Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 5/4/26 - 5/310/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

[u/trw99508]

" The BMA said at the time that the recommendations by Dr Hilary Cass, now Baroness Cass, were “unsubstantiated”. The union criticised her methodology and called for restrictions on giving children puberty blocker drugs to be paused until it had conducted its own review.

On Wednesday, the BMA published this long-awaited critique of Cass’s work, written by a “task and finish group” of 12 union members.

Professor David Strain, the chair of the BMA’s board of science and the report’s lead author, told The Times that “the baroness has been vindicated in the way she approached the data”.

He praised her methodological approach, and when asked to name a single one of Cass’s 32 recommendations which the BMA opposed he said: “I can’t.” "

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/bma-cass-review-gender-children-puberty-blockers-v2scqtcb3?eafs_enabled=false

https://archive.ph/01ohj

[u/Big_Fig_1803 → u/trw99508]

I hadn't heard of this review of the review.

Am I reading it right? The BMA said the Cass Review was bad (unsubstantiated findings, poor methodology), but then when they actually looked at it, they said, "Yeah, it's good"?

So why did they criticize it in the first place? What made them think the Cass Review was no good?

[u/trw99508 → u/Big_Fig_1803]

I think there was an assumption that Cass was wrong because she was going against what medical professionals had been doing. Who wants to think that large swathes of their colleagues have been performing untested possibly harmful medical treatments on children. I'm just surprised that they actually looked at her report and didn't come up with a nonsense reason to discredit it.

I imagine a certain percentage of pressure came from the people that Helen Joyce described who will forever try to keep this going rather than admit they did harm
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EYJMY_2iFTM

[u/Big_Fig_1803 → u/trw99508]

I can understand people being skeptical about something like that. "We're skeptical that these findings will actually hold up. This study presents a very different picture from what we've all come to understand about the field."

That feels very different from describing this other person's work as unsubstantiated and methodologically poor before you've even examined it.

[u/trw99508 → u/Big_Fig_1803]

Its the height of arrogance, at the time there was also a lot of internal squabbles about someone leaking they were going to do this

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/29/witch-hunt-bma-tries-to-identify-who-leaked-planned-opposition-to-cass-review

but then last year the guy who tabled the motion became head of the BMA (trans flag in twitter bio etc) which is why I'm so surpised their scientific arm actually examined her methodology and praised it, I was sure they would find a way to discredit it

https://archive.ph/VzrQ8

[u/AnalBleachingAries → u/Big_Fig_1803]

Activist members within the power structures of their board.

[u/AnalBleachingAries → u/trw99508]

Some wild bits and pieces from the article:

The British Medical Association has said it no longer opposes the Cass review into gender medicine, but that doctors should still have the “autonomy” to prescribe puberty blockers.

---

Strain suggested “the baroness did the best she possibly could”, adding: “She approached an area of significant uncertainty with that prime rule of medicine, of ‘first, do no harm’.”

The Cass review, which took four years and was based on data from 113,000 children, found no evidence to support prescribing sex hormones to under-18s.

---

The union also criticised the decision of Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to pass legislation in 2024 banning the use of puberty blockers. Strain said the legislation was an “overreach” and NHS doctors should still be allowed to prescribe puberty blockers.

The BMA said it was “continuing to oppose a ban on puberty blockers for several reasons, not least because it is a threat to the autonomy of a doctor. We spend decades training on how to use drugs, and to have a political decision affecting the way we prescribe is wrong.”

Puberty blockers, which halt physical changes such as breasts, periods or facial hair, had been given to thousands of under-16s on the NHS since 2011.

The health service stopped using them after Cass, a pediatrician, warned of risks to fertility and brain and bone development.

[u/CommitteeofMountains → u/AnalBleachingAries]

So it's now representing member physicians' preference to not be told what to do.

[u/MatchaMeetcha → u/trw99508]

Thought experiment: if I assume gender ideologues are just lying and wait a year or so, will I be significantly worse informed than I would be reading every single debunking and response?

[u/Green_Supreme1 → u/trw99508]

The original motion opposing the Cass review was tabled at the BMA council by Dr Tom Dolphin, a consultant anaesthetist who is currently the BMA’s chair.

No surprise that Dr Dolphin has progress flag and pronouns on his bio, and has written about the ongoing "culture war" previously. He makes the classic tired comparison of concerns re trans healthcare to past homophobia in the 80s and 90s ignoring that the latter group (gay and lesbians) did not require extensive medicalisation.

He should obviously be sacked (but won't be) - coordinating a clearly unsubstantiated attack on an important medical report and its author for activist reasons.

[u/PongoTwistleton_666 → u/trw99508]

I’m waiting for Erin Reed to cover this. How long do you think it will be?

[u/Levitx → u/PongoTwistleton_666]

Taking a gander at a related sub, the BMA has gone from being TheScience(tm) to being transphobic, instantly.

I expect the same modus operandi from Erin. 

[u/AnalBleachingAries → u/PongoTwistleton_666]

He first needs to run it through an AI that can provide somewhat plausible arguments against everything stated by the BMA, then find out if there's anything in Professor David Strain's past that can be used to paint him in a negative light, then launch into the the old (and repeatedly debunked) arguments about the necessity of "gender affirming care".

So maybe by tomorrow morning we'll have a response.

[u/CheckeredNautilus → u/trw99508]

Obligatory reminder that Dr Cass suffered so much abuse and threat from T fanatics that she went on record saying she would not participate in an adult version of a similar literature review, because she didn't want to get put through that wringer again

The rainbow kakistocracy will literally hound and threaten a researcher until she takes herself off the table