Doctor explains much is still unknown about dangerous gender transition treatments on minors

(The Daily Signal) – Doctors don’t have enough evidence to know the long-term effects of what happens to someone who takes puberty blockers as a child, the executive director of the American College of Pediatricians says.

“We know that if you stop puberty with these puberty blockers, you stop a whole sequence of events,” Dr. Jill Simons says, adding that there also are “effects on the brain.”

“There’s effects on the biology that you need that for sexual organ development to become fertile in the future,” she says.

But according to Simon, “There’s a lot of things we don’t know about stopping puberty, and you can’t get that back once you stop the puberty blockers.”

Given the rise in gender-identity treatments for children, the American College of Pediatricians launched a new initiative Wednesday called the Biological Integrity Initiative to provide not only medical professionals, “but also parents, teachers, policymakers, even teens themselves who are questioning some of these things” with resources and scientific data on the known effects of gender treatments on children, Simons says.

Simons joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain what medical professionals do and don’t know about the effects of puberty blockers and hormone treatments on young people and what resources the Biological Integrity Initiative offers. You can learn more about the new initiative at BiologicalIntegrity.org.