The Cass report should be the death knell for gender pseudoscience

History will not look kindly on the medical professionals, researchers, and activists who abandoned scientific protocol and basic common sense to justify their gender experiments. A new report out of the United Kingdom just made sure of that.

Last week, the U.K.’s National Health Services published a 388-page report, written by longtime pediatrician and President of the Royal College of Pediatrics Hilary Cass, thoroughly dismantling the arguments for invasive and irreversible procedures on gender-confused children. It is the most robust and methodical review of the medical evidence for gender transitions ever conducted, and it proves what many of us have been saying for years: that so-called gender-affirming care for children lacks supporting evidence, has lifelong consequences, and is rooted in a noxious ideology that does not care about either.

The Cass report was commissioned by the NHS to sift through the existing research and separate fact from fiction. After more than three years of research, Cass found that the affirmation model generally, and particularly as it was implemented in NHS’s now-shuttered gender clinic, is “built on shaky foundations” and supported by “remarkably weak evidence.” Many of the studies cited as evidence for affirmation “are exaggerated or misrepresented,” she added.

“Ideology on all sides has directed care, rather than care being directed by normal principles of pediatrics and mental health,” Cass wrote.

The report even goes so far as to caution against socially transitioning children, noting that encouraging impressionable children to adopt an entirely new identity is an “active intervention” that makes a patient “more likely to proceed to a medical pathway” from which there is no return. And, as Cass noted, the vast majority of children who express confusion about their gender are influenced by “social factors,” as well as “biological” and “psychological” ones, that are a part of the larger mental health crisis plaguing today’s youth. There is also the undeniable fact that most children grow out of their gender confusion if they are left to mature without intervention.

Cass’s conclusion is that medical professionals should exercise “extreme caution” about prescribing physical and hormonal treatments for minors under the age of 18 and should instead recommend a “holistic assessment” that takes into consideration an individual child’s mental well-being, neurodevelopmental condition, and social environment. The NHS has already implemented part of this guidance, announcing last month that it will no longer routinely prescribe puberty blockers and other hormonal treatments to minors.

Unfortunately, Cass’s findings are more likely to be met by resistance than acceptance. In fact, Cass revealed that six of the seven adult gender clinics in the U.K. obstructed her deep-dive into the evidence by colluding to withhold data from her. And, of course, the usual suspects are already accusing Cass and those who choose to follow her findings of endangering the lives of transgender youth — another lie I hope Cass chooses to tackle next.

Regardless, the science is clear. “Gender-affirming care” is an evidence-free, failed approach that yields overwhelmingly harmful outcomes. And those who continue to push it on our children will be remembered not just for advocating a cult-like pseudoscience but for engaging in egregious medical malpractice that has ruined countless lives.

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Kaylee McGhee White is the editor of Restoring America for the Washington Examiner and a senior fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum.