The Cass report is pretty questionable quality wise - it was written with political goals pretty directly in mind and it rules out a lot of studies for not being double blind. (Which is necessarily a hard ask here, medical ethics boards aren't going to let you give hormones to the control group children or anything.)

And that criticism has come from medical boards in the UK and globally, I believe?

Anyway, that's also only for children, which feels politically like a wedge issue. The NHS is very slow at providing HRT and I rather doubt they're treating more than a hundred children for gender dysphoria in any way rn.

This is a common misconception about the review. It is true that none of the studies they looked at were double-blinded but they were still included if they were designed and conducted well enough. In a Q&A shortly after the review's release Cass demonstrates that she is well aware that exclusion based on this would be silly.

https://thekitetrust.org.uk/our-statement-in-response-to-the...

The amount of myths circulating about the review prompted the publishing of an FAQ page which deals with some of the more egregious examples (e.g. the claim that 98% of studies were rejected).

https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-r...

What's the basis for the claim that the Cass Review was written with political goals directly in mind? Is this just based on the conclusion of the report, or is there actual substance for this statement?

Most of the criticism of the Cass Review comes from the US. Most of Europe has either stopped prescribing puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for minors or never did in the first place. The UK is joining the consensus among the majority of developed countries regarding treatment of gender dysphoric youth, now the US and Canada stand as the sole outliers.

> and it rules out a lot of studies for not being double blind

Sorry but you're repeating disinformation that has already been refuted by the lead author, and is obviously incorrect if you read the Review itself.

http://archive.today/ea0Vi

> Dr Hilary Cass, 66, told The Times last week that one activist had begun posting falsehoods about her landmark review of the treatment of trans children before it was even published.

> She was referring to Alejandra Caraballo, an American attorney, transgender woman and instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic.

> On April 9 — the day before the Cass review was published — Caraballo claimed it had “disregarded nearly all studies” because they were not double-blind controlled ones.

> Double-blind studies see patients randomly given either medicine or a placebo, with neither the patient or doctor knowing which.

> In a post on Twitter/X, Caraballo accused Cass and the review team of holding trans healthcare to an “impossible standard”. This was because, she said, transgender patients could not take hormones “blind”, as the effects of any hormones would fairly quickly become obvious.

> Her tweets were contradicted by the publication of the Cass review hours later.

> During a systematic review, researchers looking at studies on transgender healthcare found no blind control ones — so used another system altogether to determine study quality. Cass told The Times last week how difficult it would be to use blind control studies in relation to trans patients, for the same reasons identified by Caraballo.

> As for Caraballo’s claim that the review team “disregarded nearly all studies”, Cass pointed out that 60 out of 103 studies reviewed were used for the conclusions. They were studies deemed to be of moderate and high quality on the effects of puberty blockers and hormone treatment.

> Despite this, Caraballo’s post has been viewed 871,000 times and has not been deleted.

This is unfortunately quite a typical tactic of activists like Caraballo. They will deliberately lie to further their aims, relying on people who are unaware that their lies are lies to spread this disinformation.