Health
Hundreds of doctors resign from British Medical Association over its support for puberty blockers
From LifeSiteNews
Hundreds of U.K. doctors are resigning from the British Medical Association over its opposition to a ban on puberty blockers for kids, accusing the union of ignoring evidence-based medicine and failing to represent its members’ views.
According to reports in The Times and The Telegraph, hundreds of doctors are not only going public to express their anger with the British Medical Associations’ decision to reject the Cass Review’s findings on the dangers of puberty blockers – and many are resigning.
According to The Telegraph: “Doctors with decades of experience have resigned from the British Medical Association because of the union’s opposition to the Cass review.”
As I reported earlier in this space, on August 1 the British Medical Association – the U.K. doctor’s union – called on the government to lift the ban on puberty blockers for minors and called for a pause on the implementation of the National Health Service’s Cass Review.
Initially, 1,000 senior physicians from across the U.K. responded by publishing an open letter to chairman of the BMA, Professor Philip Banfield; that number is now up to 1,400, with 900 of those being BMA members. Among their accusations is that the 69-member council passed their policy at a “secretive and opaque” meeting.
READ: Texas forbids changing sex on driver’s licenses, state IDs for ‘gender identity’
“We write as doctors to say, ‘not in my name,’” the letter read. “We are extremely disappointed that the BMA council had passed a motion to conduct a ‘critique’ of the Cass Review and to lobby to oppose its recommendations … It does not reflect the views of the wider membership, whose opinion you did not seek. We understand that no information will be released on the voting figures and how council members voted. That is a failure of accountability to members and is simply not acceptable.”
The letter further stated that the Cass Review “is the most comprehensive review into healthcare for children with gender related distress ever conducted” and urged the BMA to “abandon its pointless exercise” of attacking and opposing the recommendations.
“By lobbying against the best evidence we have, the BMA is going against the principles of evidence-based medicine and against ethical practice,” the doctors wrote, in an almost unprecedented broadside against their own union in protest of the BMA’s brazen transgender activism.
As first reported by The Times, comments made beneath that open letter “reveal many doctors have torn up their membership cards in response to the union’s stance on the review.” One commenter stated: “On the basis of the BMA’s outrageous stance on the superbly researched and written Cass Report, which has my full support and endorsement, I have decided to leave the BMA having been a member for 50 years since I qualified as a doctor. Increasingly, they not only fail to represent my views, they display no respect for the very premise and ethos inherent in being a medical professional.”
Another doctor wrote: “As a union, primarily, it is the role of the BMA to represent its members, and not to drive clinical opinion, especially in specialist areas. I am considering resigning after membership of 42 years.” A third stated: “I left the BMA partly because of this sort of behaviour on the part of the leadership, having been a member for some thirty years.” Jacky Davis, a consultant radiologist and council member, told The Times:
This minority has voted to block the implementation of Cass, an evidence-based review which took four years to put together. They have no evidence for their opposition. The Cass review is not a matter for a trade union. It is not our business as a union to be doing a critique of the Cass review. It is a waste of time and resources.
READ: Federal court backs Christian teacher who refused to call kids by transgender ‘identity’
GB News also reported on the exodus, reporting that: “Critics slammed the decision as not representing the views of all members, critiquing the BMA’s ‘abysmal’ leadership which was becoming ‘increasingly bonkers and ideologically captured.’” And according to the Daily Mail: “One signatory called for a ‘vote of no confidence in BMA leadership’ and another commenting that ‘activists appear to have been allowed to take over.’”
What is so extraordinary about this is that LGBT activists have achieved phenomenal success by infiltrating and taking over organizations, and then imposing their agenda from the top-down. Once LGBT activists are in a position to pass policies, control votes, and even censor publications, their agenda is assured. This has been incredibly effective for decades.
In this instance, however, the ideologically captured British Medical Association is facing a full-scale revolt from its own members, and its credibility is taking a severe hit. Even the press coverage of their move, which would have been laudatory only a few years ago, is almost universally negative.
The BMA is still committed to its agenda – but its grip on the narrative has been broken, and it seems unlikely that the union will be able to reestablish it.
Aristotle Foundation
The Canadian Medical Association’s inexplicable stance on pediatric gender medicine
By Dr. J. Edward Les
The thalidomide saga is particularly instructive: Canada was the last developed country to pull thalidomide from its shelves — three months during which babies continued to be born in this country with absent or deformed limbs
Physicians have a duty to put forward the best possible evidence, not ideology, based treatments
Late last month, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) announced that it, along with three Alberta doctors, had filed a constitutional challenge to Alberta’s Bill 26 “to protect the relationship between patients, their families and doctors when it comes to making treatment decisions.”
Bill 26, which became law last December, prohibits doctors in the province from prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapies for those under 16; it also bans doctors from performing gender-reassignment surgeries on minors (those under 18).
The unprecedented CMA action follows its strongly worded response in February 2024 to Alberta’s (at the time) proposed legislation:
“The CMA is deeply concerned about any government proposal that restricts access to evidence-based medical care, including the Alberta government’s proposed restrictions on gender-affirming treatments for pediatric transgender patients.”
But here’s the problem with that statement, and with the CMA’s position: the evidence supporting the “gender affirmation” model of care — which propels minors onto puberty blockers, cross-gender hormones, and in some cases, surgery — is essentially non-existent. That’s why the United Kingdom’s Conservative government, in the aftermath of the exhaustive four-year-long Cass Review, which laid bare the lack of evidence for that model, and which shone a light on the deeply troubling potential for the model’s irreversible harm to youth, initiated a temporary ban on puberty blockers — a ban made permanent last December by the subsequent Labour government. And that’s why other European jurisdictions like Finland and Sweden, after reviews of gender affirming care practices in their countries, have similarly slammed the brakes on the administration of puberty blockers and cross-gender hormones to minors.
It’s not only the Europeans who have raised concerns. The alarm bells are ringing loudly within our own borders: earlier this year, a group at McMaster University, headed by none other than Dr. Gordon Guyatt, one of the founding gurus of the “evidence-based care” construct that rightfully underpins modern medical practice, issued a pair of exhaustive systematic reviews and meta analyses that cast grave doubts on the wisdom of prescribing these drugs to youth.
And yet, the CMA purports to be “deeply concerned about any government proposal that restricts access to evidence-based medical care,” which begs the obvious question: Where, exactly, is the evidence for the benefits of the “gender affirming” model of care? The answer is that it’s scant at best. Worse, the evidence that does exist, points, on balance, to infliction of harm, rather than provision of benefit.
CMA President Joss Reimer, in the group’s announcement of the organization’s legal action, said:
“Medicine is a calling. Doctors pursue it because they are compelled to care for and promote the well-being of patients. When a government bans specific treatments, it interferes with a doctor’s ability to empower patients to choose the best care possible.”
Indeed, we physicians have a sacred duty to pursue the well-being of our patients. But that means that we should be putting forward the best possible treatments based on actual evidence.
When Dr. Reimer states that a government that bans specific treatments is interfering with medical care, she displays a woeful ignorance of medical history. Because doctors don’t always get things right: look to the sad narratives of frontal lobotomies, the oxycontin crisis, thalidomide, to name a few.
The thalidomide saga is particularly instructive: it illustrates what happens when a government drags its heels on necessary action. Canada was the last developed country to pull thalidomide, given to pregnant women for morning sickness, from its shelves, three months after it had been banned everywhere else — three months during which babies continued to be born in this country with absent or deformed limbs, along with other severe anomalies. It’s a shameful chapter in our medical past, but it pales in comparison to the astonishing intransigence our medical leaders have displayed — and continue to display — on the youth gender care file.
A final note (prompted by thalidomide’s history), to speak to a significant quibble I have with Alberta’s Bill 26 legislation: as much as I admire Premier Danielle Smith’s courage in bringing it forward, the law contains a loophole allowing minors already on puberty blockers and cross-gender hormones to continue to take them. Imagine if, after it was removed from the shelves in 1962, government had allowed pregnant women already on the drug to continue to take thalidomide. Would that have made any sense? Of course not. And the same applies to puberty blockers and cross-gender hormones: they should be banned outright for all youth.
That argument is the kind our medical associations should be making — and would be making, if they weren’t so firmly in the grasp, seemingly, of ideologues who have abandoned evidence-based medical care for our youth.
J. Edward Les is a Calgary pediatrician, a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, and co-author of “Teenagers, Children, and Gender Transition Policy: A Comparison of Transgender Medical Policy for Minors in Canada, the United States, and Europe.”
James Lyons-Weiler
What People, Universities, and Pharma Do Not Yet Understand About the Kennedy Regulatory Bar: It Signals the End of the Regulatory States of America.
Science must outlive the PR cycle.
Modernization, as used today by industry lobbyists and public health officials, often amounts to a euphemism for deregulation: fewer checks, less transparency, and faster product pipelines with fewer questions asked. In contrast, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s approach to public health modernization is actual modernization—where rigorous science, true accountability, and unwavering public safety form the non-negotiable baseline.
The Kennedy Regulatory Bar isn’t a buzzword, and it’s certainly not a rhetorical device. It’s an operating philosophy grounded in scientific integrity and public duty. For those who understand regulatory policy only as an obstacle to commercial throughput, the Kennedy Bar feels like a threat. But to those who understand what science is—a falsifiable, ethical, and reproducible method of discovering truth—it represents nothing less than the restoration of sanity.
Defining the Kennedy Regulatory Bar
Secretary Kennedy has made his expectations perfectly clear. In his own words:
“Journalists like yourself assume that vaccines are encountering the same kind of rigorous safety testing as other drugs, including multiyear double-blind placebo testing. But the fact is that vaccines don’t.”
— Interview, STAT News, Aug. 21, 2017
“By freeing [vaccine makers] from liability for negligence, the 1986 statute removed any incentive for these companies to make safe products. If we want safe and effective vaccines, we need to end the liability shield.”
— Press Statement in Support of HR 5816, Sept. 26, 2024
“Mr. Kennedy believes vaccination should be voluntary and based on informed consent. For consent to be truly informed, the underlying science must be unbiased and free from corporate influence.”
— Campaign FAQ – Vaccines, Kennedy24.com, Aug. 15, 2023
“My mission over the next 18 months… will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power.”
— Campaign Announcement Speech, Boston, Apr. 19, 2023
These principles, articulated repeatedly by Sec. Kennedy across media interviews, press events, and official communications, form the foundation of what we now call the Kennedy Bar.
The Kennedy Regulatory Bar: Five Core Standards
Rigorous Science: Long-term, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials are the gold standard and must not be circumvented. This is but one example. All of biomedical science should be upgraded to highest standards.
Restored Liability: No blanket immunity for manufacturers; liability is essential to safety. This flies in the face of concerted efforts by Pharma to expand liability exemptions (e.g., PREP Act).
Transparency: All trial data must be made publicly available in machine-readable form—no redactions, no gatekeeping. Collins failed to enforce this, and the failure was noted.
Independent Oversight: Regulatory decisions must be made by individuals and boards free of industry conflicts of interest. This includes, but is not limited to, vaccines, drugs, devices, and procedures.
Informed Consent: Patients must receive full, truthful information about benefits and risks—without coercion or censorship, and their rights to free, prior, informed consent are absolute.
These are not radical ideas. They are what science used to be before it was rebranded as a partner to commerce.
Why “Banning the mRNA Vaccines” Isn’t Necessary—If the Regulatory State Is Fixed
Some critics ask: Why not just ban mRNA vaccines outright?
The question misunderstands both the Kennedy Bar and Secretary Kennedy’s governing philosophy. Banning an entire class of biomedical products by executive fiat would mirror the very authoritarianism that corrupted the regulatory state in the first place. The goal is not to replace one top-down mandate with another—it is to restore bottom-up scientific validity, where products succeed or fail based on their actual merit, risk profile, and necessity.
Under the Kennedy Bar, no product—mRNA or otherwise—can bypass the full burden of proof:
- Did it go through long-term, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials?
- Were all adverse events transparently reported and analyzed?
- Was there independent oversight?
- Can the public access the raw data?
- Was informed consent meaningfully obtained?
If the answer is no—as it has been for many mRNA formulations—then the product simply fails to meet the regulatory standard. No ban is needed. Reality disqualifies it.
The Kennedy strategy is structural, not performative. It focuses on building a regulatory ecosystem that is incapable of licensing unsafe or ineffective products. This is a stronger safeguard than any prohibition. Rather than banning, Kennedy’s approach makes bad science impossible to pass off as medicine.
Once transparency is non-negotiable…
Once liability is restored…
Once regulatory capture is dismantled…
Then any product built on hype, shortcuts, or undisclosed risks—whether mRNA or otherwise—will collapse under the weight of real scrutiny.
That is not censorship. That is civilization defending itself by enforcing its own standards.
Integration Over Isolation
What sets Kennedy’s approach apart is not only the bar he sets for scientific integrity, but it is obvious this is how he is implementing it across government. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, he is already working to integrate the work of all HHS agencies—CDC, NIH, FDA, CMS, HRSA, and others—into a coherent, collaborative ecosystem. No longer will one hand of government ignore the consequences of the other.
Where prior administrations tolerated bureaucratic silos and jurisdictional loopholes, Kennedy insists that scientific rigor be institutionalized—not merely idealized. Under his leadership, agencies are being asked to communicate better, share safety signals earlier, co-design surveillance systems, and synchronize risk communication strategies.
This is not just about stopping regulatory failure. It’s about building functional synergy between the very institutions tasked with protecting public health.
The Academy’s Crisis of Conscience
Many universities have not yet recognized that the Kennedy Bar creates a mirror they cannot easily turn away from. For decades, medical schools and public health departments have received lavish funding from pharmaceutical companies and government agencies with revolving doors. This arrangement has subtly—sometimes overtly—coerced researchers to conform to sponsor expectations, burying negative results and rewarding compliance with publication and promotion.
Secretary Kennedy has quietly changed the rules of engagement. Prestige will no longer in the place of principles. A new standard is emerging, and it doesn’t care what editorial board endorsed your work—it asks what you measured, how long you observed it, and who paid you to interpret it.
I recently gave a speech “How to Speak MAHA” to a collection of research administrators at midwestern state Universities. They did not grasp the reality that those Universities who are cheerleading their researchers to submit more, not fewer, grant proposals in response to calls for proposals to transform medicine will be scheduled for prestige and more funding. Good actors will be rewarded. Those obsessed with their bottom lines will have to find funding elsewhere. Those publishing in sketchy journals against the recommendations of HHS might suffer a ding in their grant scores.
The message from this administration is simple, and our universities now face a choice: modernize into true scientific integrity, or double down on performative consensus. The Kennedy Bar forces the question: Is your institution educating scientists—or training enablers? No grant is worth the erosion of public trust. No journal impact factor outweighs the duty to truth. The age of science as branding is over. The age of science as science—open, accountable, and rigorous—has returned.
The Industry’s Real Dilemma
Pharma does not fear Kennedy because he’s against innovation. They fear him because he demands real innovation—scientific advancements that can survive public scrutiny, not just regulatory maneuvering.
For decades, the vaccine industry has relied on two tricks: (1) measuring success through surrogate endpoints like antibody titers rather than clinical outcomes, and (2) conducting studies in silos—never long enough, never with full data access, and almost never with independent safety boards. This system has produced a torrent of marginally tested products with maximum immunity from liability and minimal transparency.
Under the Kennedy Bar, the era of “emergency forever” is over. The industry must either meet real scientific thresholds or lose the public’s trust—entirely. This is not punishment. It’s evolution. It’s the grown-up phase of medicine. A moment of maturation for a sector that has long preferred speed over scrutiny, revenue over rigor.
And it comes with a choice: evolve or… be revealed.
Outflanking the “Modernization” Rhetoric
The PR pivot has already begun. Corporate spokespeople and foundation-backed academics are working overtime to redefine “modernization” as “streamlining,” “accelerating,” or “expanding access.” But these are euphemisms for lowering standards, usually without public debate.
Kennedy’s modernization is not deregulation. It is re-regulation—the restoration of the scientific method, the demand for data, and the end of special pleading. His is not a revolution in tone, but in epistemology. He is not rebranding trust—he is rebuilding it.
Science Must Outlive the PR Cycle
Regulatory systems that abandon the scientific method for public relations will inevitably collapse. The people know. They have lived the adverse events. They have watched silence fall where transparency was promised. They’ve seen academic journals censor, media outlets spin, and regulators hedge their language to protect careers rather than lives.
The Kennedy Bar is not a barricade—it is a foundation stone. It does not prevent innovation. It ensures that innovation is real.
So to the regulators: Your authority does not come from secrecy—it comes from public trust.
To the industry: Your survival depends on the integrity of your products, not the slickness of your press kits and forward-looking statements.
And to the universities: Your legacy will not be measured in grants received, but in truths defended.
Those who come up to the bar will see not only translational success, but will also transformational success.
And they will sleep better at night.
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