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Puberty blockers may cause irreversible harm to young boys, Mayo Clinic study finds

A Mayo Clinic study published in late March 2024 found that boys who take puberty blockers may suffer “irreversible” harm. (Credit: Nephron|Wikimedia|CC BY-SA 3.0)

CNA Staff, Apr 11, 2024 / 13:35 pm (CNA).

When parents seek medical help for their gender-confused children, they are assured that puberty blockers are “reversible” treatment that pauses puberty, offering the “chance to explore gender identity.”

But a Mayo Clinic study published in late March found that boys who take puberty blockers may suffer “irreversible” harm.

The study, published on a website hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Minnesota, found that adolescent boys who take puberty blockers may experience fertility problems and atrophied testes.

Eleven Mayo Clinic scientists based in Rochester, Minnesota, studied the effect of puberty blockers on testicular cells. The researchers discovered “unprecedented” evidence “revealing detrimental pediatric testicular sex gland responses to [puberty blockers].”

While the Mayo Clinic website currently claims that puberty blockers simply “pause” puberty and “don’t cause permanent physical changes,” this recent study is just one of many that have sounded the alarm about the various harms of puberty blockers. In 2022, one study gained national attention after it found that putting children on puberty blockers causes irreversible harm to bone density.

The March study suggested that “abnormalities” from the data “raise a potential concern regarding the complete ‘reversibility’ and reproductive fitness of [spermatogonial stem cells]” for youth taking puberty blockers.

Researchers found that puberty blockers hurt the development of sperm production and could affect fertility when children grow up. They reported “mild-to-severe sex gland atrophy in puberty blocker-treated children.”

The study, which has not been peer-reviewed yet, looked at testicular samples for 87 patients under the age of 18. The study included 87 children total, with 16 boys who identified as girls and nine of whom took puberty blockers.

Two of the nine who were taking puberty blockers had abnormal features on their testicles that were observable from a physical examination.

The Mayo Clinic researchers noted that they began the study in a context where “the consequences” of puberty blockers for “juvenile testicular development and reproductive fitness” are “poorly understood.”

“To the best of our knowledge, no rigorous study has been reported on extended puberty blockade in pediatric populations and its long-term consequences on reproductive fitness,” the authors noted.

Yet puberty blockers, originally developed to suppress hormones of minors who began puberty too early, are prescribed to children experiencing gender dysphoria.

Meanwhile, European countries such as Finland, Holland, Norway, Sweden, and the U.K. have restrictions or bans on puberty blockers for children. England ended puberty blockers for kids just last month.

“Puberty blockers … are not available to children and young people for gender incongruence or gender dysphoria because there is not enough evidence of safety and clinical effectiveness,” the NHS England website’s section on “treatment” for gender dysphoria read after the update.


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12 Comments

  1. What stuns me is how deeply and swiftly into a loss of a common sense the world is falling. Shouldn’t it be self-evident that, if a child’s normal puberty (hormonal production) is being blocked his fertility (and not only fertility) will suffer long term?

    It appears to me that many modern people see their bodies as some plastic dolls – inject into that plastic shape some meds, shake it well and later, if it does not work, we can just pour out, rinse and be fine and try something else. The same attitude pervades those who happily go for plastic surgeries, I think. There is no normal apprehension “what if it will go wrong” before doing something drastic with one’s own body or the body of one’s own child. This, by the way, is sharply at odds with “a nature = Gaya worshiping”.

    Puberty blockers and hormonal meds affect not only physical but psychological health as well. They can cause a wide spectrum of reactions, from severe depression and anxiety to psychotic elation. However, those “doctors” who usher them on the trans-road somehow do make a connection between the meds they already prescribed and the worsened mental symptoms, up to suicidal ideation. “Look how depressed you are” they say to a child/teen, “do not worry, take those meds and you will feel far better after we get your breasts/penis cut off”.

  2. Anyone who thinks you can ply a human being with all kinds of hormones (even those that are contraceptives) – especially during the developmental years – and not cause damage to the organism are either certifiably insane, irreversibly stupid or evil (some win the trifecta). I also place in the same category those lemmings who take experimental and untested vaccines because the government tells them they should (and also shields the pharmaceutical companies that makes them from product liability lawsuits.)

    • Were you vaccinated? Do you also deny the validity of all other vaccines against diseases? If bit by a rabid animal would you refuse treatment? Do you really believe that the multiple attempts to find a way of preventing COVID around the entire globe was an evil conspiracy concocted by a much corrupted medical profession. Perhaps COVID was created and intentionally released by evil people for unknown reasons; but to believe that the attempt to treat the disease and prevent multiple deaths is evil makes no sense at all. Yes, it’s highly likely that some people took advantage of this situation for selfish and or evil purposes ( this is to be expected of our fallen human state ); but that does not negate the good intentions or motivations of those who produced the vaccines. It may be true that the vaccines were ineffective or even harmful, but we do not really know that and surely did not know it at the time . The epidemic was so sudden and unexpected and the nature of the virus so unknown, that there was not time to subject create and test possible treatments the way we usually do. Time was of essence and risks had to be taken. It’s easy for an armchair Monday morning quarterback to make judgements on a play; but it’s much a different situation for the quarterback himself in pocket in the heat of the game with sore muscles and dirty sweat in his eyes. He throws his best ball in spite of it all. No one can really judge him, because they were not him in his shoes. The same can be said for the whole COVID scenario. Let’s give thanks for the many good people who tried their best to save lives. Let’s at least give them the benefit of doubt. My dear Deacon, we may disagree and still be brothers in Christ. May God bless your ministry , you are in my prayers.

      • Mr. Connor, I don’t see anything in Deacon Edward’s comments that suggest a rejection of all vaccines. Many people are concerned about the side effects of pharmaceuticals & especially those created in a hurry.
        I really don’t think we’ll have all the answers about Covid for years. And considering it’s possible source, perhaps never.

  3. I was a child myself once (I’m pretty certain all of us were). So was my brother. I remember that by the time we reached school age, both of us were very self-conscious about allowing even our parents to “see us” unclothed! I remember not using the school bathroom all day because there were no doors on the stall (what insanity prompted that policy?!). Both my brother and I were terrified of doctors and nurses who poked and prodded us during examinations–I remember screaming while a doctor examined me. What horrors must these children be experiencing while they are being “examined” and questioned? How does a child feel when a “professional” who has just poked and prodded their bodies announces, with a gentle smile, that the child “feels bad” because they are in the wrong body? Does that make them feel “better?!” Really?! Do they really think, “Thank goodness, this kind doctor has figured out how to help me feel happy again!” Do they even understand the differences between boys and girls at these young ages? How horrible for a child to wake up with sore/painful incision wounds on their private parts–these wounds will require daily wound care!–surely it is an awful experience for these children to have a parent or health care professional touching their body parts that they were always told by parents and teachers are “private!” The mental and psychological trauma caused by these surgeries surely causes any depression and/or anxiety to worsen! And in the meantime, is anyone trying to figure out alternative reasons why a child might feel “sad” all the time? Perhaps it’s because a pet died, or a cherished relative or friend, or perhaps they are anxious because they are watching a scary TV show that their parents are laughing at but that the child is afraid of? Or maybe they are being bullied, not because of their sex, but because bullies are MEAN and often, no teacher is allowed (or has the courage) to confront a bully and put a firm STOP to their violent taunts, threats, and physical attacks. Maybe the child has stomachaches or headaches because of a physical issue–e.g., food intolerance or over/under eating, or maybe the child needs glasses.

    What medical professionals are violating their “do no harm” oath when it comes to treating supposedly “trans” children? They should be stripped of their licenses and forbidden to ever be around minor children or teenagers again.

  4. The medical and legal establishment is now monetizing surgical experiments on human beings.

    Eighty years ago we fought against fanatics who committed such human experiments, and we put them on trial for crimes against humanity, and hung them for committing these crimes.

    • Yes, it is the gist. But in the Nazi concentration camps the victims were unwilling. Now they are willing and it means that humanity hugely advance on its path to a total and “soft” mind control. Imagine some Gypsy woman willing coming to Ravensbrück (women concentration camp) and requesting that she and her daughter will be sterilized. This is exactly what is happening.

  5. There are some cancers that are hormone based. To keep another tumor from happening the patient is given hormone blockers.
    Catch 22. Depending on the hormone the patient must have a procedure to rebuild the bone; or else the patient will have osteoporosis.
    The big difference is most people who develop a hormone cancer are adults. They are past childbearing years.

    Teenagers are to become parents. What are these blockers and replacement procedures doing to all of the organs? When a 30 year old wants to marry and have children but discovers they are sterile. Will they figure out this is a delayed side effect from the trans drugs.

  6. The advent of the contraceptive pill and its acceptance in medical practice represented a fundamental abandonment by the medical profession of the Hippocratic Oath. It was the first time that the profession allowed the deliberate prescription of a substance designed to interfere with normal physiology and function. Early varieties of oral contraceptives caused unexpected complications, most notably venous thrombosis complicated by pulmonary embolism and death. Rather than banning such prescribing, modifications to dosage were tried and tested for no reason other than to allow big pharma the ability to continue making obscene profits – not to care for the needs of women. The outrageous use of gender altering medication and risky surgery to alter the external appearances of normal gender development is in the same category, contrary to the ideals of Hippocratic medicine which sadly continue to be eroded. Worse, of course, is the cooperation of the law, once the great protector of human life in all its forms, in aiding and abetting these abominations through legislation. And where was this abandonment of the ideals of medicine born? In the USA!! God love America – with hands on heart, of course. The Mayo clinic data screams out “Abandon this abomination and affirm its criminality through laws that punish it rather than, as happened with the contraceptive pill, approve, aid and abet it.

    • Amen! Let’s not forget, however, that one of the biggest cheerleaders for this trans-mania is our devoutly Catholic president, Joe Biden, according to whose word — and how could anyone doubt that? — the pope himself called “a good Catholic” who should continue receiving Communion.

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