physiciansweekly.com
2026-03-14
The Department of Health and Human Services recently proposed a slate of regulations that would effectively ban hospitals from using puberty blockers for children, citing research that shows the drugs can cause irreversible harm. Activist groups decried the move, claiming that puberty blockers--when prescribed to children diagnosed with gender dysphoria--are reversible and merely pause development.
Those activists are mistaken. The drugs do have lasting effects, and there's little credible evidence that puberty blockers actually help patients. In fact, there is growing reason to believe they are exacerbating the very dysphoria they are supposed to resolve and placing vulnerable children on a largely self-reinforcing path toward permanent transitions, often with serious and lasting physical consequences.
What many people don't realize is that although gender nonconformity has existed throughout history, persistent pediatric gender dysphoria--defined as distress severe enough to prompt a desire for medical transition--was exceedingly rare, particularly among children, until relatively recently.
A Rare Condition Becomes Common After the Dutch Protocol
We know this because long-term follow-up studies conducted before the advent of pediatric medical transition consistently found that most gender-nonconforming children did not go on to experience persistent dysphoria or pursue medical transition as adults, even in countries where adult transition was legal and publicly funded.