FDA ties ‘puberty-blocking’ drug to 6,379 deaths

FPI / October 4, 2019

More than 6,000 deaths have been linked to a puberty-blocking drug which is increasingly being given to children who claim to be transgender, the Food and Drug administration (FDA) reported.

The FDA between 2013 and June 2019 reported 41,213 adverse events, including 6,379 deaths and 25,645 “serious” reactions in patients who took Leuprolide Acetate, the hormone blocker known as Lupron.

Lupron is being used — without formal FDA approval — as a puberty blocker on an increasing number of children and adolescents who say their gender identity is not consistent with their biological sex, Breitbart News noted in an Oct. 2 report.

In 2017, AbbVie, which produces Lupron, said sales of the drug were $669 million in the United States alone.

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, told Breitbart News that Lupron “is off-label for lack of long-term studies,” adding it “undoubtedly causes irreversible loss of fertility and many other adverse effects that are potentially lethal. It does not turn a male child into a female child, only into a eunuch who will lose his full potential for growth and strength. Children have no capacity to comprehend these long-term consequences, so the use of this drug in gender-confused children constitutes unethical experimentation; informed consent is not possible.”

Lupron, is clinically approved for treatment of prostate cancer in men, endometriosis in women, and, for a short period of time, “precocious puberty” — a condition in which children begin puberty at a significantly younger age than is considered normal.

The drug is being used on transgender children in the United States and Great Britain with the support of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society — “despite the fact there is no evidence that such hormonal treatments actually benefit children and adolescents with gender dysphoria,” Dr. Susan Berry wrote for Breitbart.

Complications related to the use of Lupron include malignant tumors, cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and blood clots, suicidal behavior and other psychological disorders, brittle bones and painful joints, and sterility.

Orient confirmed that while some of the deaths reported by the FDA could have been patients who died of prostate cancer, the problem is that very little is known about the use of Lupron “to treat healthy children, deliberately to block normal maturation.”

California-based endocrinologist and specialist on childhood gender dysphoria Dr. Michael Laidlaw has noted the medical industry is looking at a “windfall” as a result of patients seeking treatment for gender dysphoria.

“Big pharma, big hospital systems, surgical centers and doctors seek to gain huge profits,” Laidlaw said. “Lupron … monthly is $775 alone. That’s a $27,000 ‘pause button’ at 5 years [of age]. Multiply this together with the huge rise in cases documented or observed in Western nations and a major windfall is to be had.”

Laidlaw said in an interview with the Christian Post that Lupron may be therapeutic for men coping with prostate cancer, but that “gender dysphoria is not an endocrine condition, but is a psychological one and should, therefore, be treated with proper psychological care.”

Laidlaw warned that once puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are injected into children, an “endocrine condition” in these children will develop.

St. Louis-based pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Paul Hruz told the Christian Post there is much that is unknown about giving hormone blockers like Lupron to children.

“It’s often claimed that medical blockade of puberty allows a child more time to sort out issues of their gender identity, that it alleviates dysphoria in affected children, and that it makes it easier if and when they choose to go on and get other treatments, namely [sex change] surgery,” Hruz said. “It’s also claimed that it’s completely safe and reversible.”

Hruz noted that Lupron does influence bone density, and since adolescence is a time when young people accumulate the bone mass essential for the rest of their lives, there is cause for concern about whether a young person can gain back bone density once they go off the drug.

“The reality is that there is no long-term data about treating children, and the only data that we have in adults indicates that medical interventions to align the appearance of the body to a transgendered identity does not fix the problem,” Hruz said.

Laidlaw has called for an investigation into the use of drugs like Lupron for treating gender dysphoria in children and adolescents.

“I think it’s very obvious that the Surgeon General needs to step in and become seriously involved in an investigation as to why drugs like Lupron, which are obviously extraordinarily risky, are being used off label to arrest the normal development of thousands of healthy adolescent bodies,” Laidlaw told Breitbart News.

“If this were any other (non-politicized) situation and this sort of harm was occurring, the doctors and pharmaceutical manufacturers behind it would be investigated immediately, and it would be all over the press,” Laidlaw said.

Free Press International