Paul Tuns:

Leaked files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) show that medical professionals routinely practice medical malpractice in providing sex-trait modification procedures such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-reassignment surgery.

WPATH is treated by many journalists and politicians as disinterested experts in so-called gender medicine.

Investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger was provided with the internal text messages from 2021-2024 and a video of a WPATH panel discussion. Shellenberger made the files available online, at Environmental Progress, a nonprofit research institute, with names and other identifying information redacted for all clinicians excepting two prominent members of WPATH, Dr. Marci Bowers, an American gynecologist and president of WPATH, and Canadian pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Daniel Metzger. Journalist Mia Hughes wrote a thorough 72-page report on the files, “The WPATH Files: Pseudoscientific Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children, Adolescents, and Vulnerable Adults,” to accompany nearly more than 150 pages of text messages.

One text message from September 2021, titled “Trauma and the Presence of Dissociative Disorders in Trans Patients,” acknowledges “Trauma is common among trans clients.”

In one discussion, doctors admit to providing puberty blockers to a 10-year -old girl in one case and a 13-year-old developmentally delayed child. Other exchanges show doctors committing genital mutilation surgery on people with schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder). In one message, one WPATH member admitted “I have a number of cases of folks with significant mental health issues” including autism and psychosis.

One clinician admits knowing “quite a number of people who underwent serious and invasive surgery they did not want” although they were gender-confused and may have benefited from further psychotherapy first or mere social transitioning in place of medical intervention. One text said a patient felt “brainwashed” to transition by her medical provider and while still in her teens regretted transitioning to male.

One clinician mentions a study that found 47 per cent of “natal women” – individuals born female who transition to male – regretting their surgeries and other clinicians admitting anecdotally that their practice confirms such numbers, yet no doubt about going through with the procedures are expressed by the surgeons, doctors, and therapist.

There is extensive discussion in text exchanges about how to handle doubts, including the testimonies of de-transitioners, people who renounce their transition and return to their biological sex. One clinician dismisses de-transitioners as “elderly women” who can no longer make money from prostitution. Another WPATH member admitted that there was incongruity between the organization’s view that “gender” is fluid and its opposition to de-transitioning.

Shellenberger wrote at Unherd that the files show surgeons, therapists, and activists routinely discuss amongst themselves how to “treat people with gender distress” and “they reveal that what is happening is neither good science nor good medicine.”

Hughes describes the video panel discussion, noting “There was agreement among the panel of experts about children’s inability to comprehend the powerful and life-altering effects of the hormone therapy they are seeking.” In that video, Canadian pediatrician Metzger admitted his aim is to make children “happier in the moment” despite his first-hand knowledge and medical literature proving widespread regret of loss of reproductive abilities following use of puberty blockers and sex-reassignment surgery.

Hughes observes in her report, that sex-trait modification procedures on minors and adults with mental health issues “are unethical medical experiments” that cause “harm without justification” because they result in the “destruction of healthy reproductive systems, the amputation of healthy breasts, and the surgical removal of healthy genitals as the first and only line of treatment” for “some of society’s most vulnerable people.” WPATH clinicians “eschew any attempt to reconcile the patient with his or her birth sex.” Hughes said, “their injuries are painful and life-altering.” The texts describe a litany of post-transition side-effects, with the most common being loss of sexual function and recurrent pain in the genital area, but also atrophy of tissue and liver diseases.

Hughes says in her report, “While there is a place in medicine for risky experiments, these can only be justified if there is a reliable, objective diagnosis; no other treatment options are available, and if the outcome for a patient or patient group is dire.” However, she said, “contrary to WPATH’s claims, gender medicine does not fall into this category.”

Shellenbeger said the files show that doctors providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and carrying out sex reassignment surgery are violating their professional medical ethics twice, first by harming the patient and second by not obtaining informed consent. He said the files show “overwhelming evidence that some gender clinicians associated with WPATH know that they are not receiving consent from children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults or their caregivers.” Furthermore, “They are fully aware that the so-called “gender-affirming care” they provide can result in lifelong complications and that their patients do not understand the implications, including sterility and the loss of sexual function.”

Shellenbeger wrote that the constantly evolving “Standards of Care” produced by WPATH – eight versions so far – “are based on ideology rather than science” as surgeons, doctors, and therapists “are essentially making it up as they go along, conducting uncontrolled experiments, and doing barely anything to follow up on whether they work.”

Hughes concluded her report: “Given the extent of the medical malpractice WPATH endorses, our report will conclude by calling on the U.S. government to oversee a bipartisan national inquiry 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.”