Pro-trans agency sued for giving life-altering drugs to kids

A British government agency that facilitates treatment of transgenders is being sued for giving life-altering drugs to minors.

A mother and a nurse filed a complaint at the nation's High Court against the gender-identity development service, or GIDS, at the Tavistock and Portman National Health Service Trust for allegedly illegally prescribing drugs for minors, BBC News reported.

The complaint argues "children cannot give informed consent to the treatment."

A judge will decide the future of the complaint after the agency has an opportunity to respond to the accusations.

The BBC said the nurse is Sue Evans, who left GIDS years ago after becoming "concerned teenagers who wanted to transition to a different gender were being given the puberty blockers without adequate assessments and psychological work."

She said that now "even younger children" were being drugged.

At the same time, the number of children being treated by the agency rose from 678 during 2014-15 to 2,590 over the last year.

Most of the patients were "in their early to mid-teens," the report said, but 171 were under the age 10.

Evans said in the BBC report: "I used to feel concerned it was being given to 16-year-olds. But now, the age limit has been lowered – and children as young as perhaps nine or 10 are being asked to give informed consent to a completely experimental treatment for which the long-term consequences are not known."

The mother, identified in court paperwork only as Mrs. A, said her 15-year-old with autism is "on the waiting list for treatment at GIDS."

She said she has little concern that her daughter "presents" as a boy, but "she is extremely concerned about the possibility of drugs that are not fully understood being prescribed."

"I'm worried that they will look at her age and say, 'Well, she still says this is what she wants and therefore we will put her on to a medical pathway,'" Mrs. A told the BBC.

She pointed out that her daughter sometimes means something other than what she says, because of her autism.

Trust officials declined comment because of the legal proceedings.

The U.K.'s non-profit Christian Institute called the dispute a "landmark legal challenge."

The institute noted the nurse explained that "without medical intervention, the large majority of children 'convinced they are the other sex' come to accept the body they were born with."

The Telegraph of London reported Evans left the clinic after witnessing a 16-year-old being approved for hormone blocking drugs after "just a handful" of interviews with a nurse.

Evans said in the interview she believed some of the young patients "will have grounds to sue the NHS in years go come."