Puberty blockers are powerful drugs with unproven benefits and significant risks. Those were not my words, they came from a statement by Dr Hilary Cass when this off-label use of injectable gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists was banned indefinitely last December.

Streeting needs to change tack. For the children, if not his own reputation

However, there was a loophole. Cass went on to recommend that puberty blockers, ‘should only be prescribed following a multi-disciplinary assessment and within a research protocol’. Over the weekend, it was reported that scientists at King’s College London have been granted ethical approval to administer these drugs to dozens more children. Why? What more is there to be learned?

For more than ten years, doctors at the Portman and Tavistock’s no

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