Dear Chris Whitty: An Open Letter on Trans Children and the Care They Are Being Denied
Professor Sir Chris Whitty says he has deliberately stayed out of the puberty blocker debate. With great respect, I have to disagree.
Dear Chris,
I watched your address at the Nuffield Trust Summit this week, and I want to write to you directly, because something you said has stayed with me.
You said you have deliberately stayed out of the puberty blocker debate. I understand the instinct behind that, and I have great respect for the care and dedication you bring to your role. I want to gently, and honestly, tell you why I think that particular choice is causing harm.
Your role exists to provide independent advice on public health issues, to recommend policy changes that protect and improve health outcomes, and to act as a bridge between government and the medical and scientific community. Trans children without access to healthcare is a public health issue. The distress of thousands of young people and their families, many of whom have been waiting years for support that never came, is a public health issue. This is not a debate you are watching from the sidelines. This is your territory.
You described the Cass Review as sensible, and I would like to ask you whether you have spoken to the experts who disagree. Not quietly, and not from the fringes, but from the very centre of international clinical expertise. WPATH and USPATH, the world’s leading professional bodies in transgender healthcare, said in their formal response to the Cass Review that it “deprives young trans and gender diverse people of the high-quality care they deserve and causes immense distress and harm to both young patients and their families”1.
That is the considered judgement of the global specialist community. It deserves your attention.
You said that many of the children at the centre of this are in distress, and that the way the debate is conducted does not help them. You are right, but I want you to know that those children are not only distressed because adults are arguing. They are very distressed because they have no care. The NHS waiting lists stretched to years before the ban, and the care it provided was found to be lacking. Now there is a ban on puberty blockers outside of a trial that is not yet running. A young person in gender-related distress today, in the UK, has nowhere to turn. What is your advice for that child, and for their family?
You placed your confidence in the MHRA to oversee the trial process, and I share your general confidence in well-functioning regulatory systems. But I do want to ask you to look closely at whether this particular process is genuinely independent, and genuinely centred on the welfare of these children, because serious questions have been raised and they have not yet been answered2.
You encouraged everyone to be evidence-based and to listen to experts. On that, we are completely agreed. So I want to ask you, please, to listen to the real experts in this field: the clinicians who have spent careers working with trans young people, the international researchers who have built evidence-based guidelines from thousands of patients across many healthcare systems, and the trans people themselves, and their families, who know from lived experience what is needed and what is missing.
I have made a short video about exactly this, about who the real experts are and why their voices matter so much right now. I hope you will take a moment to watch it.
They are not difficult to find. They are ready to speak with you.
We do not need you to stay out of this. We need your reassurance, your engagement, and your voice. Trans children exist. They are here, in our communities, in our families, and they need healthcare. Please help.
With care and respect,
Dr Helen Webberley, Gender Specialist and Medical Educator
Resources
WPATH and USPATH Statement on the Cass Review: https://www.wpath.org
Cass Review (2024): Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People