Britain's NHS to re-evaluate all transgender treatments in wake of investigation revealing they're based on pseudoscience

Britain's National Health Service is re-evaluating all so-called "gender-affirming care" treatments in the wake of a damning new report, which underscores the sex-change regime is built on weak and unreliable evidence.

Dr. Hilary Cass, a British medical doctor who previously served as president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, was appointed by NHS England in 2020 to lead an independent investigation into the U.K.'s sex-change regime and its youth-facing services.

Cass recently submitted her final report, entitled "The Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People," and it does not paint a flattering picture of so-called "gender-affirming care."

Cass previously intimated in her 2022 interim report that gender ideologues in smocks had more or less been freewheeling. The interim report specifically noted that the so-called Gender Identity Development Service had "not been subjected to some of the normal quality controls that are typically applied when new or innovative treatments are introduced."

The interim report further suggested that the controversial and now-defunct Tavistock gender clinic was "not a safe or viable long-term" option for young people.

Cass' final 388-page report, released just weeks after England's top health authority confirmed that minors will no longer be prescribed puberty blockers at so-called gender identity clinics, makes the same point but goes much farther, recommending:

• a moratorium on prescriptions of powerful hormone drugs to minors;
• an understanding that children who undergo cross-sex medical interventions may later come to deeply regret it;
• a holistic assessment of prospective patients' needs and screenings for "neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorder, and a mental health assessment";
• a re-evaluation of the policy on cross-sex hormones and "extreme caution" when considering their use in minors;
• the mandatory provision of fertility counseling and preservation to children before permitting them to seek a "medical pathway";
• assurances that clinical services operated at the "highest standards of evidence";
• support services for de-transitioners; and
• other reviews of current policies, services, and approaches.

Beyond making these recommendations, the Cass report also offers a number of penetrating observations about the sex-change regime.

The report notes that the "systematic review showed no clear evidence that social transition in childhood has any positive or negative mental health outcomes, and relatively weak evidence for any effect in adolescence."

While "social transition" apparently had no discernible impact on mental health, the report indicated that those children so groomed were much more likely to undergo sex-change medical interventions at a later stage.

The report also noted that while puberty blockers "exert their intended effect in suppressing puberty," they compromise bone density and have no apparent impact on "gender dysphoria or body satisfaction."

"There was insufficient/inconsistent evidence about the effect of puberty suppression on psychological or psychosocial wellbeing, cognitive development, cardio-metabolic risk or fertility," added the report.

As for cross-sex hormones, the Cass report noted that the University of York's systematic review found "a lack of high-quality research assessing the outcomes of hormone interventions in adolescents with gender dysphoria/incongruence, and few studies that undertake long-term follow-up."

The university is quoted as emphasizing, "No conclusions can be drawn about the effect on gender dysphoria, body satisfaction, psychosocial health, cognitive development, or fertility."

The Cass report also indicated there was no evidence to support the conclusion that cross-sex hormones reduce the elevated risk of deaths among those suffering from gender dysphoria. This finding corresponds with the conclusion reached in an explosive Finnish study published February in the esteemed journal BMJ Mental Health, which found that sex-change medical interventions "do not have an impact on suicide risk."

Besides underscoring the "weak" and unreliable nature of the evidence in support of "gender-affirming care," the Cass report also indicated that clinicians "are unable to determine with any certainty which children and young people will go on to have an enduring trans identity."

That's a critically important point because many kids sterilized and transmogrified by the sex-change regime could have otherwise gone on to lead healthy lives and naturally start families.

Blaze News previously reported that Finland's leading child psychiatrist Riittakerttu Kaltiala told her government that the vast majority of kids will grow out of the delusion that their gender and sex are misaligned.

The mutilation of children who would otherwise outgrow their confusion is all the more egregious because children cannot properly consent to sex-change procedures, as members of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health have recently been exposed admitting behind closed doors.

Cass' report notes that for "most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress. For those young people for whom a medical pathway is clinically indicated, it is not enough to provide this without also addressing wider mental health and/or psychosocially challenging problems."

Cass further suggested in her foreword that this is "an area of remarkably weak evidence, and yet results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint. The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress."

The Telegraph reported that British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has welcomed the recommendations made in the report, noting the massive spike of gender dysphoria among children, especially girls, in recent years.

"We simply do not know the long-term impacts of medical treatment or social transitioning on them, and we should therefore exercise extreme caution," said Sunak, who indicated the conservative government has already halted the routine use of puberty blockers in children under the age of 16.

The charity group Sex Matters said in a statement Wednesday, "Hilary Cass's report demolishes the entire basis for the current model of treating gender-distressed children. Its publication is a shameful day for NHS England, which for too long gave vulnerable children harmful treatments for which there was no evidence base. It's now clear to all that this was quack medicine from the start."

Helen Joyce of the not-for-profit Sex Matters stated, "This is the end of paediatric gender medicine as we know it."

The Lesbian Project welcomed the report, noting that it "hopes that real change will now be implemented on the ground in health services, in order to fully excise the fanatical activism that has led to the scandalous mistreatment of a vulnerable cohort of children and adolescents."

Gender ideologues are not happy that their narrative has effectively been bulldozed in recent weeks and months.

In advance of the report's release, LGBT activist Cal Horton at Oxford Brookes Business School penned a piece of propaganda for the International Journal of Transgender Health claiming the "Cass Review itself can be understood as an example of cis-supremacy, within a cis-dominant healthcare system lacking accountability to trans communities."

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