Fatal blood clots, suicidal behavior, lowered IQs, brittle bones andsterility are just a few of the potential side effects of puberty blockersthat the transgender industry doesnt want talked about.

By Celeste McGovern, September 18, 2019

Thousands of children attending affirmative gender health clinicsglobally, including in the United States and the United Kingdom, are beinggiven powerful puberty-blocking drugs with a litany of serious side effects including death according to Food and Drug Administration data.

And the National Health Service (NHS) in England is currentlyinvestigating issues surrounding use of the drugs since it registered a 4,500%increase last fall in the number of youths seeking treatments to alter theirbiological sex in the previous nine years.

The drugs, sometimes referred to as chemical castrators because theyare used to treat sex offenders, are increasingly used as a first-linetreatment for gender-confused children as young as 10 years old when they arereferred to counseling.

Frequently on their first consultation, children and teens areimplanted with hormone-blocker-releasing rods or taught to self-inject thedrugs to pause their adolescence and prevent developmental changes, likegrowth of breasts and facial hair while they decide on which sex they wouldlike to identify.

The practice recently gained the endorsement of the Endocrine Societyand the American Academy of Pediatrics, but the Food and Drug Administrationhas not licensed the drugs for transgender medicine due to lack of supportiveevidence. They are approved for treating prostate cancer and uterine pain inadults. The agency has recorded more than 41,000 adverse events reported withtheir use between 2013 and June 30, 2019.

More than 26,000 of the events associated with the two hormoneblockers, Leuprolide acetate and triptorelin (which includes Lupron and similardrugs used by clinics), were classified by the federal agency as serious,including 6,370 deaths. The drugs, which dramatically lower testosterone andestrogen levels in the body, are linked to life-threatening blood clots andother complaints, include brittle bones and joint pain.

Inducing Disease

The recent increase in the number of gender dysphoric youths seekingdrug treatments is particularly alarming to experts who see the drugs effectsas too risky to prescribe in their current form if at all.

Michael Laidlaw, an endocrinologist from Rocklin, California, testifiedbefore the British House of Lords on the issue of transgender health care inMay. Laidlaw told the Register, These drugs actually induce a known disease inpreviously hormonally healthy children.

Puberty blockers, he explained, interfere with normal signals betweenthe brain and the sex organs, thereby creating a disease state calledhypogonadotropic hypogonadism in youths. Its a serious condition thatendocrinologists would normally diagnose and treat because it interferes withdevelopment, but in [gender dysphoria] cases theyre inducing this diseasestate, Laidlaw said.

Because the drugs are relatively new, their long-term effects have yetto be fully determined, but one 2018 study of long-term risks of pubertyblockers from researchers at Boston Childrens Hospital found that while sideeffects of the drugs are advertised to resolve three-six months after stoppingtreatment, in actuality, the majority of subjects reported long-term sideeffects while almost one-third reported irreversible side effects thatpersisted for years after discontinuing treatment.

In addition to experts, those who have experienced the drugs effectsare also raising the alarm.

On social-media platforms, women describe crippling long-term sideeffects after taking the drugs as children. One woman on a Facebook page calledBAN Lupron said she was given Lupron for years as a young child to stoppremature puberty, and now, as a 24-year-old mother of two, I have [a]herniated disc in my lower lumbar, S-I Joint dysfunction, [a] shredded meniscusin my right knee shoulder pain tendonitis in my left foot, extreme toothdecay and minimal teeth left, TMJ [jaw pain].

A 25-year-old said on the page that she suffers from osteoporosis and acracked spine, while a 26-year-old indicated the need for a total hipreplacement.

Youths who take puberty blockers complain of similar side effects andof menopausal symptoms, including hot flashes, insomnia, fatigue, rapid weightgain and depleted bone density.

I stubbed my toe; it broke. I fell over; my wrist broke. Same with myelbow, an anonymous teen, who was prescribed the drugs by the Tavistock NHSgender center, told the Times newspaper of London.

They promise you that your breasts will disappear, that your voicewill be deeper, that I would look and sound more like a boy. For me, that wasthe best thing that could have happened, the teen said about her attitude atthe time, but she came to call taking the drugs the worst decision Ive evermade.

Evolving Guidelines

These and similar complaints have come to the attention of some membersof the medical community, who urge some kind of government oversight.

Yes, there can be poor or improper treatments by some; thus,governments as well as medical organizations should investigate reports ofpatient/family complaints in this regard, Michigan State Universitypediatrician Donald Greydanus told the Register. Greydanus is one of eightauthors of a paper, published in the August issue of the journal Disease-a-Month,overviewing care of teens who identify as transgender.

Greydanus is not necessarily opposed to the use of castration drugs,but he acknowledges that prudence must still play a role in how they areadministered especially since the drugs have a sketchy safety record.

Adolescents with gender dysphoria should not be started on pubertyblockers until at least early adolescence, he said. Sex-affirming hormonetherapy using high levels of hormones of the opposite sex may start soonafter, and surgery by age 18, generally, but he said, These guidelinescontinue to evolve and to be debated!

Greydanus added that proper informed consent should let all partiesknow the drugs risks before they are given.

All drugs have side effects, he told the Register, and some can beworse in some patients versus others.

However, Laidlaw called the hormone-blocking drugs untested andunsafe for adolescent children. He referred to them as development blockersbecause their results are systemic and block normal brain development and ahost of other body functions as well as sexual maturation.

Development is so stunted, he said. If you take these long-term, youwind up with an adult with child-like sex organs. If they are taken at a veryearly stage, they wont develop sperm. Permanent infertility is a possibleoutcome for those who use the drugs, he said.

Puberty is a time of tremendous growth and not just in the gonads, hesaid, noting that bone formation is also taking place at this time. They arelengthening as well as strengthening.

The effects of the drugs on bone density are well-documented, Laidlawsaid. By the end of two years the bone density of the girls [taking pubertyblockers] is down in the lowest 3%.

Mental-Health Concerns

According to guidelines from the World Professional Association forTransgender Health, children must be screened for underlying mental issues. Yeta Freedom of Information request filed by Oxford sociologist Michael Biggsrevealed that nearly one-third of the children treated at one clinic in Britainhad been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

Besides putting patients with pre-existing mental conditions at risk,the drugs also seem to be having a deleterious effect on young patientsdeveloping mental capacities, studies have shown.

Puberty is also a time of tremendous brain changes, when gray matterbecomes denser which may explain why puberty blockers have been found tolower IQ.

One 2016 study found that girls treated with puberty blockers had aneight-point lower IQ score than controls who did not receive the treatment.This was similar to the seven-point IQ drop from 100 to 93 reported among 25girls who took puberty blockers for two years for early puberty and a nine-pointIQ drop in a study of a 12-year-old boy 28 months after taking the blockers.

Proponents of the drugs claim the effects are reversible, but we dontknow what will happen in all the cases, Laidlaw said.

But the mental damage may be even more serious than a drop in IQ forpatients.

Concerns about the impact of puberty-blocking drugs on the mentalhealth of youths were raised in England when Biggs uncovered the unpublishedresults of a study by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trusts Gender Identity DevelopmentService (GIDS).

Although the results for using puberty blockers had been reported tothe public as positive, Biggs found that for all but one yardstick (that ofparents perspective) the outcomes were negative and that a significantincrease was found in the number of drug-treated youths who agreed with thestatement: I deliberately try to hurt or kill self.

Transgender Censorship

But even scientific evidence pointing to the risks of castration drugsdoesnt seem to matter to the cultural gatekeepers who wish to seetransgenderism normalized in society.

Demand for the drugs as puberty blockers has skyrocketed withgovernment-sponsored and cultural transgender programming, including televisionshows like I Am Jazz, an American reality TV following Florida teen JazzJennings, who was born male but took hormones and was surgically castrated toappear female. And the market for the drug has a potential to expand further,as gender science is extending to transgender preschool children.

With such positive reinforcement of transgenderism in culture,criticism of treatment for gender dysphoria is increasingly banned as harmfuland transphobic. The same tendency toward censorship also surfaced recentlyin state legislation. Last month, North Carolina became the 18th state to banthe use of taxpayer dollars for any conversion therapy practices that seek tohelp transgender children overcome their confusion without drugs and surgery.

Experts in the field are also not immune to such censorship. Laidlawtold the Register that as an endocrinologist, he tweeted on July 21 about thedangers of puberty blockers but his tweet was deleted by Twitter last month,and he has been unable to post on the platform since.

Likewise, when Biggs revealed the unpublished GIDS report to theBritish press, the Oxford professors Twitter account was reportedly suspendedfor transphobic statements.

Catholic Teaching

Aside from the medical risks involved with castration drugs, theprinciple driving their promotion flies in the face of Catholic teaching onhuman sexuality.

Pope Francis addressed the issue of transgenderism in his 2015encyclical Laudato Si (Care for Our Common Home), citing the words of hispredecessor, Benedict XVI, that man too has a nature that he must respect andthat he cannot manipulate at will.

Man, Benedict said in his September 2011 address to the GermanParliament, does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is alsonature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens toit and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself.

[V]aluing ones own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different, Pope Francis added. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment.

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Celeste McGovern writes from Nova Scotia, Canada.

https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/fda-thousands-of-deaths-associated-with-drugs-given-to-trans-children

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FDA: Thousands of Deaths Associated With Drugs Given to 'Trans' Children - Catholic Citizens of Illinois

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