July 31, 2024 - 8:15pm
The British Medical Association has criticised the Cass Review for allegedly using weak methodologies to support its findings, according to a Wednesday announcement.
The BMA called for the Cass Review’s implementation to be halted, and for cross-sex medical treatments to continue “regardless of [patients’] age]”. It plans to publish a full critique at the end of the year, which is slated to focus on “weaknesses in the methodologies used in the Review and problems arising from the implementation of some of the recommendations.”
The Cass Review cast the British medical establishment’s handling of youth gender distress in a harsh light, finding insufficient evidence for sometimes irreversible treatments that were administered to troubled adolescents, many of whom were autistic. Dr Hilary Cass, a former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, investigated the evidence behind cross-sex medical interventions for minors including puberty blockers and hormones on behalf of the NHS, which had been offering the treatments through the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service. The Review, published in April, found that medical treatments were in most cases not the best course of action, and instead recommended a focus on mental health treatments.
“The rationale for early puberty suppression remains unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health. The effect on cognitive and psychosexual development remains unknown”, the report read.
The BMA is joined by several other organisations, including a group of researchers at Yale University and a separate group of university researchers in the UK, that have criticised the Cass Review. These organisations have defended youth gender transitions, arguing that it will be used to politicise transgender health care and justify legal restrictions on gender transitions.
Dr Cass has previously characterised much of the criticism directed at her report as inaccurate. “If you deliberately try to undermine a report that has looked at the evidence of children’s healthcare, then that’s unforgivable,” she said, “you are putting children at risk by doing that,” she said in April.
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