In this podcast I speak with journalist Bernard Lane, formerly at The Australian and now a fellow Substacker, whose newsletter Gender Clinic News — see the link below — covers the escalating debate over youth gender medicine at home and abroad. For many years Lane was effectively the only journalist doggedly covering what may yet emerge as one of the biggest medical scandals in history. It’s worth re-reading that last sentence. How on earth did we land here? Reporters are supposed to run towards a huge story, not away from it.
We talk about activism stifling journalism and activism having undue influence over science and medicine. Mostly we talk about the final report of England’s Cass Review, the independent inquiry into gender identity services for children and young people, carried out by renowned paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass. We cover her findings on the administration of puberty blockers (they should be banned as a routine intervention) and opposite sex hormones (extreme caution is recommended), and her overall conclusion that the current medicalised approach to treating gender-related distress in minors rests on “remarkably weak evidence.”
Being literary types we also dissect the report’s tone and posture starting with the throat-clearing opening line. And we gently tackle some of the elephants still lurking in this room called “the trans debate.”
https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/
Dissecting the Cass Review