BMA Reverse Ferret on Cass

[Zahariel]

Put more details in AIBU for eye balls, but posting it here for fun as well

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5174778-to-think-the-bma-should-hang-its-head-in-shame-after-first-decrying-the-cass-review-and-now-embarrassingly-completely-reverse-ferreting-on-the-entire-thing-what-happened-to-do-no-harm

Archive link to New Statesman article

https://archive.ph/0eHj1

It's so stupid why do they think they know better than Dr Cass 🤦‍♀️

Unfortunately, it isn't much of a reverse ferret when you read the whole article. Maybe they will quietly drop their 'review'?

Arrogance.

Feels like a pretty clear decision to me, no way out of this to come up with a report that says they are right and everyone else is wrong surely?

This guy

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.

'Lived experience'! I hope that includes the detransitioners and desistors, assuming they can be found, and not just poor sods who have been sold this delusion, the freaks who have been peddling it, get off on it and/or whose livelihood depends on it.

I wish they’d just get back to doing what they’re meant to be doing- being a trade union for doctors.
I only joined because the chair of the GP Committee is brilliant and we really need the BMA to sort out the slow motion car crash that’s NHS GP.

'As a geriatrician..' wtf 🙄

I would have thought it would be better for them to appoint a doctor with a paediatric background to carry out their ‘review’ 🤨

Plus, Dr Strain will be duplicating the Cass Review by the sounds of it because Cass et al interviewed kids with gender confusion and those undergoing/who had undergone treatment etc; Strain’s statement wording makes it sound like he’s undertaking research that Cass et al omitted for their review which, if he’d read the Cass Review, he’d know they’d already carried out those kinds of interviews 🙄

I hadn't read the bit I'd quoted properly. I thought he'd been wheeled out to defend the 'critique', it hadn't registered he'd be leading it!

Dr Strain will be repeating it but without the budget or the team. There's no way he can produce something as robust and wide ranging as Cass.

I do not think Dr Strain has not read the Cass Report yet and has assumed (or believed the Bma zealots) that it is a poor quality, ideologically motivated pamphlet that can be rapidy assimilated, appraised and improved by a superior mind.

In an unrelated sentence, I have worked at the RDUH.

Sorry, there is an extra 'not' in that first sentence.

Yes. I think he needs to read ot first and talk about it AFTER he has read it.

I think this is basically a U turn and the critique is a face saving ploy to climb down with a semblance of dignity.

Blinded by ideology.
It badly blunts the critical faculties.

“Strain’s statement wording makes it sound like he’s undertaking research that Cass et al omitted for their review which, if he’d read the Cass Review, he’d know they’d already carried out those kinds of interviews “

That’s what leapt out at me from that statement too.

Two possible explanations. Either he hasn’t read the Cass Report. Or the press release is a knowingly disingenuous statement, which has deliberately been worded in a misleading way to create the false impression that the doctors’ trade union and lobby group, the BMA, is coming along to save the day by plugging a gap in the Review.

The first would demonstrate laziness and a lack of basic professionalism.

The second would raise questions about ethics.

Saw another quote from Strain yesterday (sorry should have noted where it was at the time) about compassionately listening to the voices of people with experience which made me assume that his review will be yet another 'well I spoke to a group of---- trans people and they said there wasn't a problem and they reeeaaaaalllllly needed this' variety 🤦‍♀️

Yes.

I haven't read the article but good.

And this

Dr Strain will be repeating it but without the budget or the team. There's no way he can produce something as robust and wide ranging as Cass.

Is it just for headlines? Cass review was over years and robust as pp says

Presumably the medical profession will be eye rolling at the idea of a geriatrician stating that he will check the work of a 4 year study into a niche aspect paediatric medicine led by one of the most well qualified paediatricians in the country?
The confidence of the mediocre male never dims does it?

Absolutely