🧵:Thoughts on the battle over the Cass Review:

1. Many are furious that systematic literature reviews, they say, set the bar too high, and forbid the acceptance of promising findings from studies on pediatric gender-transition treatment.

🧵See the thread for more🧵

2. Others say those standards of assessing the strength v weaknesses of research are vital to prevent research that makes false claims from impacting health policy. They note that the stakes are high, in particular giving drugs that may impact fertility and sexual function.

Here's the question:

Where does the pediatric gender-dysphoria care field go from here?

Should it accept @GLAAD's claim that the 'science is settled,' and that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones should be widely provided to gender-distressed children?

Or should the pediatric gender-medicine field follow the lead of Cass and England, and of Scandinavian nations, re-classifying pediatric gender-transition treatment as experimental and restrict it to clinical trials only?

Then, if the results of those clinical trials are favorable, it is possible that those European nations will change course again and broaden access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors. Perhaps then they would be satisfied that the evidence is strong enough?

Here in the US, we have a split-screen system, quite unlike the European nations:
▶️23 red states have banned pediatric access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for gender distress.
▶️Blue states support liberal access to such medications.

The major US medical societies, in particular the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society, along with the medical/activist group WPATH, all support liberal access to pediatric gender-transition treatment.

This is in stark contrast to Cass/England's approach.

So wide is the gulf between Cass and WPATH that after Cass backed forbidding puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors, WPATH said the majority of gender-dysphoric adolescents would do better on such medications than on the holistic mental health care Cass advises.