At its 128th general meeting last Friday, the German Medical Association spoke out in favor of a stricter approach to puberty blockers. In the majority decision The medical profession is calling on the federal government to allow puberty blockers, gender reassignment hormone therapies and operations on people under 18 “only within the framework of controlled scientific studies” and with the involvement of various experts and doctors. The resolution also stipulates that the previous draft for a new treatment guideline for children and adolescents with gender incongruence and gender dysphoria will be revised.
:New guidelines for dealing with trans young people presented
After seven years of struggle, the German-language recommendation for the treatment of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria is now being published. Those involved speak of a quantum leap.
In their justification, the applicants, seven doctors from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, refer to the fact that these would be “irreversible interventions in the human body in primarily physiologically healthy minors” and that “if there is a lack of evidence for such measures, there is no informed action.” could give consent.
The move by the German Medical Association comes as a surprise. After all, under the umbrella of the Association of Scientific Medical Societies (AWMF), an association of 27 specialist societies and affected people’s organizations had been working on a new treatment guideline for seven years. How and under what circumstances puberty blockers should be used were the questions that the committee dealt with particularly intensively. In March, the AWMF finally announced that it had agreed on treatment guidelines. This is available to the specialist societies for comment and should actually be finalized shortly.
Puberty blockers are hormonal medications that slow the progression of puberty Puberty should be delayed in order to gain more time for irreversible decisions in children and adolescents with gender incongruence and gender dysphoria. Since the scientific data base from long-term studies in this area is insufficient, experts find it particularly difficult to reach a consensus. For example, in England the National Health Service (NHS) recently decided to only allow puberty blockers in studies.
The AWMF experts have previously discussed this approach, which the German Medical Association also supports, for a long time. The AWMF argues that the suffering of the children and young people affected must be taken seriously and that in each case the consequences of a medical intervention must be weighed up individually against the effects of waiting without treatment. Minors should also be included in the decisions.
Criticism of the resolution of the German Medical Association comes from the German Society for Trans* and Inter*sex (DGTI). She described the medical profession’s resolution as “unnecessary, anti-trans* demands” on the federal government that follow the policies of right-wing conservative governments in the USA and Europe. They are “a politically motivated and technically misleading attempt” to forestall the treatment guidelines drawn up by the AWMF.
In its application, the German Medical Association also spoke out in favor of changing the self-determination law passed by the Bundestag, going beyond a medical recommendation. Accordingly, people under 18 should not be allowed to have their gender and marital status changed “without prior specialist child and adolescent psychiatric diagnosis and advice.” The law currently stipulates that minors aged 14 and over can have their gender changed with the consent of their parents.