In this exclusive episode of Family Matters, Simon speaks with retired anaesthetist, Dr Isobel Ross, who also has a PhD in informed consent.
They discuss the ethics around prescribing puberty blockers based on a paper that Dr Ross has just had published in the New Zealand Medical Journal. Arguably an article that may not have been published two years ago, but one that raises critically important issues and a set of views every parent needs to hear.
Dr Isabel Ross spent decades managing risk in operating theatres and now is assessing the risks around puberty blockers. In this episode we discuss:
🔴 The Cass Review graph that changed everything — a 5,000% surge in clinic referrals that nobody treated as an emergency
🔴 “Lack of evidence of harm is not the same as safety” — the precautionary principle abandoned
🔴 The conveyor belt: over 90% of kids on puberty blockers never come off them
🔴 Brain development, bone density, fertility — what we’re actually gambling with
🔴 “You can have a living daughter or a dead son” — how this narrative destroys real consent
🔴 The Keira Bell case: can a 14-year-old consent to a lifetime medical pathway?
🔴 Detransitioners: heartbreaking stories, and no pathway back
🔴 How NZ’s conversion therapy law may be criminalising the questions families desperately need to ask
This is a careful, evidence-based argument from a medical insider who has spent her career studying what real informed consent looks like — and knows it when she doesn’t see it. Read the paper (free): www.nzmj.org.nz — “Ethical and Evidential Challenges in Adolescent Puberty Blockage: Why Informed Consent Alone Is Not Enough” — #familymatters #familyfirstnz
