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Health Secretary Wes Streeting is being threatened with legal action if he does not ban the private sale of cross-sex hormones such as testosterone to under 18s.
Lawyers acting for three people, including campaigner Keira Bell, have written to Streeting urging him to introduce a ban as he has done for puberty blockers for children questioning their gender identity.
Ms Bell says her life has been “flipped upside down” by taking the drugs that have some irreversible effects. She was given puberty blockers at 16 and then the male hormone testosterone at 17 before having surgery to remove her breasts.
The hormones can cause irreversible effects, such as voice deepening. She said: “My whole life has been flipped upside down and there’s no way back from it.”
Ms Bell says she wants to protect other young people from going through similar regret. “Things can feel very urgent so it is important for young people to remember that your whole life is ahead of you. This sort of protection needs to be put into law,” she says.
Paul Conrathe, the lawyer who is representing Ms Bell and the two other individuals, said: “Given what we know about the unscrupulous and harmful practices of unregulated overseas gender clinics it is remarkable that the secretary of state has not banned the prescription of cross-sex hormones.”
He banned puberty blockers, but failed to ban even more harmful cross-sex hormones that expose children to irreversible lifelong changes.
The Department of Health and Social Care did not respond directly to the threat of a judicial review, but said it was working with regulators to tighten up rules around private provision of cross-sex hormones.
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