Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2024 14:28:20 +0000 From: Eleanor Clifford To: Daniel Zeichner MP Subject: I urge you to oppose this senseless political ban on puberty blockers Dear Rt Hon Daniel Zeichner, I am writing to you to urge you to oppose the Health Secretary's extension of the ban on prescription of puberty blockers to transgender children. All credible medical associations support the use of puberty blockers, including most recently the French Society of Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetology (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arcped.2024.08.003), which directly criticises the poor quality of our Cass Report on which the Health Secretary's decision is based. Even our own British Medical Association voted to criticise this decision and the Cass Review. Beyond the medical evidence, this ban is a complete violation of the bodily autonomy of children, enshrined by Gillick competence. I personally know trans children who are affected, and who have decided to simply obtain blockers and hormones outside of our medical system, since the Government has turned its back on them. I fully support their decision, and urge you to consider: what will be the true result of this ban? It certainly will not be trans children sitting idly by while they are forced through puberties they do not want. Some will be able to leave the country. Some will self-medicate, without the proper endocrinological care that they deserve. And some will kill themselves. That is the direct result of this Government's actions, and I urge you to stand up for the human rights of autonomy and dignity by opposing this decision. Yours Sincerely, Eleanor
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2024 16:31:59 +0000 (UTC) From: Daniel Zeichner MP To: Eleanor Clifford
Dear Eleanor,
Thank you for contacting me about puberty blockers. I understand your concerns and I thank you for sharing your views.
I strongly believe we need to ensure that children and young people who are experiencing gender incongruence or dysphoria receive a high standard of care that meets their needs and is safe, holistic, and effective.
Anyone accessing a gender identity service deserves the highest quality of care and support, and to be treated with dignity and respect. However, there is currently not enough evidence about the long-term effects of puberty blockers, and doubt as to whether they are safe or beneficial.
As you are aware, the NHS ceased the routine use of puberty blockers following the publication of the independent Cass Review. The current Government has since extended this ban. The Government is also consulting on making the ban permanent and is talking to organisations representing those who would be affected.
In addition, the NHS, in partnership with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, is launching a clinical trial to assess the potential benefits and harms of puberty suppressing hormones. Within this trial, their effects can be safely monitored, and the research will give the evidence needed to decide whether they can be used as a safe and effective treatment. The trial aims to begin recruiting participants early in 2025.
Alongside this I support the opening of the two new children and young person gender services in London and Liverpool, which offer a different clinical model, embedding multidisciplinary teams in specialist children’s hospitals. Two more are opening over the next year as part of plans to have a specialist children’s gender service in every region by 2026.
More broadly, I believe we need to reform our National Health Service. That is why I am delighted that the Government is building a Ten-Year Plan for our health services, to ensure the NHS is fit for the future. The best health services should be available to those who need it, and free for all.
It is great to see that part of this involves a national conversation, with patients and healthcare professionals. It is important that everyone can share their views and experiences to help fix our health service. You may wish to contribute to this yourself and can find details online at change.nhs.uk.
Thank you once again for contacting me about this important issue.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Zeichner
I can't recommend you write like this to your MP, they will just ignore you. But I was angry.
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2024 23:30:35 +0000 From: Eleanor Clifford To: Daniel Zeichner MP Dear Mr Zeichner, I take issue with several specific points in your reply, which I will respond to in turn. Further, I take issue overall with you reciting party lines at me rather than actually engaging with the content of what I have to say. This is not the way to gain or keep my vote, quite the opposite.
I strongly believe we need to ensure that children and young people who are experiencing gender incongruence or dysphoria receive a high standard of care that meets their needs and is safe, holistic, and effective.
Then you should agree with me that we should follow the international medical consensus, which is clear in its opposition to this ban.
Anyone accessing a gender identity service deserves the highest quality of care and support, and to be treated with dignity and respect.
People are not treated with dignity or respect when their identity and their autonomy is denied by ministers of parliament who ignore the medical literature in service of ideology or political expedience.
However, there is currently not enough evidence about the long-term effects of puberty blockers, and doubt as to whether they are safe or beneficial.
This is simply false. The Cass Review is the _only_ systematic review to claim this, and it has been repeatedly shown that it was politically motivated, including, by the British Medical Association, by WPATH, by France, by Trans Actual, and so on.
As you are aware, the NHS ceased the routine use of puberty blockers following the publication of the independent Cass Review. The current Government has since extended this ban. The Government is also consulting on making the ban permanent and is talking to organisations representing those who would be affected.
Even _if_ you take the Cass Review seriously (which you should not, to call it "impartial" is frankly laughable), this ban is _not_ what Hilary Cass called for, and it is a massive overstep for the Government to interfere in NHS and private medical practice. The NHS did _not_ cease the routine use of puberty blockers until the Government told them to. If the evidence were really that strong against puberty blockers, the medical practitioners would follow it on their own.
In addition, the NHS, in partnership with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, is launching a clinical trial to assess the potential benefits and harms of puberty suppressing hormones. Within this trial, their effects can be safely monitored, and the research will give the evidence needed to decide whether they can be used as a safe and effective treatment. The trial aims to begin recruiting participants early in 2025.
This trial will be extraordinarily unethical, because it will deny trans children life-saving medicine, and because the research supporting its use already exists.
Alongside this I support the opening of the two new children and young person gender services in London and Liverpool, which offer a different clinical model, embedding multidisciplinary teams in specialist children's hospitals. Two more are opening over the next year as part of plans to have a specialist children's gender service in every region by 2026.
This "different clinical model", if it does not include endocrinological care, is nothing more than cis-supremacist conversion therapy, seeking to force children into cisgender identities they do not want under the false presumption that being transgender is somehow worse than being cisgender. It's been tried a million times, and has always failed. If you took more than a cursory glance at the history of discrimination that transgender people face, you would know that. The entire premise is frankly insulting. Yours Sincerely, Eleanor