Why UK medicine uses capacity not age cutoffs
Dr Helen Webberley on Triggernometry: the trans debate, with Konstantin Kisin, Triggernometry
There has to be an age at which children are simply too young to have any say in their own healthcare. Below that line, the answer is always no, whatever the child understands or can express.
What I was trying to say there is that UK medicine already has a principled answer to this, and it is not a number. It is capacity: can this particular child, at this particular moment, understand what is being proposed, weigh it up, and communicate a real view? A 15 or 16 year old very often can. A 7 year old almost certainly cannot make that decision independently of their parents. But the point is that we assess the child in front of us rather than drawing a line on a calendar and refusing to look past it. That is not a loophole or a risk: it is how good medicine has always worked, in every area of care, not just this one. The alternative, a fixed age cutoff applied regardless of the individual, is actually the cruder and less safe approach, because it substitutes a rule for a judgement and calls that protection.
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