HEALTH Why disturbing leaks from US gender group WPATH ring alarm bells in the NHS

[Plain Jane]

Why disturbing leaks from US gender group WPATH ring alarm bells in the NHS | Hannah Barnes

WPATH is no model in the search for evidence-based care of transgender children

www.theguardian.com

Why disturbing leaks from US gender group WPATH ring alarm bells in the NHS​

Hannah Barnes


WPATH is no model in the search for evidence-based care of transgender children
Sat 9 Mar 2024 13.00 EST
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The medical transitioning of children has become one of the most controversial and polarising issues of our time. For some, it is a medical scandal. For others, life-saving treatment.

So, when hundreds of messages were leaked from an internal forum of doctors and mental health workers from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, it was bound to spark interest. WPATH describes itself as an “interdisciplinary professional and educational organisation devoted to transgender health”. Most significantly, it produces standards of care (SOC) which, it claims, articulate “professional consensus” about how best to help people with gender dysphoria.


Despite its grand title, WPATH is neither solely a professional body – a significant proportion of its membership are activists – nor does it represent the “world” view on how to care for this group of people. There is no global agreement on best practice. The leaked messages (and the odd recording) – dubbed the WPATH files – are disturbing. In one video, doctors acknowledge that patients are sometimes too young to fully understand the consequences of puberty blockers and hormones for their fertility. “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,” one Canadian endocrinologist says.

WPATH’s president, Dr Marci Bowers, comments on the impact of early blocking of puberty on sexual function in adulthood. “To date,” she writes, “I’m unaware of an individual claiming ability to orgasm when they were blocked at Tanner 2.” Tanner stage 2 is the beginning of puberty. It can be as young as nine in girls.

Elsewhere, there are extraordinary discussions on how to manage “trans clients” with dissociative identity disorder (what used to be called multiple personality disorder) when “not all the alters have the same gender identity”. Surgeons talk about procedures that result in bodies that don’t exist in nature: those with both sets of genitals – the “phallus-preserving vaginoplasty”; double mastectomies that don’t have nipples; “nullification” surgery, where there are no genitals at all, just smooth skin. And doctors discuss the possibility that 16-year-old patients have liver cancer as the result of taking hormones. The problem is not necessarily the discussions themselves, but that the organisation is not so open when speaking publicly.

The views of WPATH matter to the UK. For years, the organisation and its SOC have been cited as a source of “best practice” for trans healthcare by numerous medical bodies, including the British Medical Association and the General Medical Council – and still is. The Royal College of Psychiatrists refers to WPATH in its own recommendations for care.

The problem is not necessarily the discussions themselves, but that the organisation is not so open when speaking publicly

Most relevant is that WPATH is cited as “good practice” in the current service specifications underpinning youth and adult gender clinics in England and Scotland, albeit in both cases it is WPATH’s previous SOC that is mentioned. The most recent version does away with all age limits from the beginning of puberty for hormones and surgical interventions, other than female to male genital surgery, and contains a chapter on eunuchs.

Several staff at England’s NHS adult gender clinics are not just members of WPATH (one is the former president), but authors of that current SOC. So too was Susie Green, the former boss of the young people’s charity Mermaids; a lack of medical expertise does not exclude either membership of WPATH or the power to influence policy.

England’s only NHS children’s gender clinic – the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) at London’s Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust – will close its doors at the end of March, having been earmarked for closure since July 2022. But the 2016 service specification still underpinning Gids states that “the service will be delivered in line with” WPATH 7. While Gids was generally more cautious than other WPATH practitioners, clinicians I spoke to for my book, Time to Think, also relayed how young people claiming to have multiple personalities, or who identified with another race, could be referred for puberty blockers.

Gids staff have also presented at WPATH conferences for the past decade, including the most recent, held in 2022. This doesn’t imply agreement with WPATH’s principles, but association with the group becomes harder to justify as its views become more extreme.

It is difficult to see how the Department of Health’s assertion that NHS England “moved away from WPATH guidelines more than five years ago” holds.

What is true is that there is no mention of WPATH in updated guidance that will underpin the new youth gender services opening on 1 April. What’s more, NHS England has made it clear that WPATH’s views are irrelevant to its core recommendation that puberty blockers will no longer be available as part of routine clinical practice.

There is a battle raging over how best to care for children and young people struggling with their gender identity, with ever increasing numbers of European countries choosing to take a more cautious, less medical, approach after finding the evidence base underpinning those treatments to be wanting.

NHS England insists that new services will operate in accordance with recommendations of the independent Cass review, and that it is well placed to develop policies “in line with clinical evidence and expertise”. But it won’t be easy. There is already discussion among professionals working in gender services planning a pushback against Cass’s as yet unpublished final recommendations.

It was difficult for Gids to stand up to external pressures, allowing the care it offered to suffer. At the same time, NHS England failed in its duty to provide proper oversight. Both they and those in charge of the new services must do better if they are to avoid the mistakes of the past. Without proper, evidence-based guidance on what good practice looks like, organisations like WPATH will continue to have influence.

Hannah Barnes is associate editor at the New Statesman and author of Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children

 

[Plain Jane]

The WPATH Files Revealed — Genspect

The WPATH Files are leaked internal conversations that were sent to Michael Shellenberger last year. Michael worked on these files with Mia Hughes and created an extensive report for his organisation, Environmental Progress. The Files include verbatim leaked conversations as well as an executive...

genspect.org

The WPATH Files Revealed​

By Stella O'Malley

Posted: 5th March 2024 • Press Releases

The WPATH Files are leaked internal conversations that were sent to Michael Shellenberger last year. Michael worked on these files with Mia Hughes and created an extensive report for his organisation, Environmental Progress. The Files include verbatim leaked conversations as well as an executive summary for those who don’t fancy reading 250 pages. The Files were released at 7pm EST, Monday 4th March.

I remember my heart skipped a beat when I first heard about the WPATH Files. It was at a party last November, the night before our conference in Denver was due to start. Everyone was meeting each other for the first time and I was busy doing the introductions. Then Michael Shellenberger took me aside and explained to me that a whistle blower – or whistleblowers – had leaked files to him of internal conversations from WPATH members. The party faded away as the consequence of what Michael was saying dawned on me.

For some years now I had searched for an investigative reporter who reached beyond the research bubble and brought this complex issue to the hearts and minds of the general public. Then Michael Shellenberger and his team landed on my doorstep.

The WPATH Files reveal that clinicians are carrying out medical malpractice. Great harm is being caused and the WPATH clinicians know this.

The WPATH Files also show that WPATH is neither a scientific nor medical organisation. In fact, WPATH is the wild west of western medicine where activists admonish highly qualified surgeons who seek protocols for the surgeries they are performing. Apparently protocols and policies for irreversible surgeries are regressive and cisnormative.

Since approximately 2007, when the “Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association” became the “World Professional Association of Transgender Health”, activists have been shaping WPATH’s policies and decisions. Concerned clinicians are discouraged to demonstrate any caution in their clinical work. One activist-clinician revealed “In the last 15 years I had to regrettably decline writing only one letter, mainly b/c the person evaluated was in active psychosis and hallucinated during the assessment session. Other than that – nothing – everyone got their assessment letter, insurance approval, and are living (presumably) happily ever after.” (The word “presumably” is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence.)

This gender therapist from California also revealed, “I have also intervened on behalf of people who have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, cPTSD, homeless and got at least an orchiectomy…”. Apparently we have reached a point in gender medicine where homeless people with mental disorders receive surgeries, even when they have little chance of being able to carry out the necessary post-surgical self-care to ensure their body will recover.

The words in the WPATH Files speak for themselves; their clinicians work with “clients who identify as non-binary, agender, and Eunuchs who have wanted atypical surgical procedures, many of which either don’t exist in nature or represent the first of their kind and therefore probably have few examples of best practice.”

These “non-standard” procedures, such as “top surgery without nipples, nullification, and phallus-preserving vaginoplasty”, have no evidence-base to support them. Nobody has any idea about the long-term prognosis for a male who preserves his phallus and adds a neo-vagina.

The subtitle of the WPATH Files are “Pseudoscientific Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children, Adolescents, and Vulnerable Adults” is perhaps the most important point. Mia Hughes’ insightful report on the WPATH Files details how this fringe organisation that started in 1978 as a loose affiliation of clinicians and activists came to self-identify as the leading authority for medical transition. For many years nobody challenged their position. Suddenly, as a result of a perfect storm of social movements, WPATH recently found itself in the centre of the public discourse.

Perhaps the most egregious aspect of the Files is the revelation that the WPATH clinicians are aware of the carcinogenic aspect of testosterone and discuss patients who appear to have died as a consequence of hormone treatment.

They are also well aware of the regret experienced by young people who medically transition. Dr Daniel Metzger, a Canadian endocrinologist, pointed out that “Some of the Dutch researchers gave some data about young adults who had transitioned and [had] reproductive regret, like regret, and it’s there, and I don’t think any of that surprises us.”

These young people, who now have an average age of 32, regret their infertility. In my clinical practice I often work with people who experience infertility; the age for infertility regret becomes heightened in the late thirties and typically is most intense around the early forties, and so the enormity of the impact of their infertility has yet to unfold.

The cavalier, callous response to the devastation of young people’s lives is reflective of WPATH’s abdication of responsibility over the harm they are overseeing. “I think now that I follow a lot of kids into their mid-twenties, I’m like, Oh, the dog isn’t doing it for you, is it?” They’re like, ‘No, I just found this wonderful partner, and now want kids…’.”

Lack of sexual functioning is also a significant source of distress, as these young people now find that their lack of sexual functioning is impairing their ability to form long-lasting intimate relationships.

The WPATH Files reveal the smoking gun whereby it is clear that “First, do no harm” has changed to “buyer beware”. The consumers of gender medicine believe that the clinicians know what they’re doing. But they don’t. They are operating without an evidence-base and the Files show that they know their work is hurting to children, adolescents and vulnerable people.

We anticipate some will try to undermine the WPATH Files by reframing this material as just a series of normal conversations between doctors and therapists. Yet these files show that this is an unfolding medical scandal of catastrophic proportions. Everyone who reads the Files will see that real lives are being harmed, and that WPATH’s leaders know that children, their parents, and mentally ill people aren’t giving consent. If you want to help advance this potentially landmark release, please read, like, share and highlight these Files.

 

[Plain Jane]

The articles above are a basic introduction to the WPATH Files. The video below is an in-depth interview of Michael Shellenberger about how the project came about. The information was leaked to him some time in 2023. He hired some writers to put together a report and the report was released March 4 of this year.

I saw this video and decided to look up a couple of articles to go along with it. Shellenberger is being interviewed by Winston Marshall.

R/T 2:00:00

View: https://youtu.be/nulK60b1lnA?si=U0XhR7FWyJNyrkXJ

 

[Publius]

A bunch of butchers posing as doctors that want to use kids as guinea pigs to prefect the Frankenstein sex changes that will leave them sterile for the rest of their lives. I say pass laws to prevent this from happening until they are 18 years old or older then they can decide if this is what they really want in life.

 

[Plain Jane]

. I say pass laws to prevent this from happening until they are 18 years old or older then they can decide if this is what they really want in life.

I would agree with you about the age except for so many young adults that are mentally ill and being told that these surgeries will make them feel better. Even the so-called counselors are not sure that these young people can actually give informed consent.

 

[Southside]

Even the so-called counselors are not sure that these young people can actually give informed consent.

Of course they can't That is why the "age of majority" is 18. How these heathen changed the laws to butcher these kids is CRIMINAL!

 

[momma_soapmaker]

They are mutilating these children. The parents are just as guilty.

 

[Henry Bowman]

Of course they can't That is why the "age of majority" is 18. How these heathen changed the laws to butcher these kids is CRIMINAL!

It is worse than that, it is absolute evil.

 

[Elza]

They are mutilating these children. The parents are just as guilty.

Or they are prosecuted and their kid(s) forcibly removed by the state for refusing to allow said mutilation.

 

[Plain Jane]

Of course they can't That is why the "age of majority" is 18. How these heathen changed the laws to butcher these kids is CRIMINAL!

I probably didn't make myself clear. Even those who are in their 20's at the time of transition tend to have mental health problems to the degree that they can't think far enough into the future about what it means to lose fertility or have to provide some pretty invasive after care for the rest of their lives.

 

[Southside]

I probably didn't make myself clear. Even those who are in their 20's at the time of transition tend to have mental health problems to the degree that they can't think far enough into the future about what it means to lose fertility or have to provide some pretty invasive after care for the rest of their lives.

Oh no, you were clear. I really do not have a problem with an 18+ yer old making a stupid decision. I am sorry if they do not consider the ramifications. It should NEVER happen to someone under 18.

 

[ShadowMan]

This WHOLE trans issue is a MENTAL HEALTH issue. YOU ARE WHAT YOUR DNA SAYS YOU ARE. EVERYTHING else is a MENTAL HEALTH issue and should be treated as such. This mutilation of our youth is an abomination and needs to STOP NOW! It's already done more damage than we know and will be decades in resolving.

 

[Toosh]

What is being done to this generation of children is criminal. These kids are brainwashed, confused, drugged, dissociated from real friendships and sometimes family relations. They are depressed, afraid of everything, know nothing and can't think for themselves. Most have no real self-esteem and no accomplishments. I fear they will suffer a lifetime of pain and mental issues.