Leaked Cass interview

And democracy

Yes - the DfE / civil service's political allegiance to transactivism poses a real danger to children.

If he is then I suspect he is not the only civil servant there delaying it.

So if Viner is a supporter of pbs for children and medically experimenting on them, is this why the schools guidance on gender questioning children is still delayed? He's against disrupting the school to clinic pipeline if safeguarding children takes priority?

There is nothing in the CV to confirm she has been involved in the mechanics of research. She may have been involved in the direction of trials but is unlikely to have actually run one. By the point at which doctors step away from their day jobs into academia or management they are well above the pay grade involved in actually carrying out research. Like anyone in a senior position, you are relying on people with a range of specialist skill sets that you don’t have.

Hilary Cass is a retired paediatric consultant who worked for 15 years at Great Ormond Street Hospital where she was a Professor & Director of Postgraduate Medical Education & Deputy Medical Director of the hospital. She is a past President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. A run of the mill NHS consultant may not get much involved with research but she will have been deeply involved in research throughout her career.

I think people often overestimate the skills of doctors. You often see this in reference to NHS management - the assumption that doctors will be better at this when most of them have never engaged with most of the functioning of the NHS at all - such as cleaning, sterilisation, catering, nursing, HR, care assistance, AHP, facilities, etc etc. Some could become good managers and there are a lot of rubbish non-medical managers too. But doctors don’t automatically make good managers.

The same goes with research. I’ve seen very respected senior doctors who frankly don’t have a clue about research. I recently sat in a meeting where a small team presented some research and when I asked about ethics approval they looked completely blank and then tried to dismiss the need for it (fortunately a senior doctor backed me up). I think the same is true of Cass. She may have been a consumer of research and even been involved in the direction of research but at a level detached from the research itself.

She needed to set her own biases aside. I think I’d find that difficult to do, and o expect my negative feelings about gender would leak into the report.

the point about the trial is it is a shit trial. If they think some kids are trans they won’t learn what they need to from this protocol. It’s cod science. Which is shocking.

No need to be rude.

This.

Also how are they diagnosing children as trans? They arent just taking the word of pre teens that their gender identity doesn't match their sex, are they? Because that would be madness.

But she recommended that there should be a 'trial'. Before recommending such a trial there should be a definition of what the condition is, what the aims of the treatment are and what a successful outcome would look like for the children involved.

Without this, we're left with questions about what exactly is being treated, and why mental distress in physically healthy children is being treated with a drug which results in sexual dysfunction and sterility.

But she still thinks some children should be given the drugs even though there is no evidence that there is really a condition of 'being trans'.

What "bigotry" did they think it showed?

She has bought the idea that some people are trans and should be accommodated in their preferred gender. She isn't sure why or what will work best for them. But she is a believer. But what she thinks is irrelevant tbh. She is just giving her personal opinion now. But I do think the background on how they went about the research is interesting. It shows for one thing that they DID speak to trans people.

So, why was this leaked? Who objected to what?

I mean I objected to loads of it…

She clearly hasn't really questioned the idea of gender incongruance, or asked harder questions about what gender is.

I don't think it matters in terms of her job however. As much as it would be nice to have a serious medical inquiry into the definitions of these supposed diagnoses,I don't think that was part of her remit, and couldn't have been. She seems to have done what she was supposed to do very competently and with diligence even when it was made difficult for her.

Cass is saying that there are trans children who need PB. But we need to establish if PB are safe.

She is someone who believes that there is such a thing as trans children and they need to be medicated.

If she thought differently, why is she allowing some children to be placed on a pathway of a lifetime of drugs and surgery?

Or trying to establish legitimacy whilst pushing significant TRA points.

Tbh I think she knows pretty well what's what and is doing her best to land some key points (the evidence base is terrible! Giving irreversible hormones to young people who are identifying as trans due to their sexuality, ND or mental health issues is awful! Watchful waiting while allowing kids to wear whatever clothes they like is best!) without being totally dismissed as a transphobe.

This was what was missing - what is ‘gender incongruence’ and why does it need treating by pretending a child is the opposite sex?