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Puberty blockers cause infertility that can't be always be reversed in both sexes. They also stop brain development (which is a normal part of puberty). Wrong sex hormones given to girls to 'create' a man work by putting them into premature menopause. Premature or early menopause is associated with numerous adverse health outcomes including cognitive impairment, memory loss, dementia, parkinsonism, glaucoma, chronic heart disease, strokes, osteoporosis, mood disorders, sexual dysfunction, motor impairment and increased overall mortality. And they don't make you a man either. Frontal lobe development is not complete until between 18 and 30 years of age (depending on sex and birth order). No child is competent to give informed consent to these life changing procedures. There are going to be a lot of lawsuits and ACC claims in the future.

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Yes! So many valid concerns. It seems incredible that decision-makers are being so casual with the current and future lives of children and young people.

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Thank you!

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Like all our government departments, both at national and local level, the MoH is only consulting with people and groups invested in gender identity ideology. It's a real scandal that they have turned their ears off to those who have evidence that puberty blockers are not the harmless 'pause pills' they've been made out to be.

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Important post. NZ is in a bizarre bubble of misinformation on this topic, in part because our media and public institutions are so working so diligently to block public debate, due to a hyperbolic and unevidenced fear that any questionning of the use of puberty blockers is motivated by transphobia.

Case in point: this recent news item that frames scepticism about puberty blockers as equivalent to belief in anti-vax conspiracy theories: https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/04/04/misinformation-down-the-rabbit-hole-and-back/

MoH has a lot of explaining to do. The Ministry has fallen, indeed.

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Yes I saw that. I am still kind of dazed that the people desperate for science to drive our Covid response (as it should) go all non-sciencey on gender and sex.

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Excellent well-researched and referenced article.

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