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Norwegian guideline (Ukom 2023): hormones in minors are experimental

In March 2023, the Norwegian Ukom (Statens undersøkelseskommisjon for helse- og omsorgstjenesten) published a damning report: puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in children are experimental treatments — not evidence-based care. With this, Norway joins Sweden , Finland , and Denmark . Four Scandinavian countries plus the UK have now, independently of each other, reversed medical interventions on minors. What is still sold in the Netherlands as "international consensus" is in reality an ideological belief posing as medicine — and which is collapsing under European evidence-based bodies.

What Ukom is — and what it did

Ukom is the Norwegian authority for patient safety in healthcare, comparable to the British CQC or the Dutch IGJ. It is not an activist body, but a supervisory body. At the request of the authorities, Ukom assessed whether care for children with gender dysphoria complies with Norwegian statutory standards for patient safety. The answer: no. The guideline from the Nasjonal behandlingstjeneste for kjønnsinkongruens (NBTK) turned out not to be based on systematic literature research — a methodological form of circular reasoning in which guidelines refer to one another without an evidence base.

Key conclusions

• Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for adolescents are experimental treatments — not evidence-based.
• The existing guideline is not based on systematic evidence review.
• Risks, irreversibility, and alternatives are insufficiently discussed in informed consent.
• Social transition in prepubescent children is discouraged — it directs development, it is not a neutral act.
• Comorbid psychiatric conditions — autism, ADHD, depression, eating disorders — must be treated first.

Transition does not heal — Ukom names the problem

The report states that Norwegian gender care used the assumption that "transition helps" as an axiom, not as a testable hypothesis. Unfalsifiable claims were not viewed as a problem; self-reporting was used as evidence. That is not medicine — that is confirmation of belief. Cross-sex hormones cause irreversible physical changes — voice lowering, beard growth, mastectomies in healthy girls — and the outcome data to justify that damage are lacking. Transition does not heal; it inflicts damage on a body where the problem was never in that body. Detransitioners — see detransition research — prove that firsthand.

What happened next

The Health Directorate (Norwegian Health Service) had to revise the guideline. Puberty blockers and hormones for minors will henceforth be administered under strict conditions and preferably in a research setting. For adolescents with an ROGD-like profile — suddenly appearing during puberty, in a social context, often girls — medical intervention is no longer the first option. This aligns with what Lisa Littman described in her ROGD research and what desistance research has shown for years: the majority of children with dysphoria outgrow it if puberty proceeds normally.

Four Scandinavian countries plus the UK — one conclusion

Three of the four Scandinavian countries — Sweden (SBU 2022) , Finland (COHERE 2020) , Norway (Ukom 2023) — have abandoned the affirmative model within three years. Denmark followed in 2023. The UK reached the same conclusion in 2024 via the Cass Review and closed GIDS . All independently of each other, all based on transparent evidence review. WPATH's claim that this is "anti-trans" is propaganda — it is an international scientific correction that is being opposed by WPATH itself .

The pattern — and why the Netherlands ignores it

In Scandinavia, the empirical culture remained dominant; in the Anglo-American context, activism has partly overruled the evidence-review tradition — those who were critical were silenced as "transphobic". The Netherlands — the birthplace of the Dutch Protocol — has so far not conducted an independent evidence review. The Dutch rollout via VUmc, UMCG, and regional clinics continues as if nothing has changed internationally. That is no longer a scientific position; that is a dogmatic defense of a national export product whose empirical basis has been falsified in four surrounding countries. Cass (2024) explicitly recommends that all countries — including the Netherlands — compare their population against the original Dutch Protocol profile before further medicalization takes place.