Mick Hartley

Baroness Cass was a hero for her hugely influential report on the lack of evidence for puberty blockers. Unfortunately her report also proposed that a trial be conducted to settle the question – and she’s rather stuck with it. She’s now talking of children being in the middle of the debate – being “weaponised”. Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph has some sympathy for the poor woman, but really, no:

I can see that Cass is trying to pick her way through to a middle ground, but there really isn’t one here. Children should not be given a drug that we know is harmful, just because they think they want it. Cass knows it will be the parents, not the children, who will be buying these drugs off-script from disreputable sources, and says she is trying to prevent that. How will that work exactly?

All of this has to be seen in the wider context of lucrative “gender medicine”. We are seeing a pulling back in the US on “gender-affirming” surgeries because of a lack of evidence. Forty US hospitals are pausing gender-affirming care. Malpractice suits are coming thick and fast. Fewer people are identifying as trans.

Cass appears to be tiptoeing around the issues, suggesting that the rise in gender-questioning children is caused by social media. So, too, is the false promise that they can become entirely different people.

We, adults, know this. It is our fundamental duty to protect children, and to stop the trials. The compromise can never be one that ends up harming children. This is not “weaponising” children, it is doing the thing no one seems to care about anymore – it is safeguarding them.