Hilary Cass sent a document to every single MP and Peer, justifying and defending the puberty blockers trial

Remember the Orkney scandal in which a lot of children were taken away from their families in dawn raids and held with none of their familiar toys or clothes, and pumped for evidence their parents had been sexually abusing them?

One of the bits of "evidence" was one of the children telling them about a man in a black cloak and his nasty turtles. The black-cloaked man was eventually established to have been the local priest, but the turtles might be harder to explain if you didn't happen to know that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a TV programme at the time and very popular with children roughly that age. The child-experts involved seem not to have been aware of that phenomenon and invented all sorts of convoluted ways to explain why turtles, since they are not found in the Orkneys and however would the child have known they existed? obviously some perverse adult must have been involved....

And all these twerps seem to think that children never lie! They can't have had children in their non-professional lives or met them in non-clinical settings, is all I can say: children exercise their imaginations (which is what that sort of lying amounts to) all the time! "Mummy, when I was on holiday in Spain with Aunt Jane" and a farrago of wonderful nonsense, when Aunt Jane and the child have never gone to Spain at the same time as each other, is quite as normal as an imaginary playmate, and goodness only knows what the child-experts make of those. (And I think I don't want to. I will stick to Binker, brave as elephants and never never cries except like other people when the soap gets in his eyes, and the half-dozen sheep one or another of whom used to accompany me everywhere, invisibly and mostly silently, during the two or three years before I went to school.)

This is the bit I can never get over, (and sorry - I know this has been said repeatedly).
That otherwise intelligent adults can seriously believe that toddlers and little children think they're really the opposite sex and should be treated as if this fantasy is true, Despite all the evidence about how creative play, imagination, role play and fantasy is how young children explore and make sense of the world.

The fact that these people take the word of disordered adults, mostly male and many with a range of paraphilias, adds to the disbelief - and danger to children.

I think what I was wondering was what changed her from what was to all intents and appearances a very reasonable and competent paediatrician in one field and another, with a career that had gone well and no apparent axe to grind on this one subject, into someone who seems to be feeling it personally and proselytising somewhat. My experience has been that there's usually a reason for such a change, so I wondered what it had been.

Just to say, pre-edit posts can still be seen on MN - if you want it gone-gone you will need to ask MNHQ to delete it (and then re-post without the info/edits)…

Ah that is so interesting. Katie Alcock's research and articles she has written have been very important to me in trying to persuade of the error of social transition of young children when the subject arose in my work years ago.

I submitted written evidence to the Cass review about social transitioning, abetted by schools - knowing that was strictly speaking outside the remit of the Cass review but also wanting them to understand how a child gets locked on to a belief and therefore potentially a pathway. Just the sort of child who will now been even more sure that PBs are the answer as the 'wrong' puberty rushed towards them.

There were probably many who write to her about social transitioning, about what's going on in schools.

It is so disappointing.

Edited to take out info that's too identifying

I’ve posted this on a couple of other threads, but not on here, so will add here too:

This is a post on X from a developmental psychologist who spoke to Cass before the report came out:

https://nitter.net/wontsomeonethi2/status/2069800467811459454

Before the Cass Review was published, I had the opportunity to talk to Dr Cass about my research. I outlined how young children think that putting on a dress turns a boy into a girl and the relevance of this to younger children who think they have changed sex.

I have not mentioned this before publicly but I feel it is time to do so. She listened to what I had to say and appeared to understand the implications for younger children who identify as transgender (I'm using "identify as" as a placeholder here because the concept of internal identity in younger children is very problematic).

Dr Cass said "oh, that's interesting, I thought those cases were "safe", where they say they are trans very young" [I paraphrase but she definitely used the word "safe"]

She knows there's no magic internal feeling in young children who think they are the opposite sex. I've told her and she's heard it and acknowledged it might not be right to go ahead with social or medical transition in these cases. SHE KNOWS. I have no idea why she's doubling down on this. No idea.

Yes, but for how long before she was selected to be in charge of this review had she been saying protrans-slanted things? I don't know enough about her to be able to say for sure. It may be that at some point whilst the review was in process, she was faced with what seemed to her very persuasive evidence for the existence of gender dysphoria (as opposed to any other sort of dysphoria some people certainly do feel), but we don't know what that might have been.

I'm not entirely sure she hid it. I remember during the release of the report, hearing her speak in interviews, she did seem to believe in the concept of 'true trans' especially for people showing signs of distress in early childhood. And the report made no attempt to genuinely interrogate the concept of gender dysphoria in any serious way, it more or less stated that it exists and needs to be treated medically in some fashion.

Oh, so she has merely stopped bothering to pretend to unbiased reasoning based on the science of the matter? Makes sense, I suppose. But she did do the pretending for quite a long time.

Someone higher up the thread** suggested that there is evidence she has always been an ideologue.

**Aha - it was @BettyBooper, who said:

BettyBooper · 11/07/2026 10:56

Cass was personally pushing for a PB trial two years before her report was published. She did not admit that until a couple of months ago. It certainly wasn't explicit in the report.

She is literally behind the entire thing. This is her idea and her baby.

Imho she's been a true believer all along and twisted the science in the report to recommend a PB trial she wanted. Nothing in the report actually supports it.

Who got to her, and how?

Her demeanour and public statements on this issue have changed over the last number of years. She used to quote evidence/studies and speak in unemotive/impartial terms. Now, she's making impassioned speeches in HoL and telling people to believe her based on her personal reputation and the backstory of a fictional child.

I think she's become a little too accustomed to people lauding her as wonderful and amazing and so believes she can do no wrong. She's been positioned as the leading expert on the issue of gender distressed children and that's given her a lot of power. Anyone dissenting to any of her recommendations is simply an enemy that must be defeated; she doesn't care to engage with the arguments and see if they have any merit.

We should really document all the excuses they will make to extend and increase the numbers.

Worst of all there will be all sorts of omissions in what they look for such as what @AmaryllisNightAndDay was referring to, and most likely the long term will not be followed through for long enough.

I'm sure the cheer leader for unethical trials on children too young to give informed consent is thrilled.
The rest of us watch in horror as safeguarding children from the impacts of this age inappropriate adult belief is systematically eroded.

Four years on blockers? Blimey. I'm glad at least Jacob is feeling better having come off them.

But one of the things that Sallie Baxendale said (in the video about brain development linked upthread) is that there's a different "time window" for different kinds of brain development and puberty is a development period with a lot going on. Delay too long and the window(s) for some of them may close with permanent cognitive and emotional effects that have barely been studied.

I gather the court case to block the trial has been lost, and now it will go ahead.

And it's been in the public domain since 2019. Seven years.

Thank you. What an important report on the experience of puberty blockers from first hand experience.

Puberty- blocked children are effectively being set apart from their peers. This seems likely to add an idea of themselves as having a ‘unique’ identity, and one following a separate trajectory.

This is what these children are being put through.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/transgender-children-puberty-blocking-drugs-for-the-past-four-years-i-ve-been-stuck-as-a-child-5s6tkh7z2

https://archive.ph/iZTk5

Scenario 1
There is an impirtant social difference:
the child with prococious puberty has their puberty paused so they remain in synch with their peers. Their puberty is allowed resumed at the more normal age so, again, this keeps them like their peers.

Psychologically they are not being kept ‘different’ from all their group like puberty- blocked teenagers would be. Puberty- blocked children are effectively being set apart from their peers. This seems likely to add an idea of themselves as having a ‘unique’ identity, and one following a separate trajectory.

A major difference between prococious-puberty-blockers and gender-identity-puberty blockers is that they are not administered to the same aged bodies or minds.

For interest,
I have just seen that girls with true prococious puberty out number boys with the condition. Girls 0.2% Boys 0.05%
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK544313/

Others have already pointed out this is a nonsense argument and a false dichotomy.

But just for those at the back.

Scenario 1:
The condition being treated - precocious puberty, has a clear definition and we know why it is harmful.
The treatment - puberty blockers, administered for a strictly limited period of time.
The outcome of the treatment - as a direct consequence of the drugs, the actual condition, namely precocious puberty, is paused for limited time, natural puberty then takes place.

Scenario 2:
The condition being treated - kid is sad due to abusive brainwashing, kid's body actually healthy.
The treatment - puberty blockers, administered for unknown duration and then what?
The outcome of the treatment - as a direct consequence of the drugs, we already know these pause puberty, but where is the actual link to the actual alleged condition? Kid who has been abusively brainwashed says they are less sad? And then what happens next?

It’s a typical TRA argument to say “they’re given to kids with precocious puberty all the time, this is no different.”

Ignoring, of course, that it is massively different. Puberty hormones are abnormally raised at a much too young age. There is pathology. Those hormones are suppressed until normal age then puberty is allowed to resume.

With gender reasons, there is no pathology. The puberty hormones are exactly as they should be. But they are made abnormal. And we know that puberty is never allowed to resume.

The side effects of the former are direct effects of the medication itself for the 2-3 years it might be given.

The side effects of the latter are direct side effects of the medication itself, and also the effects of never allowing puberty to resume.

A nonsense argument to compare the two.

So why are parents not being prosecuted for medicating their by definition pre-pubescent kids with illegal drugs?