Journalist who spent years investigating Tavistock clinic hails bombshell ... trends now
A journalist who has spent years reporting on NHS gender services for children has hailed a new report that concluded young people were set on a path of irreversible change without substantial medical evidence to support their treatment.
Hannah Barnes, associate editor at the New Statesman and a prolific reporter on NHS gender services, says the Cass Report is an 'incredibly thorough' piece of work examining how the service treats young people seeking gender-affirming care.
Ms Barnes said society owed the report's author, Dr Hilary Cass, a 'huge debt of gratitude' after the paediatrician concluded there was a 'lack of high-quality research' on the effects of giving puberty blockers to children.
The journalist, who wrote the book Time To Think about the NHS's troubled Tavistock gender clinic, also questioned why 'it has taken so long' for the issues around gender care in the NHS to be addressed.
She has reported extensively on gender services for the likes of BBC Newsnight, The Guardian and her current employer, self-described as the UK's 'leading progressive political and cultural magazine'.
Hannah Barnes told Good Morning Britain she was questioning why 'it has taken so long' for the NHS's gender services to be scrutinised
She told Ed Balls and Kate Garraway that children seeking gender-affirming care were a 'very vulnerable population of young people'
Dr Hilary Cass holds a copy of The Cass Review, her 388-page deconstruction of NHS gender identity services
Ms Barnes told Good Morning Britain's Ed Balls and Kate Garraway of the report: 'It's incredibly thorough - I think society owes Dr Hilary Cass and her team a huge debt of gratitude for the time that she's put in and the care - the language is very compassionate.
'For me, it tells us what we've known for very many years and really I'm left with the question of why it has taken so long... to really tackle this. We've known this is a very vulnerable population of young people for many years.
'We've known the evidence base is weak and severely lacking for very many years. What has been recommended today is the right pathway - you take a young person and you treat them as an individual, as a whole being.'
The 388 page Cass Report concluded that the rationale for suppressing puberty in young children 'remains unclear', with 'weak evidence' on the impact such treatments have on children.
Dr Cass found that a medical pathway would not be the best way to manage questions about gender 'for most young people' without also addressing other concerns such as mental health or neurodivergent conditions such as autism.
She used the review to hit out at all sides of the debate over how best to treat children seeking gender-affirming care, noting that the discussions had become exceptionally 'toxic'.
Dr Cass said she had been criticised by both those advocating for transgender healthcare and those whom she said 'urge(d) more caution' - and accused all parties of 'exaggerat(ing) or misrepresent(ing)' studies to support their own views.
In remarks seemingly addressed to those on all sides of the discussion, she added: 'There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop.
'Polarisation and stifling of debate do nothing to help the young people caught in the middle of a stormy social discourse, and in the long run will also hamper the research that is essential to finding the best way of
