Hundreds of UK doctors are protesting after the British Medical Association (BMA) rejected the recommendation of the Cass review to ban the prescribing of puberty-suppressing drugs to minors, with some leaving the BMA after decades of membership.
Pediatrician Hilary Cass led a systematic review of the existing literature on treating children with gender confusion. The final peer-reviewed report concluded that “unproven” treatments such as puberty suppressors and cross-sex hormones are “not the best way” to treat children and adolescents with “gender-related distress” and recommended an end to such treatments.
“The rest of the medical community and the NHS fully accept and support the review,” the Times said.
Motion sickness
But on July 31, the BMA's 69-member council “passed a motion calling for 'criticism' of the Cass inquiry and arguing that stopping the prescribing of sex hormones to children is discriminatory,” the paper previously reported. On Monday, it detailed that “the BMA argues there are 'weaknesses in the methodology' used by Cass and that its recommendations are 'unfounded.'”
The Times writes:
The motion was submitted to the BMA council by Tom Dolphin, a consultant anaesthetist in London, and Vasili Crispi, a trainee anaesthetist in Birmingham, who said: “Rejecting the Cath review is one of many steps we must take.”
The bill was backed by BMA council vice-chair Emma Runswick, leader of the left-wing, pro-strike coalition of junior doctors who will be elected to the leadership in 2022. Ms Runswick described the ban on puberty blockers as a “terrible decision” and repeated false and debunked claims that they were leading to an increase in suicides.
Parliament did not even seek a second opinion from its 195,000 members before passing the motion. MP Jackie Davis, who voted against the motion, told The Times:
The BMA Council contains a vocal minority with an anti-Cass agenda who are pushing policy in a direction that members have not been consulted with and do not agree with.
This minority voted to block the implementation of Cass, an evidence-based review that took four years to put together, without any basis for opposition…. It is not our job as a union to criticise the Cass review, it is a waste of time and resources.
Rebel Room
It quickly became clear just how out of step the council was with its members. A few days after the vote, a group of them posted an open letter to BMA chairman Philip Banfield, saying:
We are writing to say, as doctors, ‘not in my name.’ We are extremely disappointed that the BMA Council has passed a motion to ‘critique’ the Cass Review and lobby against its recommendations.
The passing of this motion was done in a non-transparent and secretive manner. It does not reflect the views of the broader membership, whose opinions you did not solicit. It is my understanding that no information was released about vote counts or how council members voted. This is a lack of accountability to the membership and is simply not acceptable.
The doctors called on the BMA to “end its pointless exercise” in attacking the Cass review. “By lobbying against the best evidence we have, the BMA is going against the principles of evidence-based medicine and ethical practice,” they wrote.
The letter has since been signed by more than 1,400 doctors, of whom 900 are BMA members. According to The Times, the signatories include “high-profile figures, including around 70 professors and 23 former or current presidents of the Royal Colleges of Physicians”.
Are there any doctors at the BMA?
Some of the signatories have had their BMA membership revoked, The Times reports.
The signs included dozens of comments from doctors saying they were quitting or considering doing so. Many doctors criticised the council's members, with one calling for a “vote of no confidence in the BMA's leadership”, another saying it was an “abysmal failure of leadership” and yet another saying “activists appear to have been allowed to take control”.
One doctor said, according to the Telegraph:
Based on the BMA's outrageous attitude towards the extremely thoroughly researched and written Cass Report, which I fully support and approve, I have decided to leave the BMA having been a member for 50 years since qualifying as a doctor.
Increasingly, they not only do not represent my views, but they also have no respect for the very assumptions and ethos inherent in being a medical professional.
The exact number of members who have left over this issue is not yet known.
Whether or not the BMA changes course, the case and the media coverage of it (the Telegraph's report included a sidebar explaining that medical opinion on puberty suppressants has changed from “safe” and “reversible” to those with “lasting physical and psychological effects”) shows that, at least in Charles III's realm, the LGBT lobby is rapidly losing control over medicine. As Jonathan Van Maren of LifeSiteNews puts it:
The ideologically-driven British Medical Association is facing an all-out rebellion from its membership and its credibility has suffered a serious blow. Even coverage of its actions, which would have been praised only a few years ago, has been almost entirely negative.
The BMA is still working on its own policies, but control over its claims has been lost and it seems unlikely that the union will be able to re-establish it.
