Paediatrician’s anger about how NHS England has cared for generation of vulnerable children is barely disguised
Dr Hilary Cass: ‘I don’t think you can point a finger at anyone in particular; it’s been a system failure.’Dr Hilary Cass: ‘I don’t think you can point a finger at anyone in particular; it’s been a system failure.
She has also been charged with making clear recommendations about how services can be improved, in the wake of the closure of the Tavistock clinic last month, a closure which came about as a result of her interim research. In the future she wants services to offer a broad range of interventions, rather that having “tunnel vision” on gender.
Others were worried that they might be accused of conducting “conversion therapy if, again, they take a cautious or exploratory approach” and some clinicians expressed “fearfulness about what colleagues might say if they speak up and express an opinion that is not consistent with theirs”.
Cass believes that for a minority of young people medical transition will be the right option, but she is clear that there is no solid evidence basis justifying the use of hormones for children and adolescents.Her earlier research has led to a decision by NHS England to stop prescribing puberty blockers to children and the new research recommends “extreme caution” before prescribing masculinising and feminising hormones to under-18s.
“It’s a social experiment – we don’t know what that’s done for the generation that’s coming through – what has been good and what is bad,” she said. “Biology hasn’t changed in the last few years so it’s not that that’s changed things … We do have to think very seriously about the impact of social media, not just in terms of influencers, but about the effect of long hours on social media.”
It was “unbelievably disappointing” that the research study she had hoped to conduct to look at the outcomes of 9,000 former Tavistock patients had been blocked by the adult gender clinics, who refused to contact former patients for permission on her behalf.
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