The United Kingdom’s Department of Health has paused a trial of puberty blockers, citing concerns over its safety and efficacy.

This marks another stage in the pulling back from damaging gender ideology that has infiltrated many institutions and led to children and adolescents receiving irreversible treatments based on contested evidence.

The trial of the puberty blockers was set to go ahead after the well-known Cass Review into gender medicine and treatment which recommended puberty blockers stop being prescribed because of the poor quality of research into their effectiveness.

According to The Guardian:

Dr Hilary Cass, who led that review, has previously said her report “uncovered a very weak evidence base” for the benefits of puberty blockers for children and young people with gender dysphoria, but “given that there are clinicians, children and families who believe passionately in the beneficial effects, a trial was the only way forward to make sense of this”.

Now the recommended trial to test and research the drugs has run into further concerns and has been paused.

According to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the trial would include children who are too young and the drugs themselves carry serious side effects.

The Christian Institute of the UK praised the pause and hoped that this “outbreak of common sense” would become “permanent”.

After the pause was announced, one member of the MHRA was removed from involvement in the regulation of the trial after it was discovered he had expressed support for JK Rowling and posted his own scepticism of transgenderism.

This is a clear double standard as open transgender activists are regularly allowed to be on formal boards and provide advice on these issues not only in the UK but around the world.

It also carries concerning free speech implications, much like HRLA’s Australian clients Dr Jillian Spencer and Jasmine Sussex who face their own legal challenges about raising concerns about these same puberty blocker drugs.

HRLA continues to work with doctors and medical professionals to defend their right to question these practices. Like the Christian Institute in the UK, we can hope that this growing caution is an indicator that common sense is returning to the profession.