What happens next after the MHRA halts puberty blockers trial? (Hannah Barnes, February 22 2026, Times uk)
Dr — now Baroness — Hilary Cass’s four-year inquiry into NHS youth gender services painted a shameful picture of what had taken place at the now-closed gender identity development service (Gids) at the Tavistock in north London. All under the eye of NHS England, politicians and healthcare regulators. Youth gender medicine was “an area of remarkably weak evidence,” Cass said. There was “no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress”.
Among the most damning of her observations, though, was that the NHS had allowed the routine prescribing of puberty-blocking drugs to gender-distressed children for a decade, without any robust data to support that decision. […]
Perhaps the most surprising omission from the protocol, was acknowledgment that puberty blockers are highly unlikely to be a standalone treatment. Rather, they are part of a pathway towards medical transition. And with that comes a very real risk of infertility. There is no evidence that blockers on their own impact fertility (partly because so few children have come off the drugs, and gender clinics haven’t bothered to try to find them). But worldwide studies show in excess of 90 per cent of those who commence treatment with puberty blockers continue on to masculinising or feminising hormones. Early puberty blockade followed immediately by hormones means there is no opportunity for children’s eggs or sperm to mature.
The MHRA — which approved this trial in the first place — has now acknowledged these points, and more. “The expected effects of the drugs include the sterilising effect of puberty blockers followed by cross sex hormones,” the regulator said unequivocally in a letter to KCL. Treatment with puberty blockers beyond a year could “result in persistent and potentially permanent bone structural change,” it added. A government spokesperson described the MHRA’s intervention as raising “new concerns — directly related to the wellbeing of children and young”.
Let’s be clear, these concerns are not “new”. They have been raised in recent months by concerned medics, ethicists, clinicians and journalists. And they have been known for years.