U.K.’s Review of Child Gender Policy Reveals Profound Failures That U.S. Still Defends

Dr. Hilary Cass, a former president of the U.K.’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, was commissioned by NHS England to review and recommend “how to improve NHS gender identity services.”

Dr. Cass released her long-awaited final report just days ago – a robust 388-page independent report with 12 detailed research-based appendices that was four full years in the making.

The conclusion?

The British Medical Journal (BMJ), one of the most prestigious and respected medical journals in the world, stated in their review of Cass’ final review that “Her conclusion is alarming for anybody who genuinely cares for child welfare: gender medicine is built on shaky foundations.”  They add, “The evidence base for interventions in gender medicine is threadbare” and this is true for “whichever research question you wish to consider – from social transition to hormone treatment.”

Bari Weiss’ The Free Press, a center left publication, stated in their careful review that Cass “found that medical professionals in the UK who advocate for gender transition in children are misguided ideologues.”

The Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) was no kinder in its conclusion: “The Cass Report provides a scathing assessment of the gender-affirming approach in general, and the gender-clinic model of care, which operationalized this approach of on-demand provision of gender-reassignment interventions, in particular.”

British gender commentator, philosophy professor and out-lesbian Kathleen Stock wrote at UnHerd Cass’ report is a “cumulatively devastating account of reckless decision-making, poor evidential standards, and patchy record-keeping’ posing as so-called compassionate ‘gender affirming care.’”

National Review states this final Cass review is “a damning indictment of the NHS gender clinic and of the ‘affirmation’ model more generally.”

Not subtle conclusions.

Such findings led the editors at National Review to correctly state that “What the evidence does not point to is the sinister fiction of the ‘transgender child’: the pseudoscientific idea that children are ‘born in the wrong body.’”

No. God does not play tricks on us with our bodies. But the human mind and imagination can create some pretty wild confusions.

The final Cass Report essentially condemns the medicalizing of gender-troubled children that has now been largely halted in the U.K. They will largely deal with the issue of gender dysphoria and confusion as a psychological matter, realizing that you cannot alter or cut at the body to heal the mind.

SEGM holds Cass’s work is “a historic [medical/scientific] document the significance of which cannot be overstated” adding, “It now appears indisputable that the arc of history has bent in the direction of reversal of gender-affirming care worldwide.”

That remains to be seen in countries like the United States and Canada that are wholly beholden the ideological capture of gender ideology activists who will not tolerate the questioning of their belief system, which is based more on baseless dogmatism than scientific rigor.

Hilary Cass observed this is also true in the U.K., explaining,

There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop.

Despite claims by the gender activists and their medical professional enablers that their “gender affirming” model is “settled science,” Dr. Cass explains the opposite in the extensive forward to her report,

This is an area of remarkably weak evidence, and yet results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint. The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender related distress.

The editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, Kamran Abbasi, agrees, asserting that “studies in gender medicine fall woefully short in terms of methodological rigour; the methodological bar for gender medicine studies was set too low, generating research findings that are therefore hard to interpret.”

Abbasi adds, “Yet this inconclusive and unacceptable evidence base was used to inform influential clinical guidelines, such as those of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)” which have singularly and mistakenly driven much of the medical community on this topic.

Even though Hilary Cass and her team undertook their four-year review at the direction of the National Health Service (NHS), SEGM reports that only one adult gender clinic in the U.K. fully cooperated with the review team and their work. The Cass Review explains each of the others that were asked to cooperate responded with “significant opposition.” This is not how honest scientists and medical professionals conduct themselves.

Of this uncooperative behavior, BMJ commented, “However, despite encouragement from NHS England, ‘the necessary cooperation was not forthcoming.’” The BMJ editor-in-chief adds, “Professionals withholding data from a national inquiry seems hard to imagine, but it is what happened.”

SEGM concluded their summery this way,

The single most salient take-away is that the so-called “gender-affirming” model of care, which treats young people’s declarations of transgender identity as an indication that any physical body modification desired by the young person is medically necessary, is over in England. So is the era of the “gender-clinic model of care,” which exists to operationalize the highly medicalized “gender-affirming” care model [emphasis added].

As noted, this is precisely that approach that gender activists and the powers-that-be in the American medical community continue to pursue with abandon and defend with absolute confidence.

The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Documented Fail

Various medical organizations were examined and rated in the scientific rigor by which they developed their guidelines in medical gender practice. The often-cited American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) failed dramatically in their score, with embarrassing marks in 4 out of 6 domains. No other medical organization did as poorly as the AAP, save for the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine.

Little Evidence of Suicide Reduction

It has long been claimed by gender activists, and with greatest passion, that if parents do not fully go along with their child’s request for alternative gender affirmation and medicalized treatments, they could be responsible for their own child’s death. Yes, it is a dramatic claim, presented by far too many medical professionals with this ominous assertion, “Would you rather have an alive son or a dead daughter?”

But is it true?

In her summary of major findings, Cass explains,

It has been suggested that hormone treatment reduces the elevated risk of death by suicide in this population, but the evidence found did not support this conclusion.

There is additional data showing this claim is false.

Conclusion

The United States and Canada should drop their blind allegiance to baseless gender ideology and follow other European nations like the U.K., Sweden, France, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium that are now setting notable limitations or dramatic reversals on so-called “gender affirming care.”

These countries are realizing the data on the matter is not as clear as gender activists, and their dedicated allies in the medical profession, authoritatively claim. Nor are these approaches helping the children and adults they claim to help, and this conclusion continues to grow stronger.

 

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