An NHS consultant at one of the six transgender clinics that refused to share data about its patients with the Cass Review has heavily criticised Dr Hilary Cass, questioning her expertise and suggesting there is “a fine line between naivety, narcissism and psychopathy”.
As reported by the Telegraph, Dr Walter Pierre Bouman, a senior doctor at the Nottingham Centre for Transgender Health, said the paediatrician’s review into children’s transgender healthcare had been “poorly reasoned” and questioned her expertise. The report continues:
Dr Cass, the former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, found there was a lack of evidence to support prescribing puberty blockers to children, warned against cross-sex hormones being given to under 18s, and urged caution in the treatment of all under 25s.
The NHS is now set to review all adult services amid the concerns raised by Dr Cass regarding the treatment of young people aged 18 to 25 at adult clinics, including in Nottingham.
Responding to a LinkedIn post by a lawyer, which claimed “judges have taken the wrong approach” in gender-critical cases and were “permitting the erosion of trans and non-binary people’s rights”, Dr Bouman thanked him for the article.
Dr Bouman, who is also an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham’s School of Medicine, said: “The judiciary in the UK has a tendency to overreach their remit – with devastating consequences for the lives of minority groups and their families in the UK and far beyond – as Hilary Cass has recently done with her poorly reasoned review.
“Hilary has never treated trans youth, nor is she a researcher of any significance, yet her ‘expert’ review provides supposedly ‘evidence-based’ recommendations,” he said.
Dr Bouman went on to say that: “There is a fine line between naivety, narcissism, and psychopathy. I am hoping for a time that those in positions of power and influence develop a strict adequate ethical framework which provides evidence of their basic knowledge and (clinical/judicial) experience regarding the topic they provide judgment/treatment on/for.”
The Cass review commissioned the University of York to undertake multiple pieces of research into existing literature, and the treatment and outcomes of patients, on its behalf.
An overarching theme of the review was a lack of evidence to support practices in the diagnosis and management of gender incongruence or gender dysphoria, where a person feels their gender does not align with their sex.
The Nottingham Centre for Transgender Healthcare was one of the six adult clinics that refused to participate in the independent review’s research and provide information to better understand what has happened to the around 9,000 children treated by the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), many of whom will now be patients at adult services.
Dr Bouman was formerly the president of the controversial World Professionals Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which critics claim had a “huge influence in embedding trans ideology in health care systems”, including the NHS.
Worth reading in full.
