Dr. Simrun Bal of Dartmouth Health testified at a public hearing at the New Hampshire State House that she doesn’t know whether puberty blockers are completely reversible, even though these chemicals are known to cause sterility and sexual dysfunction for children who take them through puberty.
Related: I Am A Former Trans Kid …
NH House Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee member Rep. James Murphy (D) asked Bal, “You mentioned that these medications are reversible. Is there a time beyond which they are not reversible once they have started?”
“That’s a good question,” Bal responded. “I don’t believe so, but I can look into it more definitively and get back to you.”
Bal, representing the New Hampshire Medical Society and the NH chapter of the American College of Physicians, was testifying against HB 619, which would ban the medical transition of minors with gender dysphoria.
In her address to the committee, Bal said that physicians carefully applied evidence-based protocols to use chemicals to put a “temporary pause” on puberty while clinicians worked with parents to determine whether a medical transition is necessary. The bill was retained by the committee.
Bal appeared to be unaware that children who start puberty blockers before the age of 12 and take them through adolescence will never have any sexual function, according to Dr. Marci Bowers, president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a child-transing advocacy group that sets medical standards of care.
These children will also be sterile, according to Dr. Jeremi Carswell, director of Boston Children’s Hospital’s Gender Service. Years of missed growth are irreversible, so a boy who begins puberty blockers at 10 will have a micropenis for the rest of his life.
Bal also didn’t seem to know that 95% of children who are administered puberty blockers will move on to cross-sex hormones, so they can’t be considered as a stand-alone treatment.
Dr. John Turco, director of Dartmouth Health’s Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Health Program said physicians at Dartmouth Health administer puberty blockers to 10-year-olds for gender dysphoria.
In spite of her own ignorance, Bal believes she knows more than moms and dads. She said that if “parental role models,” aren’t supportive of medically transitioning their daughters and sons, we need laws that allow those children to turn to “teachers, peers, and others in the community who are leaders.”
Watch her testimony here.
