The cass review, as its called, came out last week, and it recommends a new approach for clinicians. This is a Polarising Subject for some people. So, what mightjournalism do differently in how it covers it . Hannah barnes is a former bbc producer who investigated some of the uks gender Identity Services for the corporations newsnight programme. She went on to write a book about it. I asked her when she first started her investigation. First came across it at all in 2017. I was off on my first Maternity Leave and there was a piece in the times Byjanice Turner Which was talking about this really rapid increase in the referrals of Teenage Girls to gids the gender Identity Development service and she had spoken to two clinicians who worked at the service. It wasnt really a Big Sort Of Whistle blowy piece but they had talked to her and said what theyd seen and itjust i thought it was very interesting, but i was off and, you know, spending time with my baby. And there was also a documentary
The transgender health guidelines, they changed, so that it would leave the age of initiation up to the clinician, so there was no minimum age of treatment. And so, we got very interested in that and decided to look into the actual guidelines and look at the evidence that was being used to build up the guidelines which were being used by doctors. But when you say you were aware of what Deb Cohen and Hannah Barnes were doing at newsnight, were these the kind of conversations being had . I wonder whether its the kind of conversation which was, theyre doing it. We dont really want to touch it because its so polarised. Or is that unfair . I think at the time, it wasjust an editorial decision. I mean, we have there was no reason why we wouldnt have done it and, certainly, we covered some of the work that you were doing. We did the piece on the american guidelines, we went to evidence based Medicine Specialists and got them to opine on what they saw as the
In the us, the transgender health guidelines, they changed so that it would leave the age of initiation up to the clinician, so there was no minimum age of treatment. and so, we got very interested in that and decided to look into the actual guidelines and look at the evidence that was being used to build up the guidelines which were being used by doctors. but when you say you were aware of what deb cohen and hannah barnes were doing at newsnight, were these the kind of conversations being had? i wonder whether it s the kind of conversation which was, they re doing it. we don t really want to touch it because it s so polarised. or is that unfair? i think at the time, it was just an editorial decision. i mean, we have there was no reason why we wouldn t have done it and, certainly, we covered some of the work that you were doing. we did the piece on the american guidelines, we went to evidence based medicine specialists and got them to opine on what they saw as the quality of the e
Became a problem. so, i can talk from the bmj perspective that when you get that kind of we re very evidence based at the bmj. we re a medical research journal. and, you know, when doctors are involved, it s a bmj story, so it s natural for us to take an interest in this and approach it from an evidence based perspective and i think what we had to do is do what cass did hilary cass did, which was to remove the political framing and focus on what is the evidence and not to be sort of blindsided by some of the backlash we got from the stories that we ran. and we were very aware of the work that deb and hannah was doing. we previously covered the interim findings of the cass report. hilary cass came to us. she wanted to talk directly to the profession. so, we ran an opinion piece by her. but when we got involved with investigations is looking at the fact that in the us, the transgender