I'd like to know how (if this is possible) it might compare to the risk level of some other meds - I do accept that having plentiful evidence of blockers safety and efficacy for treatment of precocious puberty is not necessarily the same as having evidence it is safe and generally a good idea for people to take it and then come off them and potentially have puberty much later or maybe have a late puberty affected by cross-sex hormones (or whatever is involved in going coming off blockers and going onto cross sex hormones, I don't know how it works). But unfortunately it's such an emotive topic that it's difficult to have an objective conversation about it generally.
It's worth noting that this report says there's a grand total of fewer than 100 kids on blockers - not clear if in England or whole UK, but either way it's hardly massive numbers and evidence that they are not 'being handed out like sweeties' as some people keep trying to portray it.
It's a tiny number of kids and always has been. There is a large and growing body of evidence which supports their use, as well as a
vast amount of evidence which supports the benefits of transition more generally. Puberty blockers followed by hormones have been used to treat trans kids since the 1990s in some settings, this became much more commonplace in the early 2000's and has been the usual treatment protocol in most countries where treament is available for 15 years or so. To date there is no published evidence at all of harm and other than a handful of detransitioners (globally) who had this treatment regret rates are lower than for almost all other medical interventions.
This is often presented as a medical scandal by gender criticals and appears to be unique amongst medical scandals that almost all the actual patients are really happy they had this treatment, the evidence supports it and regret is incredibly low, but some other people, who aren't trans, don't like it and think their concerns outweigh both the evidence and the feelings of the patient group. It's perhaps the first medical scandal in history where the 'victims' are people who haven't had any treatment at all but just don't like the thought of other people having it.
No branch of medicine is certain, there will always be side effects, regret etc and good practice is weighing those against the general benefits. But in this case I don't think a lot of people, including some medical professionals, really believe that there is any benefit to this treatment and that there would be no consequences (or even positive consequences - less trans people) if it is not provided. I think gender affirming care inspires a kind of body horror in a lot of cis people who just can't imagine and understand why anyone would want to do that - which has a kind of irony in that that horror they feel is akin to the dysphoria that trans people feel and the reason many choose to alter their bodies.
Anyway this announcement is weird because they've already said that any kids referred to this treatment will have to be part of a clinical research group so it's not saying anything new and the final Cass report which is supposed to inform new treatment protocols has not yet been published - although given they openly refused to allow trans people any input into the report and there appear to be gender critical activists involved in it then I'm not optimistic about the outcome.
