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/

Not sure where to put this link but it's indirectly related to this one because the main BMA protagonists in the Cass debacle are the same ones leading the pay strikes. Wes Streeting is rattling a sabre at them by telling them to stop rattling their sabres.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/12/streeting-urges-doctors-to-stop-sabre-rattling-and-work-with-him-to-fix-nhs

Although he needs to be watched carefully in regards to the clinical trials, I'm on Team Wes for this battle.

Link to thread about Wes Streeting and the puberty blocker clinical trials:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5158567-health-secretary-updates-mps-on-government-and-nhs-englands-work-to-improve-gender-identity-services-implement-recommendations-of-dr-hilary-casss-independent-review-includes-extension-of-puberty-blocker-ban-to-nov-26th-review-of-adult-svcs

I supported the strikes, which had a large mandate from the membership: a 30% real terms drop in pay is massive. We are haemorrhaging doctors. But I signed the letter.

Fair enough.
If the strikes had a large mandate from the membership, that's a union acting as it should.
The reason I linked it in to the thread was because there have been several mentions in the press of it being the same activist leaders in the committee as were championing the motion to disavow the Cass Report.

I realised my comment above was ambiguous. I support Team Wes on the BMA issue when going in to battle with these particular "sabre rattlers". I have no fixed opinion on the strikes, as my views are conflicted: doctors need fair pay and fair hours, patients don't need the disruption of strikes.

Very helpful article in The Lancet on this (can read with a free registration):

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01923-8/abstract

Good to see Prof David Oliver quoted (and fighting on twix)

Excellent collection of names with good histories (Everington, Oliver, Gerada, Irvine et al) cited in that piece.

https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/healthcare/2024/09/the-bma-turns-away-from-rejecting-the-cass-report

Thank fuck!

https://x.com/hannahsbee/status/1839541144427847838

Great news. Let's hope that the scientific evaluation of the Cass Report , that this trades union has magnanimously stated that it will continue to undertake, concludes that the pope is indeed a catholic,

Thanks for sharing.

The BMA are saying they are taking a neutral position until they have undertaken their evaluation and their first step is 'to listen to people with lived experience and a range of healthcare professionals working in this area'.

I very much doubt that this marks an overarching change in the BMAs stance whereby they think that whenever changes to NHS treatment protocols are made in response to systemic reviews, they will insist that they, a union for doctors, must first check out what lay people think of these systematic reviews before agreeing to the changes.

The BMA seems to be highlighting that gender medicine isn't medicine as used across the NHS. It is something else......which is the exact concern Cass raised!

Hopefully the continuation of their pointless evaluation is just part of a cobbled together solution to the problem of saving face and appeasing the captured committee that they will hopefully be voting out asap

This is what the reverse ferret will look like in so many professions. They're all on the wrong side of history and will now scrabble backwards while trying not to be seen reversing.

Some professionals will be in the firing line as the torrent of compensation claims starts so they'll never admit they signed up to queer theory and transactivism. Just trying to return to ethical practice without being spotted.

Thank you for sharing.

It sounds like a blend of arrogance and reverse-ferreting.

This bit....

Dr David Strain, chair of the BMA’s board of science is leading the union’s “critique” of the Cass Review, which is still going ahead. “I have no preconceptions and have every intention to lead our evaluation from a position of neutrality,” he said. “As a geriatrician, I do not treat children and young people for gender dysphoria, and so the first phase of my review will be to listen to people with lived experience and a range of healthcare professionals working in this area.” Strain explained that his group would also review the actions taken in the name of the Cass Review. “I do not know, nor do I pre-empt, what we will conclude,” he added.

... makes it clear that they are arrogant enough to think that their (1 year) review of the Cass Review is somehow more meaningful than the (4 year) Cass Review itself, even though it's a budget version of the original.

It also buys them time to see how many of their activist committee members remain committed to their activism, by providing a neutral slide on to the golden bridge.

What a bunch of muppets.

…. “their first step is 'to listen to people with lived experience and a range of healthcare professionals working in this area”

That doesn’t sound anything like a review of Dr Cass’s report and her methodology. It sounds like someone going to gather opinions from people with a vested interests in order to make them feel validated. While it is always valuable to talk to those with “lived experience”, it is not the same as a scientific process of assessing evidence. A person with “lived experience” is knowledgeable about their personal experience, but they are not an expert and do not have a dispassionate overview or an ability to assess the wider picture of evidence. It is not science and not medicine.

lay people think of these systematic reviews before agreeing to the changes

I wonder if they might consider soliciting input from lay people that include detransitioners or heterodox perspectives from Helen Joyce or such.

“I have no preconceptions and have every intention to lead our evaluation from a position of neutrality,” he said. “As a geriatrician, I do not treat children and young people for gender dysphoria, and so the first phase of my review will be to listen to people with lived experience and a range of healthcare professionals working in this area.”

That is not a position of neutrality. The healthcare professionals working in this area have been shown to be zealots with an agenda. Listening to them as though they were neutral and objective is what got us into this mess in the first place.

People with lived experience are similarly biased, being those who believe they have a gender identity, so are true believers in the ideology of genderism. Many have also undergone irreversible medical treatment to affirm their belief, which is likely to have reinforced their beliefs further, since rejecting them would now force them to face the possibility that they may have been harmed.

The first step should be to define exactly what is meant by the term gender dysphoria and exactly what this physical treatment for a mental condition is trying to achieve. Accepting gender dysphoria as some sort of quasi religious belief of a soul in the wrong body, or a fixed gender in the mind which requires a matching body is far from neutral.

It's also what Cass did.

But obviously she gave it the right weighting in terms of significance.

Empirical data (or calling out the lack of it) carries far more weight than a) anecdotal "lived experience", where there is a sunk cost bias if someone has done something irreversible to their own body and b) experts whose careers and sponsorships etc are built on an affirmation model.

I came back to finish this off after multitasking on something else and I can see that @OldCrone has done a far better job of articulating what I was trying to express.

Hilary Cass must be rolling her eyes.

So the BMA are going to spend a year humming and hawing over a four year review. Fucking idiots. They've burned their credibility.

Hopefully Wes Streeting too.

If he is, you can bet he'll help the public to do so.
He's clearly got a very politically... strong... side to him. Previous examples include his involvement in the FB group which targeted problematic women - there are threads on this.

Now that his eyes are (hopefully fully 🤞) open regarding the dangers to children of this awful medical scandal, he can turn some of those skills towards calling out what's happening in the BMA. From my observations, I should imagine he'll take delight in doing so.

Hopefully that was worded within the guidelines for this board.

Streeting is a political opportunist through and through. I don't for a minute thinks he cares especially deeply one way or another about the subject. He's just noted which way the wind is blowing.

I mean, it's instructive, and it's a positive sign for us if we look to this type of person as a bellwether. I just wouldn't mistake it for ethics.

Dr David Strain, chair of the BMA’s board of science is leading the union’s “critique” of the Cass Review, which is still going ahead. “I have no preconceptions and have every intention to lead our evaluation from a position of neutrality,” he said. “As a geriatrician, I do not treat children and young people for gender dysphoria, and so the first phase of my review will be to listen to people with lived experience and a range of healthcare professionals working in this area.” Strain explained that his group would also review the actions taken in the name of the Cass Review. “I do not know, nor do I pre-empt, what we will conclude,” he added.

So no experience and no specialist knowledge of paediatric medicine.

Not sure what to make of this.

www.royaldevon.nhs.uk/news/royal-devon-consultant-selected-as-parliament-s-new-research-lead-for-health/
A Royal Devon Honorary Consultant and Exeter University professor, Dr David Strain, has been named as one of eight Thematic Research Leads, who will act as a bridge between the new Parliament and the research community on health issues. The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) announced the second-ever cohort of Thematic Research Leads today. Professor David Strain, Associate Professor in Cardiometabolic Health at the University of Exeter, is the new Thematic Research Lead for Health.

Based on the concept of Chief Scientific Advisers, Thematic Research Leads bring their impartial expertise, extensive policy knowledge and strong network of research connections to a variety of teams in and out of Parliament. They work for three days each week in Parliament, while continuing their role in their own academic institution.
The new Thematic Research Leads will work with a wide range of staff from across POST, the House of Commons Library and the Select Committee teams to enhance the use of high-quality research evidence in scrutiny and debate.

Agreed.