A Curious Complaint
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In August 2022, I wrote “Staying Informed On Gender Healthcare”. A few days later, I received word from Mark Jennings of Newsroom, who had received the original article and engaged with me on mine, that there had been a complaint and “In order for us to respond in an appropriate manner it would be good to get your comments on each of the points made by the complainant.”
When I looked at the complaint, found some pretty worrying stuff in there. It was a very long complaint and made a lot of claims that required a point-by-point rebuttal.
I ended up writing a summary, and a full rebuttal of the complaint. Here is that summary:
Dear Mark and Tim,
I’m including a brief summary of my response in this email, and attaching a document with a detailed examination of the complaints that have been made.
The Interim Cass Report, as part of the ongoing Cass Review, has generated a lot of media attention regarding its content. Dr Hilary Cass has herself, in the last month, published an update highlighting that a lot of the reporting has not covered that it actually recommends more gender and health services, the fast establishment of a research framework to support those services, and ensuring that:
“…the care of gender-questioning children and young people needs to be everyone’s business, with responsibility taken throughout the health system rather than resting solely with a small expert workforce. The staff working at GIDS have demonstrated compassion and a strong professional commitment towards their patient population. Their experience and continued engagement will be essential in ensuring a smooth progression to the new service model. At the same time, we need to encourage, grow and develop the future workforce that will be key to the delivery of regionalised services.”
In my opinion piece, I clearly represented the parallels between what Dr. Cass was recommending and the current Ministry of Health’s approach to gender and health services — down to the evidence of international best practice Dr. Cass references already existing within our services and clear and transparent evidence of the model of informed consent and clinical best practice available for anyone to access.
In doing so, I hoped to answer some of the questions posed by Dr. Donovan and provide evidence for my opinion that the Cass Review is important for the future of gender and healthcare in the UK, but should not be employed to ‘raise concerns’ about our own services. I believe with the evidence from the report, and that included in this response, I have done that.
This complaint has raised some concerns though, especially because it misrepresents what the Interm Cass Report’s advice was. The first complaint claimed “Dr Hilary Cass, OBE found puberty blockers have ‘unknown impacts…” and included a quote from the review which was not in the summary or the advice, but as a topic of further research to be conducted. The report itself in its summary states;
“1.5. The Review is not able to provide definitive advice on the use of puberty blockers and feminising/masculinising hormones at this stage, due to gaps in the evidence base; however, recommendations will be developed as our research programme progresses.”
And then also provided Interim Advice 13 and 14, as outlined earlier in this piece. That is what the Interim Cass Report found.
Removing contextual information around a report statement to erase its relationship to the Interim Advice on Clinical Approach was another example, which turned a statement regarding the spectrum of professional practitioner approaches within services into “a matter of conjecture” instead of an element of Interim Advice 8 and 9.
It was also mildly concerning to see the complainant first insist that other evidence, not provided, disproved the evidence which I provided in my original Opinion piece — but then insist that evidence which I drew from the Interim Cass Report itself was not applicable to the findings of the Interim Cass Report, and that peer-reviewed evidence published AFTER the publication of the Interim Cass Report was equally not applicable. A strange standard of evidence.
I am also concerned at the complainants’ attempt to deliberately omit elements of statements from AusPATHA in an attempt to misrepresent their position regarding Conversion Therapy. By cutting the AusPATHA statement by over half, the complainant attempted to indicate AusPATHA held a position contradictory to the one it holds, one which matches both the MoH’s stance on gender and trans healthcare and the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act (2022)
Also misreading the Opinion piece itself and claiming that I said the difference between the UK and NZ system were of no concern to parents, entirely inverts the intent of the article. I was clear that there are differences between the systems, and that NZ’s appears to be in much healthier and more Cass aligned position than the UK. The difference on the wording around puberty blockers I described as different, but not contradictory, a position and opinion I still hold.
Finally, the conflation of two separate parts of the report to remove the context of service provision, essentially fabricating a quote, is very worrying when the complaint is regarding “error, misleading information” and being “highly inaccurate”.
I hope this response is comprehensive and appropriate.
Regards,
John Palethorpe
I will post the full rebuttal in the following post.
