Top doctor: NHS sex change drugs put hundreds of children at risk
THE health of hundreds of children is being put at risk by sex-change drugs doled out on the NHS, a leading doctor warns today.
Dr Lucy Griffin, a consultant psychiatrist at Bristol Royal Infirmary, says she is ‘extremely worried’ about t he l ong- t erm effects the medication is having on adolescents.
She is the first NHS doctor to publicly voice fears about the damage being done by the huge increase in young people receiving irreversible medical treatments after declaring themselves transgender.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Griffin reveals that:
Patients are being given drugs to change sex after claiming they are transgender, despite having serious psychiatric conditions;
The NHS is ‘running scared’ of challenging requests for transgender t reatments i n case it is accused of bigotry.
Medicines being given to teenagers to help them change gender can render them infertile, cause osteoporosis and result in sexual dysfunction, Dr Griffin warns.
Two treatments are causing the most concern. One is ‘ puberty blockers’ which are not classified as sex change drugs, but instead halt the onset of adulthood.
Their effects are completely reversible when patients cease taking them.
The other treatment involves the administration of ‘ cross sex hormones’, that do start the physical process of changing sex.
Last year this newspaper revealed that 800 children in England who were unhappy being the sex they were born were being gi ven puberty blocking injections.
Some of the children were as young as ten years old.
But Dr Griffin said that such medication was never designed to treat patients who are confused about their gender.
She explained that it was developed to halt ‘precocious puberty’ – a rare condition which causes children under eight or nine to begin going t hrough puberty. ‘Puberty blockers are not designed for the blockage of puberty in healthy adolescents,’ she said.
‘Now they’re being used for something that’s a psychological presentation without a body of scientific study behind it.’
The 48-year-old said doctors still know very little about the long-term
‘I can’t see how young people can be anything but harmed’
effects of taking puberty blockers over an extended period and added that there was ‘anecdotal data’ these drugs were linked to osteoporosis.
Young people who are prescribed blockers ‘almost always’ progress on to cross sex hormones, once they reach 16. Boys will be given oestrogen and girls will start on testosterone. The effects of this medication are irreversible and can have ‘lifelong implications’ for the users, Dr Griffin cautioned.
‘We know that cross sex hormones are associated with permanent infertility,’ she said.
‘Patients are also likely to have impaired sexual function. And there are other concerns. We think that [transitioning] women are at increased risk of heart disease. We know they are at risk of male pattern baldness and abnormal fat redistribution.’
Dr Griffin chose to speak out against a backdrop of a fierce debate between feminists and transgender activists over whether transgender women – who were born male – should be placed in the same category as biological females.
She attended a women’s meeting on the issue in Bristol last Thursday, which descended into violence after 30 masked trans protesters attempted to storm the venue.
But refusing to be silenced by such i ntimidation, Dr Griffin continued: ‘ Children can’t vote and they can’t leave school, but we are allowing them to make decisions about their fertility and sexual function. My own feeling is I can’t see how young people’s health can be anything but harmed by these treatments.’
Dr Griffin revealed that she is not the only doctor worried about the ease with which young patients can get transgender medicines.
But she said that many other medical staff are ‘running scared’ because they fear accusations of bigotry, of being out of touch or, at worst, practising ‘ conversion therapy’ on transgender people
However, Dr Griffin felt compelled to voice her criticisms because of the potential harm she feels is being done to patients by the eagerness of hospitals to appear politically correct.
uses as a return address for drugs sent to QHI customers.
When a reporter contacted Mr Specter via Facebook, he closed his account. In Bristol, the company’s only other director, Tracy Butler, insisted Ripple was ‘an administration company. When pressed about QHI drugs, she added: ‘We run logistics for overseas… like US companies and things like that. Property and stuff.’
During our investigation, the QHI website closed down. When The Mail on Sunday tried to access the site, we were directed to a message that read: ‘ We hope to restore our full website by the end of the month.’
The UK medicines regulator investigated QHI for selling prescription-only drugs online in 1996.
The MoS has spoken to parents who had no idea their children were using the drugs. One mother said her 15-year-old son bought oestrogen tablets called Progynova and spironolactone from QHI. The company also offers drugs to treat a range of illnesses, including Parkinson’s. The woman, who asked not to be named, said her son, influenced by internet chatrooms, decided he wanted to be a girl at 14. Unable to obtain an immediate appointment at a clinic, he bought hormones from QHI. He was not asked for proof of age or a prescription and simply signed and returned the disclaimer. His mother only discovered he was on the drugs five months later.
She said: ‘The fact that my son was able to purchase large quantities of drugs via this method, without the involvement of any medical practitioner, tells us all we need to know about the protections afforded to parents by companies such as QHI. Later my son did enter the gender service where, at the age of 15 years and seven months, a psychiatrist assessed him to not have the cognitive capacity to understand the consequences of his decision. The assessment was of no value, as he was al r eady taking Progynova and s pi r onolac - t one, purchased on the internet.’
The mother called for an investigation into transgender chatrooms. ‘I do not know what I could have done to prevent my son deciding to self-medicate, so I am implori ng healt h professionals and researchers to start a discussion on potential solutions to what is a major and growing problem,’ she said. ‘I missed the boat with my son, who is now 17. She is now well on the way in her transition, all via self-medication, under the not-very-watchful eye of the medical authorities, who merely check her blood levels every four months. I truly hope she won’t regret her decision.’
Professor Gary Butler, head clinician at the Tavistock Gender Identity Service, Britain’s only NHS service for u nd er-18s who want to change gender, said his staff dealt with young people buying hormone drugs online without prescriptions ‘all the time’.
‘For a young person hormones are very powerful and have more effect on the mind and the emotions than they do on the body,’ he added. ‘They can cause depression, euphoria and anxiety, particularly if you use too much. You don’t know what sharks are putting out under the guise of hormones.’
‘I hope she doesn’t regret her decision’