Pharmacies under fire for prescribing trans drugs to 16 and 17-year-olds

Parents are urging high street pharmacies to stop prescribing sex-swap drugs to 16 and 17-year-olds.

According to an investigation by The Daily Telegraph, Boots and Rowlands Pharmacy are still fulfilling private prescriptions for oestrogen and testosterone – in contrast to Tesco, Asda and Morrisons, which have halted the process.

The NHS has stopped prescribing the drugs to new patients due to “limited evidence about safety, risks, benefits and outcomes”, yet it remains legal for private clinics to do so. The hormones are given to gender-confused patients to stimulate the development of opposite-sex characteristics, such as a deeper voice or breast growth. Many of these changes and their side effects are irreversible.

‘No common sense’

Parents told The Telegraph that they were furious at the news, with one mother explaining that her 17-year-old daughter “may well be irreversibly harmed by these hormones” after receiving testosterone from Boots.

The mother blasted the notorious online clinic GenderGP, which prescribed the drugs, saying “nobody with any common sense thinks that GenderGP is a reputable company”.

“As if my daughter pumping wrong-sex hormones prescribed by a disgraced, online, unregulated provider into her perfect, beautiful body wasn’t bad enough, I then discovered that her prescriptions had been dispensed by a branch of Boots the chemist in our home town. This revelation quite possibly enraged me more than the prescriptions themselves.”

In response to criticism, a Boots spokesman claimed that its pharmacists “consider the full context of the patient’s circumstances when deciding whether it is clinically appropriate to dispense the prescription, in accordance with the guidelines from the General Pharmaceutical Council”.

‘Alienation’

Last month, a parent asked the Care Quality Commission to ban private clinics giving sex-swap drugs to gender-confused minors.

The parent is now estranged from her 17-year-old daughter, who is taking testosterone through the private Gender Plus Hormone Clinic, over her opposition to the drugs.

Speaking to The Telegraph, the mother said: “The rules that apply to the NHS should apply to the private sector as well. These hormones don’t magically become safe just because they are prescribed privately.”

“I’ve met so many other parents that are in almost identical situations, where their ex-partner has taken their child, alienated them from them deliberately, and ‘trans’d’ them. And these kids are now lifelong patients.”