Funding for the long awaited study on puberty blockers was announced this week, with £10 million pounds designated for a study running until 2031. The study team at a glance appears to be fully cis, with no trans leadership. At least one senior leader attended a conference of a known anti-trans hate group. None of ..read more

I was an academic expert invited to submit expert opinion & evidence to the Autumn 2024 closed consultation on the legal and criminal ban on puberty blockers. I’m one of the experts that Wes has claimed to have listened to in agreeing to make this ban permanent. Here is my submission: Proposed changes to the ..read more

In 2020 I summarised the then published research on puberty blockers in a blog. That blog post remains a comprehensive overview of the pre 2020 literature, with relevance to discussions today. There has been a significant body of research on puberty blockers published since that 2020 blog, that I will summarise and keep updated here ..read more

(or why I won’t be responding to another government consultation on trans healthcare). Just weeks after having submitted an invited response (invited as an academic expert) to a government consultation on making a legal ban on puberty blockers permanent, ANOTHER government consultation on trans healthcare has today been launched. This one is on adult trans ..read more

On the 3rd full day of WPATH 2024, there was one session that I wanted to write up in slightly more detail, as it is very relevant to those working with or supporting trans children and young people. (My original WPATH 2024 blog is available here). The session was titled “New long-term research on adolescent ..read more

At the end of 4 days of trans health presentations from researchers, clinicians and community advocates from across (parts of) the world, I wanted to capture some of my key learnings and reflections. The conference took place the last week of September, in Lisbon, Portugal. This is my first WPATH (a conference of the World ..read more

In trans children’s healthcare there is so much intentionally bad science, so much science that fundamentally misunderstands (or chooses to misrepresent) trans experiences. The quantity of bad science overwhelms – we challenge some, whilst other pieces of bad science slip through undetected. I just this morning had my attention drawn to some fundamentally bad science (I read about it on the website transfemscience https://transfemscience.org/articles/puberty-blockers/ ) and realised that yet another bad faith move had somehow escaped my attention. The Cass Review makes the claim that puberty b ..read more

Last night we learnt that the failing-fast UK government, in one of its very last actions, did something unprecedented, just to make life more un-liveable for transgender children and adolescents in the UK. They enacted a very rare government power to block access to the only two remaining routes to doctor-prescribed UK-pharmacy-dispensed puberty blockers. They used an emergency legal power that as far as I can see has only been used once before. That was in 1999 for a barely-known drug that had caused a number of deaths. Even then they went through several steps to gain medical authority scru ..read more

Last night I couldn’t sleep. Today I can hardly breathe. The weight on my chest and heart and spirit feels too much to bear. In the UK right now, as a trans person, as a parent of a trans little person: I do not feel safe I do not feel hope We do not feel safe We do not feel hope How do we protect those we care about from a society where there is so much hate. So much prejudice. So much injustice. So much indifference. How do we endure such overwhelming oppression? I’m trying to help my child stay afloat in the face of injustice and persecution. I’m trying to keep us afloat. But it is rough ..read more

The Cass Review final report is released tomorrow. I’ve seen the summary and it is as expected. After a 4 year process the Cass Review final report is a deeply depressing outcome. I have repeatedly, over many years, called for paediatricians to take a role in trans children’s healthcare. In other countries paediatrician-led care has helped shift trans children’s healthcare from harmful and pathologising conversive practices endorsed by those who treat transness as a mental health disorder, into modern, child-centred, trans-positive healthcare. In this, Dr Cass has failed. The Cass final report ..read more