Category: Health

  • Uniquely dangerous

    Just over two hours before Parliament closed for the election, the Tories rushed through an emergency statutory instrument to ban the private prescription of puberty blockers for under-18s. The reason for the ban, and for the rush? The health secretary says it is “essential to make the order with immediate effect to avoid serious danger…

  • Doctors speak out against Cass

    The ongoing wrecking spree by Hilary Cass continues, but it’s getting significant pushback from medical experts. As Erin Reed reports, “both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society have categorically rejected the review as a justification for bans on care and have challenged many of its alleged findings.” Every time Cass speaks to…

  • Illegal and cruel

    I’ve been loath to post about the current cavalcade of cruelties the Tories are heaping on trans people right now, but I wanted to point out something about the proposed NHS guidance that would force trans women out of single-sex wards: it’s illegal under multiple laws, especially for trans women who have gender recognition certificates.…

  • Snakes in the Cass

    The Cass review is a lengthy document and it’ll take time for detailed criticisms to emerge, but there’s already plenty of evidence to indicate that the worst fears of trans people and allies were correct. The review team included people vocally opposed to trans healthcare, applied different standards of evidence to trans-supportive and trans-antagonistic studies,…

  • The endgame

    In the US, the people who want to ban abortion will tell you that they don’t want to ban abortion; they just want to put some protections around some of it. This is a lie. Also in the US, the people who want to ban healthcare for all trans people – who, not coincidentally, are…

  • No surprises

    You’ll see a lot in the papers about the Cass review of NHS care for gender-questioning kids today, as the report is finally released. What you won’t see are any suggestions that it’s a political project, not a medical one. Its job was to undermine healthcare for trans people, and that’s exactly what it’s delivered.…

  • The job

    It’s been said so often that it’s a cliché, but the job of journalism is to report the truth. Its job is to investigate, to find facts, and to follow those facts to see where they lead. It is a process of discovering, of uncovering, of seeing and telling what’s really going on. In order…

  • Be better

    Science writer Ed Yong’s coverage of COVID was superb, and his reporting of long COVID even more so. In a thoughtful piece for the NYT, he explains how journalists should and could do better: Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me To Be a Better Journalist. Covering long Covid solidified my view that science is not…

  • Ignorance is strength

    The Tory government have confirmed that they intend to ban conversion therapy but not for trans people: according to equalities minister Kemi Badenoch, providing a safe space for kids to explore their feelings about gender rather than mentally torturing them is the real conversion therapy. It’s egregious bullshit, of course, but it’s entirely in keeping…

  • An admission

    It’s yet another week in the ongoing demonisation of trans women; former prime minister Liz Truss wants to introduce a member’s bill that would ban healthcare for trans teens and make it illegal for trans women to use women’s spaces, and a bunch of bigoted right-wing shits have made a film mocking trans women in…