Health
UK’s NHS set to launch detransitioning services for ‘transgender’ patients
From LifeSiteNews
A report showing that clinical practice for ‘transgenders’ is built on ‘shaky foundations’ prompted the UK’s Health Service to work toward ‘detransitioning’ services.
The National Health Service of England (NHS) is slated to launch its first “detransitioning” service aimed at returning “transgender” individuals to physical conformity with their biological sex.
The move was prompted by the recommendations of a review of Gender Identity Services by pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, The Telegraph reported. Dr. Cass’ report found an “exponential” spike in the number of young people who were presented to the UK NHS Gender Identity Service (GIDS) beginning in 2014.
General Practitioners in England were found to be “pressurized to prescribe hormones” by patients who had not consulted with a private clinician, and Dr. Cass concluded that the current practice of so-called “gender medicine” in the U.K., involving the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, was built on “shaky foundations.”
Dr. Cass reportedly went so far as to recommend that GPs resist efforts by private practitioners to prescribe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, “particularly if that private provider is acting outside NHS guidance.”
NHS England has decided to fully adopt Dr. Cass’ recommendations, and on Wednesday published its plans to reform its gender services accordingly. Sir Stephen Prowis, medical director of the NHS, praised Dr. Cass’ work as “invaluable” and said the NHS would now embrace a “fundamentally different and safer model of care for children.”
According to Health Service officials, the NHS’ next step is to “define” a “pathway” for those who decide to detransition, since there is currently no official guidance on how to care for such individuals. Their work will involve examining the proportion of patients who detransition, and their reasons for detransitioning, The Telegraph reported.
The plan involves the creation of six new clinics by 2026 specialized to care for minors struggling with their biological sex.
Despite this impending reform, the NHS is set to begin clinical trials of puberty blockers for minors, since Dr. Cass’ report cited lack of long-term studies as a reason that puberty blockers should not be prescribed to minors.
Critics have warned that these trials are “ethically unjustifiable,” with the warning that they “pose the very real risk of the NHS sacrificing the otherwise good health of vulnerable children and causing them grave physical harm in the name of research.”
Lucy Marsh of the Family Education Trust has called upon the NHS to address the roots of gender dysphoria and has decried its planned trials of administering puberty blockers to teenagers as “unethical” and “dangerous.”
‘We do not need more gender clinics, instead the NHS should be looking at the root causes of gender dysphoria including mental health issues, autism, sexual abuse and issues within the family,” said Marsh, according to The Daily Mail.
“It is not ‘kind’ to lead children down a pathway that leads to irreversible harm and destroys families,” she said, adding that it is a “a huge waste of taxpayer’s money to roll out gender clinics to every area of England.”
Transgender hormonal and surgical interventions are known to cause lifelong mental and physical damage and to exacerbate psychological issues in those subjected to them.
Studies find that more than 80 percent of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored detransitioners have attested to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion that “transitioning” is the best solution.
From HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy’s Facebook Page
From the Brownstone Institute
Cigarettes kill nearly half a million Americans each year. Everyone knows it, including the Food and Drug Administration. Yet while the most lethal nicotine product remains on sale in every gas station, the FDA continues to block or delay far safer alternatives.
Nicotine pouches—small, smokeless packets tucked under the lip—deliver nicotine without burning tobacco. They eliminate the tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens that make cigarettes so deadly. The logic of harm reduction couldn’t be clearer: if smokers can get nicotine without smoke, millions of lives could be saved.
Sweden has already proven the point. Through widespread use of snus and nicotine pouches, the country has cut daily smoking to about 5 percent, the lowest rate in Europe. Lung-cancer deaths are less than half the continental average. This “Swedish Experience” shows that when adults are given safer options, they switch voluntarily—no prohibition required.
In the United States, however, the FDA’s tobacco division has turned this logic on its head. Since Congress gave it sweeping authority in 2009, the agency has demanded that every new product undergo a Premarket Tobacco Product Application, or PMTA, proving it is “appropriate for the protection of public health.” That sounds reasonable until you see how the process works.
Manufacturers must spend millions on speculative modeling about how their products might affect every segment of society—smokers, nonsmokers, youth, and future generations—before they can even reach the market. Unsurprisingly, almost all PMTAs have been denied or shelved. Reduced-risk products sit in limbo while Marlboros and Newports remain untouched.
Only this January did the agency relent slightly, authorizing 20 ZYN nicotine-pouch products made by Swedish Match, now owned by Philip Morris. The FDA admitted the obvious: “The data show that these specific products are appropriate for the protection of public health.” The toxic-chemical levels were far lower than in cigarettes, and adult smokers were more likely to switch than teens were to start.
The decision should have been a turning point. Instead, it exposed the double standard. Other pouch makers—especially smaller firms from Sweden and the US, such as NOAT—remain locked out of the legal market even when their products meet the same technical standards.
The FDA’s inaction has created a black market dominated by unregulated imports, many from China. According to my own research, roughly 85 percent of pouches now sold in convenience stores are technically illegal.
The agency claims that this heavy-handed approach protects kids. But youth pouch use in the US remains very low—about 1.5 percent of high-school students according to the latest National Youth Tobacco Survey—while nearly 30 million American adults still smoke. Denying safer products to millions of addicted adults because a tiny fraction of teens might experiment is the opposite of public-health logic.
There’s a better path. The FDA should base its decisions on science, not fear. If a product dramatically reduces exposure to harmful chemicals, meets strict packaging and marketing standards, and enforces Tobacco 21 age verification, it should be allowed on the market. Population-level effects can be monitored afterward through real-world data on switching and youth use. That’s how drug and vaccine regulation already works.
Sweden’s evidence shows the results of a pragmatic approach: a near-smoke-free society achieved through consumer choice, not coercion. The FDA’s own approval of ZYN proves that such products can meet its legal standard for protecting public health. The next step is consistency—apply the same rules to everyone.
Combustion, not nicotine, is the killer. Until the FDA acts on that simple truth, it will keep protecting the cigarette industry it was supposed to regulate.
Author
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