Cass Review Author Denounces As 'Baseless' And 'Cynical' Dissidents' Claim That She Touted Abigail Shrier's Scathing Polemic On Trans Kids

Two dissidents opposed to Britain's designs for reforming its care of gender-distressed kids claimed this week that Dr. Hilary Cass once "recommended strongly" Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier.

Wildly controversial, Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage, was published in June 2020 and became a runaway bestseller.

A pair of dissident clinicians, each of whom has been central to an internal effort to thwart the National Health Services’ implementation of a new system in the U.K. to care for gender-distressed children in line with the landmark Cass Review, this week boldly accused the review’s lead author of expressing opposition to pediatric gender-transition treatment even before she began work on the review.

In a response provided to me, Dr. Hilary Cass denied the dissidents’ claims as “wholly untrue” and accused them of engaging in a “cynical attempt to undermine the Review.”

This high-stakes back-and-forth began on Aug. 7, when Dr. Max Davie, a pediatrician, and Dr. Lorna Hobbs, a clinical psychologist, posted in a public Google document a non-peer-reviewed paper they wrote criticizing the Cass Review. (The paper had a number of glaring errors, which I detailed in a tw…