JOHN Swinney has responded after scientific analysis from a top US university concluded that the Cass Review into trans healthcare in the UK “obscures key findings, misrepresents its own data, and is rife with misapplications of the scientific method”.
The analysis, authored by Professor Anne Alstott of Yale Law School and Dr Meredithe McNamara of the Yale School of Medicine along with a team of international experts, drew damning conclusions about the Cass Review – which has been used to inform treatment of trans people across the UK.
The Yale report, which was published on Monday, stated: “The review’s process and recommendations stake out an ideological position on care for transgender youth that is deeply at odds with the review’s own findings.”
It added: “Far from evaluating the evidence in a neutral and scientifically valid manner, the review obscures key findings, misrepresents its own data, and is rife with misapplications of the scientific method.”
The report further found that physician Dr Hilary Cass "relied on serious methodological flaws, including the omission of key findings in the extant body of literature".
However, the Cass Review has been widely accepted by politicians in the UK, with Labour shadow health secretary Wes Streeting pledging to work to implement its recommendations.
The Scottish Government has also engaged with the findings of the review, which have already led Scottish NHS boards to "pause" the use of puberty blockers as treatment for trans youth.
However, the Yale analysis stated that Cass had “subverted the well-established process for making clinical recommendations from systematic review findings” – casting doubt on the validity of her review’s suggestions.
Appearing at a campaign event in Cumbernauld on Wednesday, Swinney was asked if his SNP government would look at the Yale experts’ analysis of the Cass Review before implementing any further recommendations from it.
He said: “Ministers took a decision to invite a multidisciplinary team led by the chief medical officer to consider these issues.
“I think these issues should be considered in a clinical context – and by clinical, I mean a multidisciplinary clinical approach because there's a lot of disciplines required to be involved here.
“Obviously the output of the work that has been led by the chief medical officer will be made public and that will be the substance of the approach that we take.
“Now, the focus of that work by the chief medical officer and the multidisciplinary team must be comprehensive to make sure that we take the right decisions, and I'm confident that's exactly the approach that will be taken.”
Report authors Alstott and McNamara are experts in public policy on children and paediatrics and adolescent medicine respectively.
The two co-founded Yale’s Integrity Project, which aims to ensure that health policy is “based on scientific rigor” and works towards “evidence-based health policy for children and adolescents”.
Yale University, which was founded in New Haven, Connecticut in 1701, is considered one of the foremost educational institutions on earth.
It ranked at number 10 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024.
