CV NEWS FEED // Leaked internal files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) this week revealed members’ shocking disregard of medical ethics and the detrimental long-term effects of the hormone therapies and surgical interventions they recommend for children.
“Around the globe, patients and doctors have been assured they are following ‘best practice’ through the ‘Standards of Care’ published by [WPATH],” stated Robert Clarke, Director of Advocacy for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International:
The documents released today expose an organisation lacking consideration for long-term patient outcomes despite being aware of the debilitating and life-changing effects of cross-sex hormones and other “treatments”.
The WPATH Files
The nonprofit group Environmental Progress published a report including the leaked files on March 4. The leaked files include internal conversations between members of WPATH, and a panel discussion of the members.
The report’s author Mia Hughes wrote that WPATH, founded in 1979, “is considered the leading authority on the care and treatment of individuals who have gender dysphoria and/or identify as transgender,” and added that its published guidelines have international influence.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Endocrine Society are among the medical groups that look to WPATH’s “Standards of Care” for guidance.
Yet, WPATH’s “approach to medicine is consumer-driven and pseudoscientific, and its members appear to be engaged in political activism, not science,” Hughes wrote.
The files show conversations from an online forum for WPATH members seeking advice on different situations involving minors or adults suffering from gender dysphoria. Among WPATH members are doctors, nurses, psychologists, counselors, activists, and others.
WPATH’s Disregard for Minors’ Safety and Health
Clarke stated that WPATH members are dismissive of “concerns and characterize efforts to protect patients as unnecessary ‘gatekeeping.’ The files also provide clear evidence that doctors and therapists are aware they are offering minors life-changing interventions they cannot fully understand.”
In the leaked panel discussion, WPATH member and pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Daniel Metzger said, “most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of a brain space to really talk about [fertility preservation] in a serious way,” when discussing transitioning as a “treatment.”
According to the panel’s transcript in the report, Metzger continued, “that’s always bothered me, but you know, we still want the kids to. Be happy, happier in the moment, right?”
Hughes highlighted in the report that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones combined “could leave a young patient sterile for life.”
“The drugs come with a host of known and anticipated side effects, including brittle bones, cognitive impairment, and heightened risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease, as well as uncertainty concerning resolution of gender dysphoria,” Hughes added.
Clarke stated that the WPATH “files reveal what we already knew to be true – children cannot consent to life-altering procedures in the full knowledge of the consequences involved.”
WPATH’s Disregard for Vulnerable Adults’ Safety and Health
The messages also reveal WPATH members’ disregard for the safety of vulnerable adults, such as those suffering from schizophrenia, depression, and PTSD, so as to promote hormone therapies and surgical interventions.
In one such WPATH post, which did not have a date, a nurse practitioner “described a patient with very complex mental health issues, including PTSD, major depressive disorder (MDD), observed dissociations, and schizoid typical traits,” Hughes wrote:
The nurse told the group that the patient is eager to start hormones, but psychiatry is recommending holding off.
“My practice is based fully on the informed consent model however this case has me perplexed; struggling internally as to what is the right thing to do,” said the nurse.
Dr. Dan Karasic of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), the lead author of the mental health chapter of WPATH’s SOC8, was baffled by the nurse’s perplexity. “I’m missing why you are perplexed,” said Karasic. “The mere presence of psychiatric illness should not block a person’s ability to start hormones if they have persistent gender dysphoria, capacity to consent, and the benefits of starting hormones outweigh the risks.”
Calling on Governments to Act
Hughes wrote that the report calls upon the United States government “to investigate how activists with little respect for the Hippocratic Oath could have risen to such prominence as to set the Standards of Care for an entire field of medicine, leading to the medical abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.”
Clarke echoed Hughes’ call for accountability, stating that it is “time for more governments to act.”
“Children who experience discomfort with their biological sex deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and need compassionate, effective mental health care. Sadly, at the hands of ‘gender clinics’ around the world armed with the WPATH ‘standards of care’, they have been pushed in only one direction,” Clarke concluded:
There is a mounting and tragic cost to this ideology, revealed by the many stories of those “de-transitioning” or who otherwise regret what was done to them. Ultimately, vulnerable children and adults who deserved better were led to irreversible interventions; those who spoke out were censored.
