puberty blocker use for gender incongruence in children,” Cretella explained to Breitbart News. “Ergo, no one can say blockers are completely reversible and without harm.”

Cretella pointed to documentation, however, by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that links “harm,” i.e., thousands of deaths, to Lupron, a drug prescribed with FDA approval for several conditions, including prostate cancer and endometriosis.

Nevertheless, Lupron is also being used without FDA approval as a puberty blocker on children and adolescents with gender dysphoria.

She explained:

Puberty blockers, like Lupron, effectively “castrate” children of both sexes at the level of the pituitary gland in the brain, chemically turning boys into eunuchs and sending girls into a pre-teen menopause. This is why many girls treated for FDA-approved conditions with Lupron have developed osteoporosis in their twenties. Puberty blocking prevents the normal maturation of all organs – including the brain – that depend upon the child’s natural sex hormones to develop. Adults treated with Lupron for FDA-approved conditions experience memory deficits. What are we doing to the brains of gender incongruent but physically healthy children?

The pediatrician emphasized the “harm” caused by professionals urging transition affirmation.

“They are absolutely harming kids with blockers because they rob them of the very developmental period during which the vast majority come to embrace their biologic sex,” Cretella stressed. “Even if a child comes off blockers, we can never give back the period of normal physical/psychosocial development that was stolen from them.”

California-based endocrinologist Dr. Michael Laidlaw also said in a statement to Breitbart News organizations such as the Pediatric Endocrine Society “have created an institutionalized childhood pathway towards sterility.”

“Why would organizations, that are ostensibly out to help children, actually harm them in a most profound way?” he asked, and then explained the progression of how medical societies have been infiltrated by radical transgender activists with “one of the most insidious child sterilization programs ever devised”:

It’s really critical to understand that our medical organizations beginning with the Endocrine Society and moving on to the Pediatric Endocrine Society and American Academy of Pediatricians, that with respect to this topic they have been taken over by the most radical elements. These radical trans activists were involved in writing the Endocrine Society guidelines in 2009 and 2017. These are low to no quality evidence guidelines, and anyone can read for themselves the poor evidence they have for these treatments for children and adolescents.

Laidlaw cited a study in which the majority of children prescribed puberty blockers went on to cross- or wrong-sex hormones, and the majority of these went on to sex reassignment surgery.

“All of those who started on blockers and went to cross-sex hormones are infertile,” he said. “Those who had gonads removed are sterilized.”

He said this path begins at the earliest phase of social transition, when the child is “affirmed” in dressing as the opposite sex and changing his or her name.

“Social transition has the psychological effect of convincing the child that they are in the wrong body,” he explained. “The puberty blockers are a drug-induced model of not only blocking essential aspects of development, but also solidifying the belief that they must take wrong-sex hormones to escape from their situation.”

The endocrinologist described “wrong-sex” hormones as “very dangerous” with risks of blood clots, cardiovascular disorders, and cancer.

“And, so, they’ve been brainwashed since youth, drugged and psychologically damaged by puberty blockers, then made even more confused, depressed and even psychotic by cross-sex hormones,” Laidlaw concluded. “They ultimately seek relief by having breasts and testicles and penises and ovaries removed.”

Appearing as a guest on Dennis Prager’s radio show recently, humanities and media studies Professor Camille Paglia vehemently described the use of puberty-blocking drugs on children as “a crime against humanity,” as Breitbart News reported.

“I think that experiments of unproven drugs — drug protocols — on children is a crime against humanity, and it should not be tolerated,” she said. “It amazes me there is hardly any media attention to this matter.”

“These drugs have not been fully tested, and we’re using children as experiments?” Paglia exclaimed. “Boys forever are going to have, in adulthood, a child’s-size penis? I cannot believe that this is happening without protest.”

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