Leaked files released on Monday by the think tank Environmental Progress reveal that a leading transgender activist organization, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), is playing loose with facts about transgenderism. WPATH is considered by many to be the leading authority on transgenderism, and its Standards of Care have shaped the policies of governments and medical organizations on the subject.
Transgender zealots claim that the shadowy procedures, euphemistically termed “gender-affirming care” and sometimes performed on children, are somehow “life saving,” although that claim is difficult to prove or even defend. The release of WPATH files reveals an organization more interested in the narrative that transgenderism is good and healthy than actual science.
“The WPATH Files show that what is called ‘gender medicine’ is neither science nor medicine,” said Michael Shellenberger of Environmental Progress. “The experiments are not randomized, double-blind, or controlled. It’s not medicine since the first rule is to do no harm. And that requires informed consent.”
Children are particularly vulnerable to harm from the experimental procedures, and the files show that doctors are well aware that these kids often do not understand the procedures they are being subjected to.
“Activist members of WPATH know that the so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ they provide can result in life-long complications and sterility and that their patients do not understand the implications, such as loss of sexual function and the ability to experience orgasm,” Shellenberger added. “These leaked files show overwhelming evidence that the professionals within WPATH know that they are not getting consent from children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults, or their caregivers.”
Psychoanalyst David Bell, a prominent figure in exposing the U.K.’s Tavistock gender clinic, where thousands of children were rushed into taking puberty blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria, told the Daily Mail, “Even for me the contents of these files are shocking and disturbing.”
“The files suggest that some members of WPATH are aware that gender-affirming care sometimes causes very serious harm and that some patients who received irreversible medical treatments were incapable of giving meaningful consent,” Bell said.
WPATH members “demonstrate a lack of consideration for long-term patient outcomes despite being aware of the debilitating and potentially fatal side effects of cross-sex hormones and other treatments,” noted an Environmental Progress press release. “Messages in the files show that patients with severe mental health issues, such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, and other vulnerabilities such as homelessness, are being allowed to consent to hormonal and surgical interventions. Members dismiss concerns about these patients and characterize efforts to protect them as unnecessary ‘gatekeeping.'”
Among the files is a recording of a discussion in which Canadian hormone specialist Dan Metzger declares, “It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year-old, but I know I’m talking to a blank wall. Most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of a brain space to really talk about it in a serious way.”
Mental illness, of which many believe gender dysphoria is a symptom, should not be a barrier to treatment, according to at least one physician activist.
“Psychiatric illness should not block a person’s ability to start hormones if they have persistent gender dysphoria, capacity to consent, and the benefits … outweigh the risks,” declared Dan Karasic, a physician who helped draft WPATH’s mental-health guidelines.
Indeed, psychiatric illness would appear to be a prerequisite to receiving such treatment.
Shellenberger claims he received the WPATH files through a source who contacted him after his work on the Twitter files.
“At a moral level, we feel duty-bound to publish the WPATH Files and do everything within our power to encourage as wide an audience as possible to access them. We believe they show that WPATH is neither a scientific nor [a] medical organization and should not be treated as one,” Shellenberger said in the report.
The files show that WPATH knows that the care they are championing is experimental at best. At worst, it’s a form of social engineering designed to create non-breeding human beings.
