Two of Scotland’s most senior doctors have urged the Scottish Government to follow “strong clinical consensus” by adopting the Cass Review’s recommendations for the care of gender-confused young people.
According to The Telegraph, the Medical Directors of Scotland’s largest health boards, Drs Jennifer Armstrong and Tracey Gillies, have advised Chief Medical Officer Sir Gregor Smith to use the Cass Review as part of a specification for a new national children’s gender service. They had called for an independent review of trans drugs back in 2022.
NHS Scotland’s Sandyford gender identity clinic in Glasgow no longer prescribes puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to newly referred children, but existing patients can still receive the experimental drugs.
Puberty blockers
The Scottish Government has refused to implement any further changes until it has considered the potential implications.
Health Minister Jenni Minto had committed to a ‘careful examination of Dr Hilary Cass’ findings followed by an update to Holyrood “before the summer recess”. However, no such update was given before MSPs rose on 27 June.
Trina Budge, Director of campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS), commented: “The most senior clinicians in Scotland could not be clearer that Scotland must follow the science and implement the findings of the Cass Review.
“Yet they have been repeatedly fobbed off by the chief medical officer, who had to be bounced into a belated ban on puberty blockers. It is time for Sir Gregor to finally grow a backbone, stand up to the ideologues and do the right thing for children across Scotland.”
Misinformation
The women’s group also accused trans activists of abusing their position in the Scottish Government’s National Gender Identity Health Care Reference Group.
Network TransparentSees reportedly sent an email to other members of the reference group overseeing NHS Scotland’s gender identity services about “10 potentially dangerous items in the Cass Review”.
The email referred to a blog that claimed the Cass Review was “built on a foundation of prejudice, ignorance, cisnormativity and pathologisation of trans lives” and promotes “conversion therapy”.
FWS criticised the group for attempting to discredit the “most comprehensive study of its kind ever carried out”.
‘Toxic ideology’
In a motion brought before Holyrood at the beginning of May, MSPs called on the Scottish Government to protect vulnerable children from radical transgender ideology.
During the debate, Murdo Fraser MSP hailed the work of Dr Hilary Cass as “a welcome step” towards changing perspectives “on the treatment of young people with gender issues”.
Fraser said parliamentarians “should not be permitting the mutilation of young bodies in the name of an anti-science ideology”, and that all in Holyrood who had “allowed this abuse to occur in furtherance of a toxic ideology” should be ashamed of their conduct.
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