Belgian government wants research into the use of puberty blockers

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Published on March 4, 2025
by Bernard Lane
Original: GCN – False promise – Another review

However, Dr Patrik Vankrunkelsven, director of Belgium’s Centre for Evidence-based Medicine, said the lack of sound scientific support for this use of hormone suppression was already well established.

The use of puberty blocker drugs with gender-distressed minors will be reviewed by Belgium’s Federal Health Care Knowledge Centre (KCE), according to the newspaper De Standaard. The coalition agreement for the country’s new government under Prime Minister Bart de Wever stipulates that the scientific evidence for transgender puberty suppression be examined.

“There is a broad debate taking place in our society, but also among doctors, about the use of hormone inhibitors,” a spokesman for the social democratic Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke told De Standaard last month. “When do you start [puberty blockers]? What is the impact on the human body? We are therefore asking the KCE to collect all the international scientific evidence.”

However, Dr Patrik Vankrunkelsven, director of Belgium’s Centre for Evidence-based Medicine, said the lack of sound scientific support for this use of hormone suppression was already well established. “Additional research by the KCE would therefore be a waste of time,” Dr Vankrunkelsven said.

Such a rate gives the lie to the “transition or suicide” narrative used to persuade parents to go along with the gender medicalisation of their children, family physician Dr Luc Vandecasteele

“It should be forbidden to give puberty inhibitors to adolescents. We do need to commit to counselling these adolescents. For example, in the teenage girls who now present with gender dysphoria, we often see other problem areas, such as ADHD or autism spectrum disorder.”

In a 2007-23 review of treatment at Ghent University Hospital’s gender clinic, published in January, five suicides were reported; these were young women with a median age of 18.6.

“Four of these individuals had started medical transition during late puberty with [hormone suppression] followed by [testosterone]; they had also undergone mastectomy and [genital surgery] at the time of suicide,” the authors said.

“One individual had started medical transition with [testosterone] without previous [hormone suppression], and had undergone [genital surgery].” With 431 patients starting cross-sex hormone treatment at the clinic from 2007 to 2023, this translates to a high suicide rate of 1,160 per 100,000 people.

Such a rate gives the lie to the “transition or suicide” narrative used to persuade parents to go along with the gender medicalisation of their children, family physician Dr Luc Vandecasteele told GCN. He also highlighted the landmark Finnish study concluding that psychiatric co-morbidity, not gender distress itself, drives suicide risk.

Original

GNC – False promise – Another review