WELLBN GP SURGERIES, FLOUT LAW AGAINST CROSS-SEX HORMONES – Gender affirming care being given against the law.
The NHS has ordered a GP practice to stop prescribing cross-sex hormones to children who want to change gender.
WellBN GP surgeries in Brighton have flouted the Cass review’s recommendations by prescribing the drugs to children, as first revealed by The Telegraph.
The practice, which runs three surgeries, has been the subject of a legal challenge by the parents of Child O, an anonymous 16-year-old boy who claimed he was prescribed cross-sex hormones without having been properly assessed by a gender-identity clinic and without his parents’ knowledge.
WellBN said the NHS “has forced us to temporarily pause initiating new NHS prescriptions for gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 18”, including a ban on taking on prescriptions from private sector providers.
The administration of cross-sex drugs, also known as gender-affirming hormones, involves giving hormones such as testosterone to help someone change their physical appearance. They are different to puberty blockers, which stop the onset of puberty by suppressing the release of hormones.
The Cass review, led by the paediatrician Baroness Hilary Cass, said all under-18s questioning their gender should be seen by a team of experts for a range of conditions, including mental health issues and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.
The independent review concluded that medical pathways to change genders had been “built on shaky foundations” and called for puberty blockers to be banned, citing the “weak evidence” to support their use in this group of patients. It urged “extreme caution” in relation to cross-sex hormones.
