Ministry needs to correct disinformation about puberty blockers ban
Last week, after delays of more than a year, the Government announced there will be no new prescribing of puberty blockers as of 19 December pending further UK clinical trials. The response from advocates of puberty blockers as part of “gender-affirming care” has been full of alarmist disinformation.
Gender medicine specialists have warned of an increased risk of suicidality and dysphoria in gender diverse children, and argued it would put them at a higher risk of marginalisation and discrimination. [1]
Women’s Rights Party Co-leader Jill Ovens says all of this is contestable, but there has been no attempt to balance such claims with the evidence. And not a word from the Ministry of Health.
The most common complaint by gender clinicians and advocates has been that politicians should not be making such decisions; these should be made by doctors.
As Emeritus Professor and epidemiologist Dr Charlotte Paul said in an opinion piece in the NZ Herald in January this year: “Clinical experience matters. But there are plenty of examples where such experience has proved highly misleading, especially where clinicians, as in this case, have a strong belief in the effectiveness of the treatment.” [2]
Ms Ovens is old enough to remember the ‘Thalidomide’ disaster.
“This drug was originally developed and marketed over the counter for a variety of uses before being prescribed by doctors to pregnant women for morning sickness,” Ms Ovens says. “Somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 babies who survived suffered appalling disabilities. The global medical scandal that followed led to greater regulation of drugs by health authorities and governments.”
Dr Paul has consistently said that ideally the MoH should be making these decisions. Indeed, the Women’s Rights Party has been questioning for more than a year why hasn’t the Ministry had the courage to act?
“During Covid, we heard daily from then Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield standing beside the Government on decisions about lockdowns, mask wearing, vaccinations, and so on. Not all of these measures were popular, but the point is we had leadership from the Ministry of Health,” Ms Ovens says.
After Dr Bloomfield resigned from the role in 2022, he was replaced by Dr Diana Sarfarti, a world-leading cancer research expert, known for her “strong, evidence-informed leadership”. However, in February this year, Dr Sarfarti suddenly resigned with a week’s notice. [3]
It was a time of turmoil in the health sector with the previous Minister of Health Dr Shane Reti having been replaced by Simeon Brown in January, the premature resignation of Health NZ CE Margie Apa the week before Dr Sarfarti’s resignation, and the resignation of Director of Public Health Dr Nicholas Jones within the same week.
Audrey Sonerson was appointed the new Director-General of Health and Ministry of Health chief executive in early April. At the time of her appointment, Deputy Public Service Commissioner Heather Baggott said Ms Sonerson was a "trusted and respected public service leader with a track record of delivery and working effectively with ministers". [4]
Before she was appointed as Acting Director-General of Health on Dr Sarfarti’s departure, Ms Sonerson was Ministry of Transport chief executive. She previously held deputy chief executive roles at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, was deputy commissioner (Resource Management) at New Zealand Police and held two deputy chief executive roles at the Ministry of Justice. Between 2002 and 2012, Ms Sonerson held a number of roles at The Treasury.
She started her career at the Ministry of Health and while at Treasury she was part of the health team. Her Masters degree in Commerce and Administration focussed on health economics.
In the absence of any comments from the Director-General of Health and her Ministry, disinformation has been spreading like wildfire. Take The Conversation, for example. In an article by University of Waikato academic Jamie Veale, it was stated that restrictions on puberty blockers in Great Britain, parts of Scandinavia, Queensland in Australia, and some US States had occurred “in a context of political pressure and culture-war dynamics, rather than by any new medical evidence.” [5]
Journalist Bernard Lane, who covers the international debate over youth gender clinics in Gender Clinic News, says this is “a misleading claim in a misleading article”. [6]
“The international shift away from routine use of puberty blockers began in Finland in 2020 and was initiated by clinicians who were early adopters of the puberty blocker-driven ‘Dutch Protocol’. They found that blockers and hormones did NOT produce the results promised by the Dutch and these treatments were being sought by a quite different patient profile: chiefly teenage females with serious psychiatric and other issues predating their gender distress.”
This had nothing to do with politicians. Finland was followed by Sweden, where the shift to caution was initiated by the Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital Board of Health and Welfare. Again, nothing to do with politicians.
In the UK, the indefinite ban on the use of puberty blockers for gender distress outside clinical trials, followed the 2020-2024 Cass Review, led by Dr Hilary Cass, eminent paediatrician and past President of the Royal Society of Paediatrics, which was based on peer-reviewed evaluations of the evidence base for blockers and hormones, as well as 1000 interviews.
Yet again, based on scientific evidence. Nothing to do with politicians.
“It is true that a change of government in Queensland led to a pause in blockers and hormones,” Lane says, “but this was a rational policy response to the international trend to caution begun in Finland.”
In the US, the gender clinic issue certainly has a political dimension. Lane says this is because “the Democratic Party elevated identity politics over evidence on this question of child safeguarding. Republican administrations restricting blockers and hormones for minors have the science on their side, whatever the rhetoric.”
Announcing the restrictions on puberty blockers, Minister of Health Simeon Brown said the New Zealand government’s “precautionary approach”, (which had been signalled by the MoH in November last year), mirrored extra safeguards adopted in Nordic countries such as Sweden and Finland, and followed the Ministry’s consultation period after the publication of its evidence brief.
Lane asks why aren’t readers of the Conversation told that Veale co-authored New Zealand’s current “gender affirming” treatment guidelines which promote blockers and hormones for minors. “These 2018 guidelines make a series of claims at odds with the state of the evidence – for example, the claim that puberty blockers are ‘fully reversible’ and have a ‘positive impact’ on ‘future well-being’,” Lane says.
It has been said by gender clinicians and advocates that puberty blockers give children “time to explore their options”. But puberty blockers are more than a “pause button” in the treatment of gender distress. Studies show that around 98% of children who take them for this reason go on to cross-sex hormones.[7]
That is a problem because cross-sex hormones are irreversible, with serious unintended consequences such as sterility, and cardio-vascular disease, among other issues.
Claims that blocking puberty as part of “gender-affirming care” significantly improves mental health and well-being have been widely discredited in systematic review after review conducted independently in several countries, writes Lane.
“That is why gender clinicians and advocates are now abandoning their ‘blockers = better mental health’ claim.” Lane points to Veale’s assertion that the actual purpose of puberty blockers is to pause unwanted physical changes and was not to address mental health.
Yet parents have been pressured to agree to puberty blockers for their children experiencing gender distress on the basis that not to do so risks their child committing suicide. And, as Lane points out, we still do not know the effect of puberty blockers on the still-developing adolescent brain.
The restrictions on puberty blockers apply only to their use in treating children experiencing gender distress. There is no ban on use of the puberty blockers to treat children with precocious puberty. In this case, girls under 8 years of age or boys around 9, who are developing sex characteristics of adolescents are prescribed puberty blockers for a short period of time until they reach the age where puberty usually occurs, at which time they go through puberty and the normal changes of adolescents.
“This is very different from preventing puberty to avoid unwanted physical changes and give the appearance of the opposite sex,” Ms Ovens says.
The use of puberty blockers in gender medicine is relatively new, and originally confined to the treatment of a small number of mainly pre-pubertal boys with persistent gender dysphoria. From 2014, puberty blockers were given to a broader group of patients who would not have met the inclusion criteria of the original ‘Dutch protocol’; notably adolescent girls.
The Women’s Rights Party says the unquestioning use of puberty blockers for the rapidly expanding cohort of adolescent girls suddenly experiencing gender distress was a dereliction of medical ethics akin to the ‘Unfortunate Experiment’ carried out at National Women’s Hospital on women with cervical cancer in the 1980s.
“This should have been of considerable concern in light of follow-up studies showing that childhood criteria may ‘scoop in’ girls who are unlikely to persist with gender dysphoria into adulthood, and are more likely than the general female population to be lesbian or bisexual,” Ms Ovens says.
As Dr Cass reported: “Puberty is an intense period of rapid change and can be a difficult process, where young people are vulnerable to mental health problems, particularly girls. Unwelcome bodily changes and experiences can be uncomfortable for all young people, but this can be particularly distressing for young neurodiverse people who may struggle with the sensory changes.”
The Women’s Rights Party supports a holistic approach that also looks at other conditions often found in young people presenting with “gender distress”, including ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), body dysmorphia (such as eating disorders like anorexia), and sexual abuse.
[1] 'Shockingly inappropriate overreach of politics': Doctors slam puberty blocker pause | The Press 20 November 2025
[2] https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/where-do-we-go-now-with-puberty-blockers-charlotte-paul/ 8 January 2025
[3] Director-General of Health Diana Sarfati resigns TVNZ One News. 14 February 2025.
[4] New Director-General of Health named as Audrey Sonerson | RNZ News 1 April 2025.
[5] Veale J. "Puberty blockers: Why politicians overriding doctors sets a dangerous precedent." 21 November 2025.
[6] https://X.com/Bernard_Lane/status/19924084744140213359?s=20 23 November 2025.
[7] https://statsforgender.org/puberty-blockers-are-more-than-a-pause-button-roughly-98-of-children-who-take-them-go-on-to-take-cross-sex-hormones/