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

[IwantToRetire]

(sorry if already posted - really struggling with MN search function )

Not in Our Name BMA

We note that the sources the BMA is relying on to cast doubt on the review are authored by groups with serious conflicts of interest and have not been through peer-review.

Full text of letter and option to sign for members at https://notinournamebma.co.uk/open-letter-not-in-our-name-bma/

Tom Dolphin has been winning over his colleagues for almost 2 decades now - & apparently was an infamous misogynist even before it was cool to deny women exist as a discrete class into which one cannot identify…

'The selfish political climbers who have somehow managed to take control of the BMA must be stopped, otherwise the BMA will die; its corrupt hierarchy is dragging it into the gutter as we speak.'

Crikey.

Quite the way with words that blogger - I felt it would be rude not to share @ArabellaScott !

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13781747/BMA-revolt-Cass-review-Doctors-quit-opposition-review-gender-identity-services-children.html

Doctors are quitting the British Medical Association in revolt at its opposition to a landmark review into gender identity services for children.
Many members, including NHS leaders and former presidents of medical royal colleges, have voiced their dismay over the report, led by paediatrician Hilary Cass.
They have accused the BMA of being influenced by a 'vocal minority' with an ideological agenda.
…
Jacky Davis, a consultant radiologist and council member, told The Times: 'This minority has voted to block the implementation of Cass, an evidence-based review which took four years to put together.
'They have no evidence for their opposition. The Cass review is not a matter for a trade union. It is not our business as a union to be doing a critique of the Cass review. It is a waste of time and resources.'
In response, more than 1,400 doctors, including nearly 70 professors and 23 former or current presidents of medical royal colleges, signed an open letter urging the BMA to drop its opposition to the Cass review.
…
One signatory called for a 'vote of no confidence in BMA leadership' and another commenting that 'activists appear to have been allowed to take over'.
Despite the BMA's stance, the NHS remains committed to implementing the review's recommendations.
Professor Philip Banfield, chairman of the BMA council, said a 'task and finish' group set up to evaluate the Cass report would report on progress at the end of the year.

Bloody hell. Well said that person.

www.bma.org.uk/about-us/about-the-bma/how-we-work/leadership-at-the-bma

List of staff. Note Emma.

Pronouns in the bio is just the beginning

People like this get voted into union positions (almost all unions, not just the BMA) because the majority of members are not particularly active and either don’t bother to vote, when candidates stand for election, or don’t take the time to find out what their values are.

It means that the activists standing for union positions can leverage the votes of fellow activists to take office. And, once there, can manipulate the union’s processes to keep themselves in office.

Exactly as it goes in political parties.

It’s why there is no place for unions in democratic government and the main reason I won’t vote labour. The unions have too much power vis a vis the ordinary voter when it comes to policy, manifesto and its leadership.

I think there is a place for them in principle, it's just that - in practice - their status as genuine grassroots mass movements has been hollowed out, which has led to them being wildly unrepresentative. Nothing reveals that more than the damage they are doing on this particular issue of women's rights. But the same has happened/is happening with the Labour Party too. It is no longer an authentically grassroots organisation, controlled by its members.

I don't know what the answer is, but I still view the trades union funding model as less undemocratic than the funding models of other major parties.

I signed the letter because I think the Cass review is important and should be respected. It wasn’t the place of the BMA to challenge the report.

I don't understand how they're saying the ban on pbs goes further than the recommendations, have I missed something?

Happens in charities too.

Jo Bartosch has an excellent article

https://archive.ph/NfYyK paywall jump

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/27/the-activist-bma-has-betrayed-medicine/

Forgive this rather long quote

More widely, the sickness of the BMA has not only harmed patients, it has left clinicians unsupported. The union hasn’t found the time to condemn the harassment and persecution of clinicians by transgender activists. No public support has been offered, for example, to the twenty-six female nurses who have had to take legal action after County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust allowed a biological male who identified as transgender to get changed alongside them. The nurses were told to “re-educate” themselves despite reporting inappropriate behaviour by their male colleague.

Moreover, Banfield opted not to praise the whistleblowers from the scandal-struck Tavistock clinic, brave and experienced therapists many of whom were monstered, and some forced out of the NHS, for simply trying to protect the interests of confused young people.

And not one person who voted to reject Cass found the time to speak up on the impossible situation for BMA members who are now expected to routinely ask men if they might be pregnant during hospital appointments. Meanwhile, the BMA has found time to release statements on the conflict in Gaza, the killing of George Floyd, keeping communities safe from fascists on British streets and the situation in Afghanistan.

The TQ+ activist mentioned upthread comes across as forceful and energetic. Although I've not seen interviews with any of the others and prepared statements tell you little of the character and motivation of the people putting their names to them. However, I can imagine a forceful and energetic character, with transphobia metaphorically in their back pocket, being able to bamboozle and steamroller others on subjects that perhaps aren't important to them, or where they see not harm in complying. The silence though, in areas where they should be supporting their members, that speaks very loudly as to their character.

Instead of getting back in their box, the BMA is going on a witch hunt for who leaked to the press. There needs to be a vote of no confidence in the leadership

www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/29/witch-hunt-bma-tries-to-identify-who-leaked-planned-opposition-to-cass-review

Victoria Smith in Unherd

https://unherd.com/newsroom/bma-civil-war-over-cass-review-deepens/

She makes a good point (one of several) if doctors are promising the impossible to patients I, too, want to be immortal and I'd like the power of flight while they're at it.

That is a beautifully written piece.

Telling children this process can be “paused” or avoided entirely is as meaningful as telling them they can be made immortal. It is telling them they can get out of being human rather than helping them to live. Some doctors — hopefully most — are still doing the latter. The would-be gods of the BMA union ought to halt their “evaluations” and learn from them instead.

Hannah Barnes in the Times on how a small cohort of the BMA took control and the piss

https://archive.ph/67hqP bypass paywall

www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/politics-power-and-puberty-blockers-the-trans-row-dividing-the-bma-xl52dgdmb

Not sure why but sometime I have been unable to use archive links that include ".ph"

So if anyone else is having problems with the link above try https://archive.is/67hqP

The fear now is that this row provides a distraction from the vital task of delivering a safe and compassionate gender service for children and young people. The most recent figures suggest that more than 5,700 are on the waiting list to be seen. Having let down this group of children so badly in the past, it would be unforgivable to do so again.

This is so true. And ironically Hannah Barnes has contributed to that. I wonder if it would have made a difference if she / others waited until the vote and then expose.

All this of course because the moment there is a critical article, the usual suspect rush round over stating conspiracies etc.

Although in this instance I think that because the upcoming vote was in the public domain it maybe made a few who would have just gone with the flow, think they needed to step back.

What a mess.

But also, so good to know so many Doctors are willing to take a stand.

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.

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

Good for you 👏

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