800 children prescribed sex-change drug

MORE than 800 children – some as young as ten – are being given controversial drugs to help them change gender.

The NHS treatment, which halts the onset of adulthood, is aimed at young people who believe they are trapped in the wrong body.

Powerful monthly hormone injections stop the development of sex organs, breasts and body hair, making it easier for doctors to carry out sex-swap surgery later.

Until now it was thought that just a handful of children and teenagers were receiving the injections, known as ‘puberty-blockers’.

But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that more than 600 young people are undergoing treatment at the Gender Identity Development Service clinic at University College Hospital in London, and a further 200 at a clinic in Leeds. The MoS has been told that 230 of those 800 are under the age of 14.

The huge growth in the number of youngsters being prescribed the drugs came after the NHS scrapped the age limit in 2014, which was previously 16.

Now doctors can give the injections to children from the very early stages of puberty – meaning that in some cases, ten-year-olds are receiving the jabs.

Mary Douglas, a spokesman for Grassroots Conservatives campaign group, said: ‘Adolescence is the age when you are in turmoil because you’re trying to work out who you are and gender is a big part of that.

‘So to introduce such powerful medication into that is unwise.’

Professor Gary Butler, the lead clinician for the gender identity service in London and Leeds, said the drugs have no ‘permanent effects’ on the reproductive system or the body as a whole.