Thread by @mimmymum

I want to address some of the misinformation that’s been spread recently about blockers - especially in treating #trans kids for gender dysphoria.

Inaccuracies & inflammatory propaganda have been pushed by trans-hostile individuals & unfortunately taken hold in the public sphere

https://twitter.com/CSockpuppet/status/1055511595906985987

Firstly, there is this scare-tactic headline that “blockers make kids infertile” - This is absolutely UNTRUE!!!

What blockers do is ‘pause puberty’ for the length of time that the person is taking the treatment.

Once treatment stops, puberty resumes.

In fact, blockers have been used to treat kids with precocious puberty for years with no recorded impact on fertility due to taking blocking medication.

Fact: Blockers are used as part of the IVF fertility treatment cycle (albeit for shorter periods of time)

Of course you can’t get pregnant / reproduce while taking blockers, but this is no different to someone not being able to get pregnant while taking the contraceptive pill.

The pill doesn’t make you ‘infertile’ any more than blockers do!

Stop taking them, and fertility resumes!

The other scare-story that anti-trans lobbyists like to promote is that prescribing blockers for treating trans kids is ‘off label’. What this means is that they’ve not been tested on children for the specific use of treating gender dysphoria.

But let’s put that in context...

Many drugs are prescribed ‘off label’ for children.

The contraceptive pill, for example, has been prescribed ‘off label’ to children for MANY years in the treatment of teenage acne!

Yet “gender critical” lobbyists didn’t complain about that!

I’ve seen trotted out the “shocking” list of side-effects for blocking medication (as is required by pharmaceutical manufacturers to communicate) as reason why it shouldn’t be prescribed to children.

Let’s look at the contraceptive pill which is prescribed to kids with acne...

Reading this list of potential side-effects from taking the contraceptive pill, juxtaposed with the fact that kids take it off-label for acne and I’m sure I could devise a suitably “shocking” headline!

KIDS PRESCRIBED “UNTESTED” CONTRACEPTIVE PILL FOR ACNE, CAN CAUSE CANCER!

😱

This sort of inflammatory and misleading rhetoric is EXACTLY the narrative that’s been fed into the media by anti-trans activists that want to convince the general public that trans kids SHOULDN’T have blocking medication.

Note: This treatment is prescribed by QUALIFIED doctors!

Yes, there are potential side-effects to blockers (as there are with ALL medicines), but the possible risks of treatment are ALWAYS balanced against the benefits.

This is why we have endocrinologists who are EXPERTS in the field making these judgments.

endocrinenews.endocrine.org/blocking-puber…

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