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Hundreds of doctors resign from British Medical Association over its support for puberty blockers

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Health

Hundreds of doctors resign from British Medical Association over its support for puberty blockers

Todayville

Published

10 months ago

8 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

Hundreds of U.K. doctors are resigning from the British Medical Association over its opposition to a ban on puberty blockers for kids, accusing the union of ignoring evidence-based medicine and failing to represent its members’ views.

According to reports in The Times and The Telegraph, hundreds of doctors are not only going public to express their anger with the British Medical Associations’ decision to reject the Cass Review’s findings on the dangers of puberty blockers – and many are resigning.  

According to The Telegraph: “Doctors with decades of experience have resigned from the British Medical Association because of the union’s opposition to the Cass review.”  

As I reported earlier in this space, on August 1 the British Medical Association – the U.K. doctor’s union – called on the government to lift the ban on puberty blockers for minors and called for a pause on the implementation of the National Health Service’s Cass Review. 

Initially, 1,000 senior physicians from across the U.K. responded by publishing an open letter to chairman of the BMA, Professor Philip Banfield; that number is now up to 1,400, with 900 of those being BMA members. Among their accusations is that the 69-member council passed their policy at a “secretive and opaque” meeting.  

READ: Texas forbids changing sex on driver’s licenses, state IDs for ‘gender identity’ 

“We write as doctors to say, ‘not in my name,’” the letter read. “We are extremely disappointed that the BMA council had passed a motion to conduct a ‘critique’ of the Cass Review and to lobby to oppose its recommendations … It does not reflect the views of the wider membership, whose opinion you did not seek. We understand that no information will be released on the voting figures and how council members voted. That is a failure of accountability to members and is simply not acceptable.”  

The letter further stated that the Cass Review “is the most comprehensive review into healthcare for children with gender related distress ever conducted” and urged the BMA to “abandon its pointless exercise” of attacking and opposing the recommendations. 

“By lobbying against the best evidence we have, the BMA is going against the principles of evidence-based medicine and against ethical practice,” the doctors wrote, in an almost unprecedented broadside against their own union in protest of the BMA’s brazen transgender activism. 

As first reported by The Times, comments made beneath that open letter “reveal many doctors have torn up their membership cards in response to the union’s stance on the review.” One commenter stated: “On the basis of the BMA’s outrageous stance on the superbly researched and written Cass Report, which has my full support and endorsement, I have decided to leave the BMA having been a member for 50 years since I qualified as a doctor. Increasingly, they not only fail to represent my views, they display no respect for the very premise and ethos inherent in being a medical professional.” 

Another doctor wrote: “As a union, primarily, it is the role of the BMA to represent its members, and not to drive clinical opinion, especially in specialist areas. I am considering resigning after membership of 42 years.” A third stated: “I left the BMA partly because of this sort of behaviour on the part of the leadership, having been a member for some thirty years.” Jacky Davis, a consultant radiologist and council member, told The Times: 

This minority has voted to block the implementation of Cass, an evidence-based review which took four years to put together. They have no evidence for their opposition. The Cass review is not a matter for a trade union. It is not our business as a union to be doing a critique of the Cass review. It is a waste of time and resources.

READ: Federal court backs Christian teacher who refused to call kids by transgender ‘identity’ 

GB News also reported on the exodus, reporting that: “Critics slammed the decision as not representing the views of all members, critiquing the BMA’s ‘abysmal’ leadership which was becoming ‘increasingly bonkers and ideologically captured.’” And according to the Daily Mail: “One signatory called for a ‘vote of no confidence in BMA leadership’ and another commenting that ‘activists appear to have been allowed to take over.’” 

What is so extraordinary about this is that LGBT activists have achieved phenomenal success by infiltrating and taking over organizations, and then imposing their agenda from the top-down. Once LGBT activists are in a position to pass policies, control votes, and even censor publications, their agenda is assured. This has been incredibly effective for decades. 

In this instance, however, the ideologically captured British Medical Association is facing a full-scale revolt from its own members, and its credibility is taking a severe hit. Even the press coverage of their move, which would have been laudatory only a few years ago, is almost universally negative.  

The BMA is still committed to its agenda – but its grip on the narrative has been broken, and it seems unlikely that the union will be able to reestablish it.  

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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Related Topics:#CassReview#JonathonVanMaren#LifeSiteNews#PubertyBlockersBritishMedicalAssociation
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Addictions

‘Over and over until they die’: Drug crisis pushes first responders to the brink

Published on July 9, 2025

By

Todayville

By Alexandra Keeler

First responders say it is not overdoses that leave them feeling burned out—it is the endless cycle of calls they cannot meaningfully resolve

The soap bottle just missed his head.

Standing in the doorway of a cluttered Halifax apartment, Derek, a primary care paramedic, watched it smash against the wall.

Derek was there because the woman who threw it had called 911 again — she did so nearly every day. She said she had chest pain. But when she saw the green patch on his uniform, she erupted. Green meant he could not give her what she wanted: fentanyl.

She screamed at him to call “the red tags” — advanced care paramedics authorized to administer opioids. With none available, Derek declared the scene unsafe and left. Later that night, she called again. This time, a red-patched unit was available. She got her dose.

Derek says he was not angry at the woman, but at the system that left her trapped in addiction — and him powerless to help.

First responders across Canada say it is not overdoses that leave them feeling burned out — it is the endless cycle of calls they cannot meaningfully resolve. Understaffed, overburdened and dispatched into crises they are not equipped to fix, many feel morally and emotionally drained.

“We’re sending our first responders to try and manage what should otherwise be dealt with at structural and systemic levels,” said Nicholas Carleton, a University of Regina researcher who studies the mental health of public safety personnel.

Canadian Affairs agreed to use pseudonyms for the two frontline workers referenced in this story. Canadian Affairs also spoke with nine other first responders who agreed to speak only on background. All of these sources cited concerns about workplace retaliation for speaking out.

Moral injury

Canada’s opioid crisis is pushing frontline workers such as paramedics to the brink.

A 2024 study of 350 Quebec paramedics shows one in three have seriously considered suicide. Globally, ambulance workers have among the highest suicide rates of public service personnel.

Between 2017 and 2024, Canadian paramedics responded to nearly 240,000 suspected opioid overdoses. More than 50,000 of those were fatal.

Yet many paramedics say overdose calls are not the hardest part of the job.

“When they do come up, they’re pretty easy calls,” said Derek. Naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses, is readily available. “I can actually fix the problem,” he said. “[It’s a] bit of instant gratification, honestly.”

What drains him are the calls they cannot fix: mental health crises, child neglect and abuse, homelessness.

“The ER has a [cardiac catheterization] lab that can do surgery in minutes to fix a heart attack. But there’s nowhere I can bring the mental health patients.

“So they call. And they call. And they call.”

Thomas, a primary care paramedic in Eastern Ontario, echoes that frustration.

“The ER isn’t a good place to treat addiction,” he said. “They need intensive, long-term psychological inpatient treatment and a healthy environment and support system — first responders cannot offer that.”

That powerlessness erodes trust. Paramedics say patients with addictions often become aggressive, or stop seeking help altogether.

“We have a terrible relationship with the people in our community struggling with addiction,” Thomas said. “They know they will sit in an ER bed for a few hours while being in withdrawals and then be discharged with a waitlist or no follow-up.”

Carleton, of the University of Regina, says that reviving people repeatedly without improvement decreases morale.

“You’re resuscitating someone time and time again,” said Carleton, who is also director of the Psychological Trauma and Stress Systems Lab, a federal unit dedicated to mental health research for public safety personnel. “That can lead to compassion fatigue … and moral injury.”

Katy Kamkar, a clinical psychologist focused on first responder mental health, says moral injury arises when workers are trapped in ethically impossible situations — saving a life while knowing that person will be back in the same state tomorrow.

“Burnout is … emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment,” she said in an emailed statement. “High call volumes, lack of support or follow-up care for patients, and/or bureaucratic constraints … can increase the risk of reduced empathy, absenteeism and increased turnover.”

Kamkar says moral injury affects all branches of public safety, not just paramedics. Firefighters, who are often the first to arrive on the scene, face trauma from overdose deaths. Police report distress enforcing laws that criminalize suffering.

Subscribe for free to get BTN’s latest news and analysis – or donate to our investigative journalism fund.

Understaffed and overburdened

Staffing shortages are another major stressor.

“First responders were amazing during the pandemic, but it also caused a lot of fatigue, and a lot of people left our business because of stress and violence,” said Marc-André Périard, vice president of the Paramedic Chiefs of Canada.

Nearly half of emergency medical services workers experience daily “Code Blacks,” where there are no ambulances available. Vacancy rates are climbing across emergency services. The federal government predicts paramedic shortages will persist over the coming decade, alongside moderate shortages of police and firefighters.

Unsafe work conditions are another concern. Responders enter chaotic scenes where bystanders — often fellow drug users — mistake them for police. Paramedics can face hostility from patients they just saved, says Périard.

“People are upset that they’ve been taken out of their high [when Naloxone is administered] and not realizing how close to dying they were,” he said.

Thomas says safety is undermined by vague, inconsistently enforced policies. And efforts to collect meaningful data can be hampered by a work culture that punishes reporting workplace dangers.

“If you report violence, it can come back to haunt you in performance reviews” he said.

Some hesitate to wait for police before entering volatile scenes, fearing delayed response times.

“[What] would help mitigate violence is to have management support their staff directly in … waiting for police before arriving at the scene, support paramedics in leaving an unsafe scene … and for police and the Crown to pursue cases of violence against health-care workers,” Thomas said.

“Right now, the onus is on us … [but once you enter], leaving a scene is considered patient abandonment,” he said.

Upstream solutions

Carleton says paramedics’ ability to refer patients to addiction and mental health referral networks varies widely based on their location. These networks rely on inconsistent local staffing, creating a patchwork system where people easily fall through the cracks.

“[Any] referral system butts up really quickly against the challenges our health-care system is facing,” he said. “Those infrastructures simply don’t exist at the size and scale that we need.”

Périard agrees. “There’s a lot of investment in safe injection sites, but not as much [resources] put into help[ing] these people deal with their addictions,” he said.

Until that changes, the cycle will continue.

On May 8, Alberta renewed a $1.5 million grant to support first responders’ mental health. Carleton welcomes the funding, but says it risks being futile without also addressing understaffing, excessive workloads and unsafe conditions.

“I applaud Alberta’s investment. But there need to be guardrails and protections in place, because some programs should be quickly dismissed as ineffective — but they aren’t always,” he said.

Carleton’s research found that fewer than 10 mental health programs marketed to Canadian governments — out of 300 in total — are backed up by evidence showing their effectiveness.

In his view, the answer is not complicated — but enormous.

“We’ve got to get way further upstream,” he said.

“We’re rapidly approaching more and more crisis-level challenges… with fewer and fewer [first responders], and we’re asking them to do more and more.”


This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.


Subscribe to Break The Needle
Launched a year ago Break The Needle provides news and analysis on addiction and crime in Canada.

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Business

Prime minister can make good on campaign promise by reforming Canada Health Act

Published on July 8, 2025

By

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail

While running for the job of leading the country, Prime Minister Carney promised to defend the Canada Health Act (CHA) and build a health-care system Canadians can be proud of. Unfortunately, to have any hope of accomplishing the latter promise, he must break the former and reform the CHA.

As long as Ottawa upholds and maintains the CHA in its current form, Canadians will not have a timely, accessible and high-quality universal health-care system they can be proud of.

Consider for a moment the remarkably poor state of health care in Canada today. According to international comparisons of universal health-care systems, Canadians endure some of the lowest access to physicians, medical technologies and hospital beds in the developed world, and wait in queues for health care that routinely rank among the longest in the developed world. This is all happening despite Canadians paying for one of the developed world’s most expensive universal-access health-care systems.

None of this is new. Canada’s poor ranking in the availability of services—despite high spending—reaches back at least two decades. And wait times for health care have nearly tripled since the early 1990s. Back then, in 1993, Canadians could expect to wait 9.3 weeks for medical treatment after GP referral compared to 30 weeks in 2024.

But fortunately, we can find the solutions to our health-care woes in other countries such as Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Australia, which all provide more timely access to quality universal care. Every one of these countries requires patient cost-sharing for physician and hospital services, and allows private competition in the delivery of universally accessible services with money following patients to hospitals and surgical clinics. And all these countries allow private purchases of health care, as this reduces the burden on the publicly-funded system and creates a valuable pressure valve for it.

And this brings us back to the CHA, which contains the federal government’s requirements for provincial policymaking. To receive their full federal cash transfers for health care from Ottawa (totalling nearly $55 billion in 2025/26) provinces must abide by CHA rules and regulations.

And therein lies the rub—the CHA expressly disallows requiring patients to share the cost of treatment while the CHA’s often vaguely defined terms and conditions have been used by federal governments to discourage a larger role for the private sector in the delivery of health-care services.

Clearly, it’s time for Ottawa’s approach to reflect a more contemporary understanding of how to structure a truly world-class universal health-care system.

Prime Minister Carney can begin by learning from the federal government’s own welfare reforms in the 1990s, which reduced federal transfers and allowed provinces more flexibility with policymaking. The resulting period of provincial policy innovation reduced welfare dependency and government spending on social assistance (i.e. savings for taxpayers). When Ottawa stepped back and allowed the provinces to vary policy to their unique circumstances, Canadians got improved outcomes for fewer dollars.

We need that same approach for health care today, and it begins with the federal government reforming the CHA to expressly allow provinces the ability to explore alternate policy approaches, while maintaining the foundational principles of universality.

Next, the Carney government should either hold cash transfers for health care constant (in nominal terms), reduce them or eliminate them entirely with a concordant reduction in federal taxes. By reducing (or eliminating) the pool of cash tied to the strings of the CHA, provinces would have greater freedom to pursue reform policies they consider to be in the best interests of their residents without federal intervention.

After more than four decades of effectively mandating failing health policy, it’s high time to remove ambiguity and minimize uncertainty—and the potential for politically motivated interpretations—in the CHA. If Prime Minister Carney wants Canadians to finally have a world-class health-care system then can be proud of, he should allow the provinces to choose their own set of universal health-care policies. The first step is to fix, rather than defend, the 40-year-old legislation holding the provinces back.

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