Hilary Cass on Woman's Hour 9.10.24

[WarriorN]

She will apparently be on the programme tomorrow talking about the impact of her report a year later.

I won't be able to listen but just a heads up if anyone else is interested.

It is amazing how these transactivists keep popping up on these threads with easily disprovable misinformation that has been debunked time and time again.

Please see this link.
https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/final-report-faqs/

I've read it. She dismissed a whole bunch of perfectly good studies.

The GIDS Audit she commissioned found less than 10 detransitioners in a discharged cohort of 3,306.

I prefer to see the research rather than anecdotal evidence. It is however admirable that you have taken interest in the side effects of a drug which up to it being presscribed to trans kids, you had no interest in at all.

But it's moot now. There's a clinical trial.

"In 2020, WPATH commissioned John Hopkins University to carry out a systematic review of existing research on cross-sex medical treatments. The study found ‘little to no evidence’ to support the medicalisation of gender-distressed children and adolescents. So WPATH blocked researchers from publishing their findings....

Michael Shellenberger, published a shocking 242-page report known as ‘The WPATH Files’. authored by researcher Mia Hughes. Relying on documents sourced from an internal whistleblower, the report brought to light a chilling scandal within the organization. It describes medical malpractice on a massive scale and a total lack of any medical ethics; minors encouraged into treatments and procedures they could not possibly understand or properly consent to, homeless and schizophrenic people undergoing ‘sex change’ surgeries and even “Extreme body modifications performed with no medical justification”.
As Malcolm Clark writes in The Critic, “WPATH is little more than a pressure group made up of a mixture of saucer-eyed trans activists and self-professed experts in disciplines like endocrinology, psychiatry and surgery. “Experts” who just happen to pocket huge profits from the mutilation and sterilisation of deluded people who are convinced they were born in the wrong body. Yet by a combination of external bullying and internal feeble-mindedness, some of the world’s top medical authorities from the BMA to the American American Academy of Pediatrics have given WPATH the stamp of approval.”

The power held by WPATH and its ideological champions, such as Rachel Levine and the AAP, has persisted for too long. Medical practices, particularly those involving children, need to be rooted in evidence rather than driven by ideology.

‘We are going to start your young daughter on an incredibly powerful drug with a list of side effects as long as my arm. We previously used it to treat terminal cancer patients who took it for a couple of weeks but we are going to put your child on it for life. Evidence? Oh yes, we got a self interested lobby group funded by the drug manufacturers to tell a bunch of children they would commit suicide if they didn’t take this drug (that non of the lobbyists took) then gave a few of them the drug and asked them five minutes later if they were happy to have it. A couple of them said yes so it definitely works. Ok they might have felt more suicidal (a know side affect) but I sure that was just ‘phobia’. What does it do? Well apart from stunt all aspects of their development, nothing for girls.’

NB. The whole report can be downloaded via my link upthread.

It just blows my mind that random laypeople go about acting like they are qualified to armchair critique a four year long government-backed healthcare research piece. Blows my mind every time. It's like someone walking into someone's place of work, peering over their shoulder and saying "Ah, I see you have dismissed lots of perfectly good methods. What you should have done is sent a big bag of sweets to my home address. What do you mean, that's not your job?".

Perhaps you could give one example of a study which you believe should have been included but was not?

Your telepathy is on the fritz Dadjoke - I learned about the dangers of the drugs by reading about them being used to treat precocious puberty and endometriosis before I knew that the drugs were given to children to treat gender confusion.

It was because I knew about the dangers from the treatments of these other physical conditions that I became concerned about the drugs being given, for a much longer period of time, to children with emotional rather than physical ailments.

It is not 10 out of 3,306 though is it? The followup data for the majority of the cohort were with-held, lost or didn’t exist. We also know that PB trap children into the medical route so if the other 3,296 had taken PB and continued onto cross sex hormones then that proves harm as when left more than 85% of adolescents desist.

You also just dismissed a pp as just providing anecdote. That is what those poor studies are.

WPATH commissioned John Hopkins University to do some research, but didn't approve of its findings ( See attachment above)

I'm amazed that there are people who think you can have a drug that stops something as fundamental and complex as puberty and think this drug would have no side effects. I find that completely mad.

'Trans' is just a definition/ a framing device placed on people, and children, who can't or won't conform to gendered expectations. It doesn't mean someone is the opposite sex to that which they are.

Given this is a parenting forum that is accessed by many thousands of women, I think you'll find that drug trials and medical malpractice very much have been the concern of people who post here - especially when it concerns children. The Lupron scandal has long been discussed,

It must be difficult to be the parent of a child who has gone along with such life altering medical practices - especially when the negative consequences have been shown to be true.

Sadly, these children in these trials will likely show us, with clear data and outcomes, how very bad the idea of "changing sex" can go.

I also suppose many of these children in trials would be at risk regardless of bans as many will have transhausen parents who would order blockers from the Internet or fly to dubious medical practitioners overseas. Maybe Cass suspects they are safer in trials.

No, that's not what being transgender is at all. There are plenty of gender non-conforming people - far more than there are transgender people.

You'd think that drug scandals affecting large numbers of children would be the more important, and yet, it's puberty blockers, which before the ban were prescribed to fewer than 100 children on the NHS, which seems to be the primary concern of this particular forum.

What number of children need to be harmed before we are allowed to be concerned if 100 is not enough? 200? 500? 1000? Are we only allowed to be concerned with those in England? What about Scotland? The rest of the world?

Perhaps some posters aren't aware that many women on Mumsnet have their own personal experiences of the side effects of these drugs prescribed for endometriosis, IVF, fibroids.

"No proven side effects"

Have a wee look at www.lupronvictimshub.com/ and get back to us on that one

With drugs, you need to compare outcomes with the risks of side effects. That's what drug trials are for. So far, use with CPP and for trans children doesn't suggest that there are high levels of side effects

And a reminder that they've tried to use lupron on children diagnosed with autism before. Nothing to do with trans.

Seems to be a hell of a lot of situations where this drug has been used without an evidence base.

I was wondering about her comment 'Look, if you have an enduring, long-standing trans identity…' as I also thought (actually, assumed, I admit) that she didn't subscribe at all to the idea of there being people who should have been the other sex.
But maybe your suggestion explains it: she's good at realpolitik.

I prefer to see the research rather than anecdotal evidence. It is however admirable that you have taken interest in the side effects of a drug which up to it being presscribed to trans kids, you had no interest in at all.

You know what they say about making assumptions?

No. I was concerned years and years ago when DD's best friend was going through a precocious puberty and I read up on puberty blockers.

Tell us you don’t know the uses of Lupron for precocious puberty and the reported debilitating effects on the young girls who took it (and dismiss so casually) without telling us you don’t know the impacts of Lupron.

There is a reason that it is used very carefully now for precocious puberty and the doses are very carefully handled. For precocious puberty and endometriosis.

Unlike blocking puberty. Where the drugs are used for much longer and the dosage is to fully block not to slow down.

But yay!!!! A male person telling women all about the drugs many women on this board have experience with.

I have a friend who used the drug for other purposes 20 years ago.

She expects to not be alive in 5 years due to the complications.

But yes…. A male person is telling women that they don’t know anything about the drugs prescribed….