Experts at a trust of the National Health Services (NHS) in the U.K are offering drug therapy to defer the development of secondary sexual characteristics and organs in children with gender-identity disorders to enable easy surgical options later.
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Children with gender identity disorders (GID) or gender dysphoria have difficulty accepting the sex they are assigned at birth due to various reasons like psychological factors, genetic make-up and prenatal exposure to hormones.
The medications are known as hypothalamic blockers that delay the production of hormones like testosterone and estrogen. In young boys these drug stall development of masculine traits like deepening of voice and growth of facial hair. While in girls, it prevents menstruation and expansion of breast tissues thus making it easier to perform sex-change operations.
However critics condemned the clinic's decision and said they are 'playing god'.
"I think many people will be horrified at the thought of a nine-year-old being provided with a drug that effectively stops them developing and maturing naturally," said Andrew Percy, the British Conservative Party politician, reports the Daily Mail.
The health officials backed their decision citing success of their past trial involving gender non-conformist children aged below 16 . The GID patients may assume homosexuality but no longer suffer confusions about being male being trapped in the wrong body or vice versa.
The treatment is reversible which means the body resumes its normal condition upon discontinuation of drugs. But, the worry lies in its long-term impacts on brain, bone structure and fertility, reports the Daily mail.
So far, only about 10 to 20 percent of adolescents with GID have undergone the transformation surgery.
The authors believe these injections can be given to children much younger than the study participants only after screening their mental health and taking their parents' or guardian's consent.
:We're talking about stopping puberty in the normal range of puberty, so I guess the younger age might be nine or ten," said Polly Carmichael, study author and researcher from the NHS foundation trust, reports the Telegraph.
