CV NEWS FEED // Doctors and psychiatric professionals are condemning the leading global “transgender healthcare” association after a set of leaked internal files exposed the group for “widespread medical malpractice.”
The WPATH Files, published on March 4 by the nonprofit Environmental Progress, include leaked internal discussions and panels from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). WPATH’s published guidelines, called “Standards of Care,” influence many medical professionals and organizations on “best practices” for medically treating patients who suffer from gender dysphoria.
WPATH members include professional doctors, counselors, psychiatrists, nonprofessional “trans” advocates, and others. As CatholicVote previously reported, the Files reveal WPATH members’ “disregard of medical ethics and the detrimental long-term effects of the hormone therapies and surgical interventions they recommend for children.”
In an emailed press release from Environmental Progress, doctors, psychiatrists, and other professionals expressed their shock at the files’ contents.
At least one of the physicians and professionals in the press release are in favor of transitioning adolescents and adults in certain cases – yet they also condemned the credibility of WPATH’s “Standards of Care” and called for greater transparency after learning about the Files.
“Knowingly misleading patients, parents and the public about safety, efficacy, consent, and long-term outcomes is medical malpractice,” stated Lauren Schwartz, MD, FAPA, Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. “WPATH has evolved into one of the most egregious disfigurements of medical practice our profession has ever encountered.”
Especially “reprehensible” is that “WPATH continues to knowingly prioritize high-risk, invasive medical and surgical paths for minors,” Schwartz said, which is “an approach that would not be tolerated in any other field of medicine.”
“The report uncovers fundamental flaws found in the WPATH’s treatment guidelines, curiously embraced by many American associations,” Schwartz said, listing groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society:
The WPATH report provides critical transparency that the WPATH SOC8 is not scientifically investigated, is not ethical or evidence-based and is certainly not representative of professional consensus regarding medical and mental health care for gender distressed youth.
Dr. Carrie Mendoza, Emergency Medicine physician and Director of FAIR in Medicine, said that the files show “that the WPATH community is in chaos, unable to recognize patients too young or too mentally ill to properly consent, experimenting with medications and doses for cosmetic effects, and shrugging off life-threatening complications like cancer.”
Dr. Eithan Haim, a general surgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital, said, “This is like the Milgram Prison Experiment but played out on an international level.”
“The clinicians in WPATH know what they’re doing is wrong, they’re expressing the same concerns of their most ardent critics, but when it comes time to decide, they defer to the white coat standing behind them telling them to press the button,” Haim continued:
Unlike the Milgram Experiments where the electric shocks were merely simulation, the effects in this case are the permanent physical and mental destruction of society’s most vulnerable. And what makes this more frightening is that this is being perpetuated by our society’s most powerful institutions, the same ones who claim to be their victim’s primary protectors.
Roy Eappen, MDCM, an endocrinologist, said, “The clinicians at least are very aware of the issues of informed consent in children for life altering treatments. They talk about fertility regret, the many risks of hormonal treatment and puberty blockers and the problems with follow up,” even though they admit that these children likely haven’t taken a biology course.
“It puzzles me why [Standards of Care] removes age restrictions for medicalizing children,” Eappen said:
The informed consent issues alone should make these treatments a non-starter in children.
The WPATH files make clear that this is not a medical society giving best evidenced advice for vulnerable children and adolescents but indeed has been taken over by activists with an agenda to move forward with these treatments in spite of risks and consequences.
Dr. Az Hakeem, a consultant psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and former head of the adult gender dysphoria psychotherapy service at the Portman Clinic, stated that the “alarming” Files show that WPATH’s guidelines “appear to be based on clinicians improvising as they go along and conducting experiments on people who are often vulnerable.”
“The discussions seen in the WPATH Files could not fall further from the normal standards in healthcare and are in direct contradiction to the first rule of medicine – that of ‘first do no harm’,” Hakeem said.
Dr. Louise Irvine, GP and co-chair of the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender called the Files’ contents “shocking.”
“They show that an organization that has been extremely influential in UK policy and practice for transgender health care is unscientific,” Irvine stated, also calling the members “neglectful of the principles of medical consent, especially for vulnerable groups such as those with mental health problems… It is time that UK medical organizations stopped using WPATH as their policy guide.”
Dr. David Bell, a psychoanalyst and former staff governor of the Tavistock and Portman National Health Service foundation trust, also wrote a reaction op-ed on March 5 for The Critic about the WPATH Files.
Bell’s article especially denounced the experimental treatments WPATH members have encouraged for persons suffering from gender dysphoria, and called for medical professionals to respond. He wrote:
I do not know how any responsible medical authority can do anything after the release of these files but break off all ties with WPATH, and indeed condemn its continued existence.
