As news broke that the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) will increase restrictions on the use of puberty blockers for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, a leading pediatrician observed that multiple European countries and the American public have moved away from the Left’s insistence on giving gender-confused children puberty blocking drugs and undergoing irreversible surgeries to remove healthy organs.

In a recent announcement, the NHS stated that most children who express confusion about their gender may be going through a “transient phase,” while also placing restrictions on dispensing puberty blocking drugs and requiring medical doctors to lead transgender treatment rather than therapists.

Dr. Quentin Van Meter, president of the American College of Pediatricians, joined “Washington Watch” on Tuesday to discuss the NHS’s move and American’s views on minors undergoing irreversible transgender procedures.

“A number of states in this country are aligned with what Britain is doing nationally,” Van Meter said. “It would be the equivalent of the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services coming out with an edict saying [to] cease and desist any social [and] medical transition of gender confused individuals. It’s a phase that they’re going through. They will most likely resolve this through the help of significant counseling efforts.”

Van Meter went on to point out that medical science does not show that “blocking normal, healthy puberty, using the wrong sex hormones in children, and finally mutilating perfectly healthy normal organs” improves mental health, and that multiple European countries are moving away from these procedures for minors as a result.

“If the whole purpose of doing these things is to improve the mental health of these individuals, it is not based on reality or science,” he noted. “So Britain says, ‘No, under no circumstance.’ Sweden says, ‘No, it’s not going to happen unless we do it under a very carefully proposed research protocol,’ which is yet to be developed. Finland is right behind, and France is not far behind Finland in saying that this is an emotional issue that needs to be dealt with, with counseling. So essentially, we have some very enlightened states in the United States that have come together with laws to protect children from this abusive circumstance.”

As Van Meter went on to emphasize, trustworthy studies showing the long-term effects of gender transition procedures do not exist.

“[There is a] lack of any long-term studies that prove safety is evident, [and] there are none in the making,” he said. “There are some that are talked about as if they were [trustworthy long-term studies], but in reality [they] are sort of a sham kind of a study through an NIH grant which does not have any control. It’s basically just observing the prospects of what goes on in the gender clinics … in the United States. It’s not designed to have a control group or even any generalized protocols that each institute follows as part of a very carefully constructed prospective study.”

Van Meter continued, “The U.K. knows this. And on top of that, the U.K. report is based on a very significant review of existing science that looks at whatever benefits have been claimed and whatever harms have been documented — and they have documented harms. There’s just no question about it. And having had this information so carefully done in a very valid way, the U.K. government said, ‘I think we will cease and desist immediately.’”

So what is the outlook for medical professionals in the U.S. regarding the transgender issue?

“I think reason should prevail,” Van Meter stressed. “It’s going to take a while. And I think we’re going to have to chip away at some of these things, sort of slowly but surely. But the wall is beginning to crumble. The bricks and mortar are not strong enough to resist the invasion of truth. And so we are going to see more and more courts kind of listening to the fact that … a very progressive nation in Europe has evaluated this. And maybe we should use that study instead of the hopeful wishes of the gender activists in terms of setting what standards should be followed here in the United States.”

While U.S. medical institutions are largely on board with providing irreversible gender transition procedures to minors, surveys show that the American people are not. A recent Trafalgar poll revealed that almost 80% of likely voters believe that minors under 18 should be required to wait until they are adults before undergoing transition procedures.