Mick Hartley

Azeem Ibrahim's essay in The Herald – Puberty blockers for Scots children must be banned:

Blockers are dangerous and irreversible in their own right, but they also 'lock-in' children to even more devastating outcomes when they would likely have recovered from the dysphoria without intervention – if only doctors had let them. It is not reality that is causing most of these young people to commit suicide, it is collaborating with a mental disorder with body and mind-altering drugs…..

Paul McHugh's seminal 2014 essay should still serve as a critical point of reference on the use of puberty blockers. McHugh, a distinguished former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital (an institution which was an early pioneer of such surgeries), wrote candidly at a time before the transgender issue became the cultural powder keg it is today.

McHugh identified three subgroups of transgender people who might be given surgery or medication. The first is the opportunist, such as Isla Bryson, who have obvious motives to change sex. The second group are internally and externally suggestible, similarly to anorexia nervosa patients, who are convinced that a physical surgery will fix their psycho-social problems. The third group are often prepubescent children who, in the process of naturally exploring how they fit into the world, begin to imitate behaviours of the opposite sex.

Puberty blockers are obviously not the solution for any of the groups above. It’s too late for the first, inappropriate for the second and unethical and premature for the third. Puberty blockers must be banned.