Hillary Cass at Scottish parliamet - live

[ArabellaScott]

This started at 9am.

https://www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/health-social-care-and-sport-committee-may-7-2024

Well, yes, it is a bit optimistic. They're not civil servants or lawyers, who are professionally bound to be impartial. Politicians hold strong beliefs and are free to express them - ultimately they are only accountable to their electorate. I thought we wanted fewer professional politicians, not more?

Just pointing out how difficult it can be to identify the difference between the rainbow flag waving muppets only interested in slogans from professional politicians who (one would hope) would approach a meeting like this centring the needs of children to be protected from medical mistreatment?

Thanks for the thread

By the by:

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/john-swinney-says-cass-review-32747057

I think Cass' assertion that some children may benefit from PBs is the completely rational position when there is no evidence.

And all that is needed is for the rational position to be presented.

The response to it will be instructive to most people.

For example, the meeting has been discussed on the 'trans uk' subreddit.

Here, Cass is called a 'monster' and 'murderer' and 'lickspittle fascist', among other things:

'Wasn’t she advised not to use public transport a few weeks ago? Why on Earth would she want to expand her publicity if there was genuine concern about her safety?'

-demonstrating a complete and utter failure to understand the motivations of a senior, expert medic.

'She looks more like a stereotypical trans woman than many trans women… Maybe she’s jealous of how young transfem transitioners get to look better than her'

😶

And:

'I’m not inciting violence, but'

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1cltd39/cass_to_appear_at_holyrood_as_calls_for_snp_to/

Where do you draw the line?

I'm in the public sector, when I joined we were given clear rules of nothing that shows an affiliation to any organisation or cause. We're not allowed to take pens with logos into meetings even if the logo is a charity that nobody would take issue with and has nothing to do with the subject at hand. It's far easier to say 'no lanyards or badges', because otherwise someone needs to check each item and judge each cause.

Cass CAN NOT say that puberty blockers have no benefit. In the same way that Cass CAN NOT say there is a benefit.

Why? Because there is no evidence based for either position.

Cass CAN say there are significant harms that puberty blockers produce. Cos the IS evidence for this. Therefore there's no ethical base for encouraging their use.

You have to have an evidence based to say that there is a significant effect benefit to out weigh the harm. But you can't unethically seek to build this evidence either.

We also know the placebo effect may be at play, at least in the short term.

The absence of long term follow ups is one of the critical issues here. As is the ability to identify cases where other issues are driving problems and that it's not about gender identity.

Further research may well find that evidence in either direction to either say it's utterly harmful or have enough benefit to some children to make it worthwhile.

But you also can't harm lots of other children in the process of helping a tiny number - no one should be collateral damage for someone else - even if you do find evidence of benefit for some. Until you can find the ' true trans' magic formula, you cant risk the lives of other children.

Cos ethics and evidence based medicine.

It's pretty simple. Civil servants don't get to express political opinions or affiliations at work, actual politicians do.

That's why I was angry about it in my original message. That particular politician wearing the lanyard in front of Dr Cass felt the same to me as that PHD supervisor putting up the Trans banner on her Twitter feed after Mumsnet users discovered they had been stealing our data. It was a deliberate FU to signal (not so subtly) what the true feelings were.

Which Dr Cass, being light years ahead of that MSP in terms of her intelligence would have no doubt picked up on. Therefore it was a way to intimidate. That's what annoyed me.

I'm not saying politicians shouldn't express their political beliefs but when listening to a serious person discuss serious matters to do with actual child harm she could have restrained herself. But she didn't. Says a lot.

Exactly. It's taking all emotive, moral judgement out of the equation and looking only at the evidence. Which is unarguable.

It's not possible to argue that the evidence is there. So what we are seeing is attempts to smear, threaten, intimidate, undermine, and dismiss Cass and the Review. Suggestions that 'evidence' is 'impossible'.

Utterly predictable.

Re the rainbow lanyard - I suppose that yes, politicians are able to express their political allegiances in parliament - they can wear T shirts saying 'SAOR ALBA' or paint a Saltire on their face, or wave the flag of the local Donkey Sanctuary if they really want to.

And the electorate are free to judge their ability and seriousness as a politician by those choices.

Is that another politician stepping away from trans extremist beliefs?

“On matters of such sensitivity about the wellbeing of children and young people we should listen to clinicians.”

And thank you for the thread Arabella.

I think it's more likely a politician stepping away from any form of responsibility, tbh.

Herald:

https://t.co/oX0D4PdfUZ

Holyrood:

https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,dr-hilary-cass-ban-on-conversion-therapy-risks-criminalising-clinicians

I missed this part of the meeting, will need to go back and watch it ...

https://twitter.com/TessWhite4NE/status/1787808781172175161

Tess Green asking Cass how she feels about the Rainbow Greens calling her Review a 'social murder charter'.

Couldn’t agree with you more. This goes for anyone working in the public sector.

Megan Gallagher:

'Deeply disappointed that I was unable to put a question to Dr Cass this morning at the health, social care and sport committee. Apparently, there wasn’t enough time despite giving advance notice and the session lasted one hour….'

Shite. And they cut off Ash Regan, too. So the meeting was stacked in favour of anyone anti-Cass. Still, I actually think it helps more to get the utter gibberish of the 'activist' talking points out in the sunlight.

But you also can't harm lots of other children in the process of helping a tiny number
If we make some very generous assumptions, the number needed to treat¹ (back of an envelope calculation) seems to be at least 7.The number needed to harm is 1. That is, every single person who receives the treatment is harmed² by it - even if some also receive a benefit that might (in some cases) outweigh the harm.So unless and until there's some way of narrowing down who might be the 1 in 7, there's no way ethics panels should be even considering this sort of treatment. ¹ A research measure that says how many people on average would need to receive the treatment for 1 to benefit. It's a hypothetical measure that assumes the treatment has no harmful side effects, and it's particularly difficult to calculate for something like transition. So it's of limited usefulness, but gives us some sort of number to compare with the NNH.² Not just 'side effects', which we know are common and serious, but judged against normal pubertal development the actual intended effect is a harm.

It's not unlike saying every teenage boy should be castrated because some of them will go on to get testicular cancer. You would be absolutely right is saying that this approach would save some lives (so in that respect there's arguably a stronger case for castrating every teenage boy).

As I said, it's a question of where the line is drawn.

Of course politicians get to express political opinions at work. That's their job. By speaking and voting.

Affiliations? That's trickier. RSPB? Stonewall? Sanofi-Aventis? Millwall? Rangers?

As is expressing opinions by means other than speaking or voting. For example in the House of Commons a slogan T-shirt would be banned (don't know the Holyrood rules on those). So it's not actually a simple question. Do you allow lanyards but not T-shirts? Both? Neither? For some causes but not others? What about placards or flags?

I don't know what the right answer is, but I do know it's not as straightforward as it first appears.

https://twitter.com/Sandeshgulhane/status/1787859237009293622

Thread from Dr Sandesh Gullane of his questions and Cass' answers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0de2p7wvd9o

'The author of a major review into gender services for under-18s in England has told MSPs that Scotland could benefit from adopting a more "holistic" approach to children's services.
Giving evidence to Holyrood's Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Dr Hilary Cass said young people with "gender distress" also often had struggles with mental health, neurodivergence or family issues.

'Dr Cass said it was not for her to comment on any political opinion in Scotland about her review but only to answer questions on the conclusions she had made.
It came after Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie refused to accept the Cass Review as a valid scientific document.
That contributed to a build up in tension with the SNP, which ultimately led to the collapse of the Bute House power-sharing agreement and the end of Humza Yousaf's resign as first minister.'

'A Scottish government spokesperson said: "The Cass Review is a comprehensive and valid scientific document. In line with NHS England - for whom the report was commissioned - we are considering all of the recommendations.
"A multi-disciplinary clinical team within the office of the chief medical officer in the Scottish government - including people with paediatric, pharmacy and scientific expertise - is leading this work.
"The chief medical officer will provide a written update to parliament on the outcome of that clinical consideration process before the summer recess."'

Yes. ANy more than giving any other random intervention might help a particular problem.

The big elephant I see in all this is - what do they think the problems these kids are having are really about? What is the cause? We know they aren't actually "trans" whatever that is supposed to mean. They are kids who are confused and distressed.

They can't, or won't talk about that, so it's not possible to say, giving hormones to kids is never likely to resolve the issues they are having, and is a bad idea.

or stand in front of signs saying "decapitate TERFS"
empty headed fools

Thanks for all the info in the thread @ArabellaScott especially the summaries of what was said.

Isn't one of the reasons for studies of gender incongruent children to identify who might benefit from puberty blockers or cross sex hormones? Wouldn't they try to figure out which children are likely to persist in identifying as a different gender?

E.g., if you found that all autistic boys who wanted to be a girl before age 4 persisted and none of the neurotypical boys who developed gender incongruence after age 7 did, could you start trials of PBs or other interventions (e.g., social transition vs counseling only vs wait list) for those autistic boys who had consistently wanted to be a girl before age 4, since you know that they are very likely to continue to want to be a girl? You might try various supportive services for neurotypical boys who developed gender incongruence after age 7 but you wouldn't allow them to participate in PB studies or other studies with harmful side effects.

I assumed that was one reason they wanted better data about who persisted in their gender dysphoria/incongruence. Once you know that, you can narrow down reasonable treatment or testing options.