The Cass Review represents independent, unbiased science
Robby Starbuck said:
“I think that's what the intention was, is have somebody independently study. In medicine, you would take somebody who's in the field of medicine, and you would have them study it independently.”
Independence from financial interest in the outcome sounds like a basic principle of good science, and framing the Cass Review as the neutral outside view versus self-interested clinicians is an intuitive contrast.
Independence from financial interest is a reasonable principle, but it is not the same as expertise, and a review is only as good as the methodology behind it. The Cass Review was led by a single paediatrician whose clinical background was in respiratory medicine, not in gender medicine, and it has been criticised by researchers in the field for applying evidence standards to gender-affirming care that are simply not applied to comparable paediatric interventions, which had the effect of excluding a large proportion of the existing evidence base. WPATH, drawing on the work of more than two hundred clinicians and researchers who actually specialise in this area, examined the same literature and reached different conclusions. When policymakers treat the Cass Review as the neutral, definitive word on the subject without understanding those criticisms, it is trans young people who lose access to care they need.
What I said at the time:
“Doctor Cass is not somebody who has ever managed transgender children or adults. She's a respiratory paediatrician, so she manages lung problems. And yet she, for 1 person, was called to do a review on transgender services... the WPATH, which was over 200 gender experts, and they did a whole review of all the literature in the same way that Doctor Cass purported to, and they came out with a different outcome.”
Policymakers and parents who treat the Cass Review as the definitive scientific word on the subject make decisions that restrict access to care for trans young people, without understanding the serious criticisms of the review's methodology.