Author:

Mackenzie Moir

Senior Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute

Dr. Hilary Cass, author of the Cass Review, YouTube screenshot

From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

That a female physician has been advised to stop taking the bus or the train because she might be assaulted by trans activists for attempting to protect children from a horrifying – and ongoing – medical scandal should be shocking to us all.

Dr. Hilary Cass, the 66-year-old physician who led the team behind the 366-page Cass Review, has become a target of trans activists as the repercussions of her findings reverberate through the political and medical establishment. The abuse is not confined merely to online; she has been advised not to use public transport for her own safety. 

In an interview with the Times, Cass stated that critics of her report are putting children “at risk” by spreading “straight disinformation” and that criticisms, thus far, have been “completely wrong.” One Labour MP accused Cass of ignoring “100 transgender studies” in her findings. This, says Cass, is disingenuous in the extreme. 

“I have been really frustrated by the criticisms, because it is straight disinformation,” Cass told the Times. “It started the day before the report came out when an influencer put up a picture of a list of papers that were apparently rejected for not being randomized control trials. That list has absolutely nothing to do with either our report or any of the papers.” 

“If you deliberately try to undermine a report that has looked at the evidence of children’s healthcare, then that’s unforgiveable,” she continued. “You are putting children at risk by doing that.” The 100 papers that were allegedly “left out” of the report, Cass noted, were each individually examined by her team of researchers, who “pulled the results from the ones that were high quality and medium quality, which was 60 out of 103.” 

Cass’s crime, of course, is that her report debunks the transgender narrative. She has been encouraged, she told the Times, by the impact of her report in many quarters – but the response elicited from trans activists has been “pretty aggressive” and she noted that the vitriol spiked each time the Cass Review reported something “people don’t like.”  

“There are some pretty vile emails coming in at the moment,” she said of the profanity-laced digital missives coming her way. “Most of which my team is protecting me from, so I’m not getting to see them. What dismays me is just how childish the debate can become. If I don’t agree with somebody then I’m called transphobic or a TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist].” 

When asked if the vitriol was wearing her down, Cass responded: 

No… it’s personal, but these people don’t know me. I’m much, much more upset and frustrated about all the disinformation than I am about the abuse. The thing that makes me seethe is the misinformation. I’m not going on public transport at the moment, following security advice, which is inconvenient.

Indeed, six clinics, she said, refused to share research into the impact of puberty blockers – Cass called their reaction “coordinated” and “ideologically driven” and noted that “they were not particularly friendly to us when we approached.” 

That medical institutions would refuse to cooperate on a study of the long-term impacts of the care they give to children is, any reasonable observer should agree, a very red flag – and there were more. Tavistock also refused to hand over data on detransitioners, which Cass called “very disappointing.” When asked about ideological capture, she told the Times that “there were certainly one or two individuals… who I would describe as activists among the staff,” although she added that “the majority of staff believed what they were doing was right.” 

Although Cass will not be carrying out the recently-announced review of adult gender clinics, she did condemn GenderGP – which we have reported on in this space several times – for continuing to advertise and prescribe puberty blockers, noting that the “care” provided by Dr. Helen Webberley “certainly doesn’t come anywhere near anything one would recognise as adequate in terms of a proper assessment and exploration.”  

That a female physician has been advised to stop taking the bus or the train because she might be assaulted by trans activists for attempting to protect children from a horrifying – and ongoing – medical scandal should be shocking to us all. The last few years have desensitized us to this sort of behavior. Fortunately, it appears that the Cass Review’s findings are having a seismic impact on the debate trans activists desperately tried to avoid, nonetheless. 

Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016