Nearly 900 doctors sign letter urging BMA to abandon inquiry into Cass review

Good to see this getting coverage in the Guardian & Observer. Long overdue that their readers were given the reality side of the trans debate.

Well done to The Observer. Keep up the sensible reportage.

BMA stance on Cass review of transgender care has ‘damaged its reputation’
‘Climate of fear’ at British Medical Association after it rejected findings of landmark study, leading member claims

The British Medical Association has threatened the reputation of all UK doctors by rejecting the findings of the landmark Cass review of transgender healthcare, a leading member of the BMA has told the Observer.
Dr Jacky Davis claims that the doctors’ union’s stance on the Cass review is “irrational”, has created a “fracture” between its leadership and the grassroots doctors it represents and left the medical profession “in an uproar”.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/sep/07/bma-stance-on-cass-review-of-transgender-care-has-damaged-its-reputation

Also: Undemocratic and secretive: the BMA no longer speaks for doctors trying to protect children
…
So why did the BMA, which is not a scientific body such as Nice, feel it could criticise and undermine Cass’s work? The BMA has allowed itself to get into a position whereby a vocal minority of council members with an anti-Cass agenda have engineered policy that the membership have not been consulted on and do not agree with. While they are sincere in their beliefs, these council members have no hard evidence for their opposition, and good intentions aren’t enough to guide medical practice. It must be underpinned by evidence.
The BMA now finds itself isolated in its opposition to Cass, and with its reputation and integrity damaged. The prognosis for the union is not terminal, but it needs to acknowledge the mess that it is in and then to pull itself back from the brink of what one critic has called “its descent into madness”.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/07/bma-cass-report-gender-identity-services

There is the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association which is open to any doctor except GPs.

There is also Doctors in Unite which is open to all grades of doctors and includes GPs.

No idea what Unite is like, I've been very happy with the support from HCSA.

I just listened to an interview with Helen Joyce about this, discussing Hannah Barnes' latest article about the capture of the BMA by approximately 30 individuals, the leader of whom was a prominent member of Momentum. (I do remember hearing that there some very inappropriate goings on inside Momentum. I wonder if it was connected to the same individual).

What other unions are there for doctors who want to leave the BMA but still need to belong to a union?

This is so important. People put their trust in doctors and other HCPs. We trust that they're educated and informed. We trust that they will treat their patients with respect, using the best available knowledge and science and deal sensitively with the major transitions in life including birth and death.
And then we discover that one branch of medicine is in the pockets of queer theorists - have been experimenting on vulnerable children / young people with unevidenced medication and the most brutal of surgery to "cure" a mental health issue and all their peers failed to speak up because they were busy, exhausted and scared of being bullied.
I know that the same criticism can be made of teachers, politicians, psychiatrists etc but those who kept silent need to make sure that now so many doctors have spoken, everyone else speaks out too. Because it's going to be the weight of informed opinion that will remove the influence of queer theorists from child medicine.

What might be overlooked by the doctors you describe is the impact this could have on the profession as a whole. Trust in doctors is pretty high, still. As you say, people assume that they are acting from an evidence based position. It is shocking to find out that this has not been the case here.

When this becomes more broadly known, I fear it may affect the profession as a whole. I'm not sure people will be thinking 'oh this is just one niche branch of medicine'.

My answer would be similar:

There are large numbers this doesn't affect
Doctors are used to new conditions and treatments being discovered
Most naturally tend to 'be kind'
The narrative of most underprivileged group took a strong hold
Everyone assumed assessments were a lot more thorough and evidence based than it turned out to be

That's really interesting thank you. Makes a lot of sense.

It's heartening to see the strength of opposition to the BMA activists - and from so many senior medics. It's taking so long but finally children are being centred again.

Possible answers to your question
a) I think there is a large number of (mainly specialist) doctors who don't or would rather not think about it as it does not affect their line of work and is way to toxic to stick an uninvited oar in
b) there are a significant number of GPs who are utterly disillusioned with their work; caring about this issue (or evaluating the evidence) is beyond their bandwidth. Just do what the 'shared care' letters/GMC say and try to survive.
c) there are GPs who do care and are completely horrified but again, too toxic. Think it needs to be fixed systemically and their voice will be not heard except where it hurts them personally
d) there are a number of doctors who believe purely in patient choice, think the NHS is too nanny state, and if people want to do themselves harm (and pay for the privilege) then they should be able to crack on.
e) there is a vocal minority of doctors of different stripes who are ideologically committed to 'progressivism' and push that agenda. They are not all junior, not all young - but many are. Principle is more important than evidence.
f) some doctors think that Cass fixed it, Labour are on side and it will all just come out in the wash
g) and a very very few doctors (like the brave ones in the Telegraph article) who put their money where their mouths are and keep shouting about evidence.

And they are heros. The rest of those that do not to speak up are depending on them risking their reputations.

I voted for the consultant strike. I contributed to the junior doctors' strike fund. I voted for Labour. I signed the letter calling out the BMA for opposing the Cass review.

That's a very interesting read. I realised, reading it, that I assumed would have assumed all Doctors would react like Clare Gerada to the idea of giving minors unevidemced treatments.

I wonder what has happened to the profession recently to explain this shift?

The Telegraph have a little more on some of the medics speaking out against this action by the BMA and the entryists who got the motion (in every sense of the word) passed

https://archive.ph/udYnn bypass paywall

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/02/trans-row-bma-british-medical-association/

I think (hope) if there's going to be any reputational fallout from this it'll be the BMA 🤡 that'll take the hit.

I, until recently, didn't realise the BMA was just the union, albeit a powerful and (formerly?) respected one. The last time they hove into view over my horizon was when they opined on older women becoming pregnant. I, turned 40 and about to have my second, joked to my midwife about them coming round and breaking my windows. She...well...one of the finest eye rolls I have ever witnessed.

Thank you @IcakethereforeIam that is the bit I was looking for (and which was invisible at the time, no idea why). Its still there now, so not edited. What are those odds? 950 signed letter complaining about the vote and are members of BMA vs 21 who voted for this overstepping move. Likely overwhelmingly the less experienced junior doctors voted in last time. Appalling.

Hopefully BMA members of the BMA's Representative Body of policy makers, who have seen the effect of this, will step in. Otherwise what might happen next.

There's this from the archive of the Hannah Barnes article in the Times that I linked this morning. It may have been edited in the interim?

Even the BMA’s leadership body, the UK council, was split on the matter. Sources have confirmed to me that 45 of 69 voting members of the BMA’s council took part in the votes. Less than half — 21 — voted to oppose implementing the Cass review (11 voted against; 13 abstained). Twenty-nine members voted to critique it.

I thought I had read somewhere this morning (on this thread/in the article linked) that it was a very low number of the 69 council members who voted on this issue. 45? and that there were abstentions. But I can no longer find that information. Did I imagine it or has it been edited out?

I think it's possible the DoctorsVote entryists were also the victims of entryism by the TQ+.

Good for you 👏

I was a member of the BMA for over 30 years. I am not any more.

Important article.

The former Sunday Times journalist Andrew Gilligan has revealed how in the autumn of 2021, a group calling itself DoctorsVote first appeared on the online discussion site, Reddit. It described itself as “a small group of like-minded people … committed to achieving full pay restoration”. To do that, it set out to gain as many seats on the UK council as possible.
Who are DoctorsVote?
The group’s “campaigning strategy” would focus on what it called “entryism” — encouraging people “to join the BMA for the purpose of voting in this election”, acknowledging that “BMA elections have painfully low turn-out”. It was a classic trade union tactic, and one that was enormously successful. In 2022, DoctorsVote candidates gained 25 of the council’s 69 seats.
DoctorsVote is a loose coalition of left-leaning junior doctors, containing a smaller, but harder left, grouping called Broad Left. A Broad Left member, and former Momentum activist, Emma Runswick, is now the council’s deputy chair. Runswick has made no secret of her views in favour of an affirmative, medical approach to caring for gender-questioning children. She declared that the ban on puberty blocker prescriptions “will lead to suicide”, a claim that has been discredited repeatedly.
It was another Broad Left member of the council who proposed the motion criticising Cass, arguing on X that “rejecting the Cass review is one of many steps” the BMA needed to take to protect and boost “gender identity healthcare”.

I think it is increasingly clear the TAs miscalculated in this vote. It has exposed their sexist stuff. Whatever "review" they come up with will have no evidence. Reality based medics will have to organise a fight back.

The next BMA elections look to be in April/May 2025. Get rid of these biology deniers.