The Cass Review is globally the most comprehensive study ever done
Andrew Neil said:
“But that wasn't the conclusion of the Cass Review, which is globally the most comprehensive study ever done.”
The Cass Review is frequently described in UK media as the largest and most thorough review of its kind, and Andrew Neil adds the detail of 113,000 children, which sounds like an impressively large evidence base.
The 113,000 figure refers to records examined across studies the review looked at, not children directly assessed by its team: the Cass Review was a systematic review of existing literature, which is a different thing. Whether it was the most comprehensive of its kind is genuinely contested, not settled. WPATH, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have each raised specific methodological concerns, including the review's decision to exclude a substantial proportion of existing research on quality grounds that other researchers have disputed. When a document that has attracted that level of international expert criticism is treated as beyond question, the people who lose are the young people whose care was restricted on the basis of it.
What I said at the time:
“Absolutely not globally the most comprehensive study ever done.”
Clinicians and policymakers who treat the Cass Review as beyond scrutiny may foreclose legitimate debate about its methodology and the policy decisions built on it.