Trans rights activists who have publicly trashed the Cass Review and promote puberty blockers are helping the SNP set up a new NHS child gender service in Scotland, reports the Telegraph.
Members of an influential group on gender identity healthcare, established by the Scottish Government in 2022, include vocal critics of the landmark report which raised grave concerns about how children with gender issues have been treated.
The Telegraph has seen evidence that a member of the group, which includes activist organisations and academics as well as doctors, used their position to spread disinformation to other members which rubbish Hilary Cass’s findings.
Another member, a transgender academic, attended a protest in Glasgow after Scotland followed England by announcing a ban on puberty blockers, due to Dr Cass’s warnings of a lack of evidence they are safe.
Dr Ruth Pearce, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, made a speech at the event in which she labelled the decision “disgusting”. She went on to suggest trans people including children should be able to “do what we want with our own body”.
One of the National Gender Identity Healthcare Reference Group’s tasks is also to oversee the creation of a nationally commissioned young person’s gender service in Scotland.
Fears were raised that members would use their influence to attempt to have Dr Cass’s findings disregarded in Scotland, after she called for a cautious approach and said not all children with gender issues should receive medical interventions.
“Members of this so-called healthcare group are being allowed to abuse their positions with attempts to rubbish the most comprehensive study of its kind ever carried out,” Trina Budge, a director at For Women Scotland, said.
“They should not have been let anywhere near positions of influence over the NHS in the first place. But given their behaviour, continued membership is clearly untenable and they must be removed immediately.”
She added: “Members of a group like this should have been seriously and dispassionately reviewing Dr Cass’s findings and working out how to implement them in Scotland as soon as possible.
“Instead, they are spreading anti-scientific lies at extremist protest rallies and promoting disinformation to their colleagues.”
An email sent on April 16 by a representative of the organisation TransparentSees, the day before a group meeting was due to take place, urged members to read about “10 potentially dangerous items in the Cass Review”.
An online blog it referred to claimed the Cass Review was “biased and prejudice-driven” and that the findings would “cause significant harms to trans children”.
It added that the report recommendations were “built on a foundation of prejudice, ignorance, cisnormativity and pathologisation of trans lives”, and accused Dr Cass of promoting “a form of conversion therapy”.
Dr Cass, who has been clear that she does not support conversion therapy, called for caution in social transition, meaning to change names and pronouns.
She said it could make it more likely that a child goes on to receive potentially irreversible and damaging medical interventions, when gender distress may otherwise have resolved naturally.
Dr Pearce spoke at a rally in Glasgow on April 18, after the Scottish NHS implemented a ban on puberty blockers and hormone treatments for children.
She labelled the decision “disgusting” and claimed Dr Cass had “intentionally ignored” evidence about the benefits of puberty blockers, wrongly suggesting that she had only accepted double-blind studies.
Dr Pearce went on to claim that healthcare experts and trans people had been “excluded” from the report, when in fact they were consulted extensively.
Other members of the reference group are representatives of the charity LGBT Youth Scotland, which has described treatments such as puberty blockers as “wonderful”.
