The documents and video suggest a lack of informed consent from parents and children for gender transition treatments and surgeries.
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Leaked Files From Transgender Association 'Shocking' And 'Horrific' Admission, Critics Say
TUESDAY, APR 02, 2024 - 11:40 PM
Authored by Brad Jones via The Epoch Times ,
A leaked video and documents exposing the inner workings of the organization responsible for setting the so-called “standards of care” for gender transition treatments and surgeries on children is
a “shocking” and “horrific” admission, critics say.
In a file photo, a detransitioner looks at a letter from her former doctor who authorized a double mastectomy for transitioning into a male, at her home on Nov. 1, 2022. The woman now regrets the procedure. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
The leaked files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—better known as WPATH—reveal “
widespread medical malpractice on children and vulnerable adults,” according to a
241-page report disclosing emails, documents, and an 82-minute video.
Environmental Progress, a nonprofit organization led by founder and president Michael Shellenberger that obtained the files, released them to the public in an exposé on March 4.
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The WPATH Files show that what is called ‘gender medicine’ is neither science nor medicine,” Mr. Shellenberger said in a statement. “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.”
The files are “a shocking admission” by WPATH doctors and other medical practitioners privately acknowledging they’re not getting proper informed consent from parents and children before proceeding with gender transition treatments and surgeries, prominent civil rights attorney Harmeet Dhillon told The Epoch Times.
Ms. Dhillon, the founder and CEO of the Center for American Liberty, which is representing several women who’ve allegedly suffered harm and irreversible damage as a result of WPATH’s recommendations of transgender surgery for gender dysphoric children and young adults, called the exposé “an important act of journalism.”
“
These leaked files show that behind closed doors, WPATH members are admitting to the fact that they’re not getting informed consent for hormonal and surgical interventions from young patients, which is the very premise of our litigation for young women who’ve been mutilated by these doctors when they were children,” she said.
The Center for American Liberty has taken on three pro-bono cases representing detransitioners
Chole Cole, Layla Jane, and Luka Hein, who are suing Kaiser Permanente and doctors who performed double mastectomies on these young women.
The Report
WPATH advocates for children to have access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to alter their body according to their gender identity, according to the report. This suggests that children should be able to understand the full ramifications of these drugs and procedures, and that their parents can provide informed consent.
“But while WPATH publicly supports minors and their families consenting to these hormonal and surgical treatments based on a nebulous inner sense of self, privately,
some members admit that consent is not possible,” states the report. “Behind closed doors, WPATH-affiliated healthcare professionals confess that their practices are based on improvisation, that children cannot comprehend them, and that the consent process is not ethical.”
Michael Shellenberger, founder and president of nonprofit organization Environmental Progress, in a file photo. (The Epoch Times)
In video footage of an internal WPATH panel, Dianne Berg, a child psychologist, said experts wouldn’t expect children and youth to fully understand the effects of transgender procedures, because it is “out of their developmental range to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them,” according to the report.
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What really disturbs me is when the parents can’t tell me what they need to know about a medical intervention that apparently they signed off for,” said Ms. Berg. She suggested encouraging patients to ask questions and offering a “real informed consent process” rather than what was happening, which is “not what we need to be doing ethically.”
Jamison Green, an activist and former WPATH president, told the panel that sometimes patients avoid learning important information about procedures out of fear, saying, “People also are afraid many times about surgery, and so they can read other people’s descriptions about surgery, and they’ll miss details, or they’ll miss the most important piece of information for them simply because they’re afraid to read it.”
Dr. Daniel Metzger, a Canadian endocrinologist, said
gender doctors are “often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven’t even had biology in high school yet,” adding that even adults have limited knowledge of many of these medical interventions.
WPATH guidance states that doctors must inform patients about “the potential loss of fertility and available options to preserve fertility.”
But Dr. Metzger told the panel that “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 [fertility preservation] in a serious way.”
Less than week after Environmental Progress released the WPATH Files publicly, Britain’s National Health Service
stopped the use of puberty blockers on children. NHS England said, “We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of [puberty suppressing hormones] to make the treatment routinely available at this time.”
Meanwhile,
other European countries, such as Sweden, Finland, Norway, and France are also growing increasingly skeptical of what supporters call the “gender-affirmation model.”
‘They’re Doing It Anyway’
Informed consent is a well-known pre-requisite for ethical medical treatments and procedures, and yet “the so-called transgender medical community” in the U.S. continues to prescribe this “gender-affirming care” for children, Ms. Dhillon said.
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They’re doing it anyway,” she said. “The WPATH medical practitioners are fully aware that the gender-affirming care they’re pushing is based on shaky and inadequate medical research, but they continue to push it, ignoring the growing body of scientific evidence that is distancing mainstream medicine from these procedures.”
The leaked video also reveals that
what WPATH is stating publicly is the opposite of what its members they’re saying privately, Ms. Dhillon said.
“They know what they’re doing is wrong and that’s what they say to each other behind closed doors. They’re not getting proper informed consent. It’s not working,” she said. “We’re enabling, through WPATH’s quack medicine ideology, 9-year-olds to decide that they’re able to change their gender.”
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Gender-affirming” doctors and politicians in California, for example, continue to push puberty blockers as a safe, effective and reversible treatments and the only way to prevent suicide among gender dysphoric youth, but the facts say otherwise, Ms. Dhillon said.
The Center for American Liberty litigation has shed the light on the fact that puberty blockers are “absolutely permanently damaging,” she said.
Harmeet Dhillon, founder and CEO of the Center for American Liberty, which is representing several women who’ve allegedly suffered harm and irreversible damage from transgender procedures. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
“Every day detransitioners come out and announce that they’ve been told by their doctors [they] can’t have children,” she said. “All of our clients who have this so-called ‘treatment’ have permanently altered voices. They can’t reverse that even though they stopped taking the hormones.”
A
California law even enables 12-year-old children “to run away from home and seek refuge in LGBTQ homes to emancipate themselves” to pursue medical interventions such as the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone replacement therapy, and surgery without parental consent, she said.
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This is all being justified and underwritten by these pseudo-medical standards even when doctors privately and openly admit they don’t know all the long-term effects of “their radical procedures” or how to deal with them, she said.
The exposé reveals a WPATH member confirming fertility and sexual pleasure could be destroyed for young patients receiving gender-affirming care, Ms. Dhillon said.
In any other field of medicine, doctors cutting off body parts “and then saying they don’t really know what the long-term effects of that are” would be considered “completely outrageous,” but in “this sexual experimentation field,” the same standards of care don’t seem to apply, she said.
Every doctor who knowingly lied to patients should sued for medical malpractice and exposed to put an end to these practices, she said.
WPATH Statement
WPATH President Dr. Marci Bowers, issued the following statement on March 5:
“
WPATH is and has always been a science- and evidence-based organization whose recommendations are widely endorsed by major medical organizations around the world. We are the professionals who best know the medical needs of trans and gender diverse individuals—and stand opposed to individuals who misrepresent and de-legitimize the diverse identities and complex needs of this population through scare tactics. The world is not flat. Gender, like genitalia, is represented by diversity. The small percentage of the population that is trans or gender diverse deserves healthcare and will never be a threat to the global gender binary.”
Blaine Vella, executive director for WPATH stated in a memo to association members on March 5:
“This is and will continue to be our response to any media outreach. If any of you receive inquiries from the media, we request that you do not respond, send the request to us ... and our media partners will respond with the statement above.”
WPATH did not respond to an Epoch Times request for comment about the allegations.
A year ago, WPATH and its U.S affiliate USPATH, doubled down on gender-affirming care for minors, saying they “vehemently oppose” legislation outlawing access to gender-affirming health care to “transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people.”
‘A Giant Experiment’
Erin Friday, an attorney and co-leader of Our Duty, an international group that opposes gender ideology, especially for children and young adults, told the Epoch Times the WPATH Files are an admission that gender transition procedures are “a giant experiment.”
Ms. Friday referred to the case of a 16-year-old girl from the report who developed large tumors on her liver after taking testosterone and other medications, and an oncologist and surgeon both indicated the hormones were the likely reason for the cancer, according to the report. Many other known or potential complications and other related medical conditions were also discussed in the document, along with evidence of a lack of research.
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[T]here have never been any properly controlled trials in the wider field of gender medicine, which also consistently lacks long-term data,” states the report.
“Gender-affirming” doctors don’t question a patient’s comorbidities, especially in matters of mental health, even though WPATH’s recommendations state that the goal of “gender-affirming care” is to partner with transgender and gender diverse people “to holistically address their social, mental and medical health needs and well-being while respectfully affirming their gender identity,” said Ms. Friday.
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They push aside any patient mental health issue, regardless of whether its severe schizophrenia or a dissociative disorder,” she said. “They know that these people ... have severe mental health issues and they transition them anyway.”
Erin Friday, western U.S. co-leader of Our Duty, speaks at a seminar in San Francisco on Sept. 24, 2023. (Lear Zhou/The Epoch Times)
Ms. Friday, whose daughter formerly identified as transgender but has since accepted her female form, anticipates the WPATH Files will lead to congressional hearings.
The WPATH Files reveal much more than an organization that has overstepped its bounds, she said.
“
They have admitted to medical malpractice. They have admitted to lying,” she claimed.
Hospital boards and medical societies, Ms. Friday said, would be “well-advised” to use the leaked WPATH Files as “an off-ramp,” to move away from such harmful practices.
Dr. Shannae Anderson, a
licensed psychologist in California and Virginia who fled California nearly two years ago after her license was threatened, told The Epoch Times the WPATH Files have exposed the “horrific” agenda behind gender-affirming treatments.
In most states, the WPATH “standards of care” are the only treatment allowed, which means puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, social transitioning, and ultimately top and bottom surgeries, Dr. Anderson said.
“It is illegal in most states to actually offer another treatment avenue, which is crazy,” she said.
Another “absolutely horrifying” aspect of the leaked files is WPATH’s admission “they’re conducting these radical life-altering procedures on individuals with severe mental health disorders,” she stressed.
Dr. Anderson, now the director of psychology and co-director of ethics and advocacy for the American Association of Christian Counselors, which bills itself as the world’s largest faith-based mental health organization, said gender-affirming care policies have hamstrung therapists from being able to talk freely with patients about gender dysphoria and trampled free speech.
But, like other critics, she expects the WPATH Files exposé will lead to congressional hearings and more litigation to restore free speech so therapists can do their jobs.
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Psychotherapy is speech. That’s what we do. We talk,” she said. “And so when there is this ban against talking and exploring someone’s gender dysphoria, we’re not even allowed to ask questions about it or explore it.”
WPATH doctors admitting they know children cannot give informed consent is “a huge deal,” she said.
Dr. Anderson, a native of Thousand Oaks, Calif.,
confronted the board at a Conejo Valley Unified School District meeting in June, 2022, alleging that 8-year-olds were being exposed at school to sexual issues including abstract concepts like transgender ideology, which she said was beyond their level of comprehension.
“That is actually one of the reasons why I had my license threatened in California. I spoke before a school board about how teaching children about transgender ideology is inappropriate and dangerous because they can’t begin to comprehend all that goes into a transgender identity and transformation,” she said. “And, what the WPATH files expose is that I was right, essentially, that when they undergo these gender treatments, they cannot give informed consent.”
WPATH members acknowledged not only that children can’t grasp the scope of what’s going to happen to them with these treatments, but neither can parents, and that they’re not disclosing all the risks and dangers associated with them “because they don’t know what they are,” she said.
There isn’t enough research to determine the long-term effects of such treatments and procedures, and the research that does exist shows that a “watch and wait” treatment is best, because the vast majority of gender dysphoric minors outgrow the condition and accept their natural bodies, she said.
Jordan Peterson, Canadian clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, in a file photo. (The Epoch Times)
Worst Medical Scandal in History?
In a recent
interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson, a well-known Canadian psychologist and author, Mr. Shellenberger said he was unfamiliar with WPATH at first.
“I thought maybe people were exaggerating what was happening,” he said.
Then, “a source or sources” gave him about 170 pages of the internal files from the discussion boards of WPATH, along with the video of WPATH leaders and members talking about some of the problems they were encountering.
“These files put to rest any doubts anybody should have that what is happening is one of the greatest medical mistreatment scandals in human history,” he said. “It might be the worst. It’s certainly up there with lobotomies. It’s up there with the Tuskegee experiments.”
Mr. Peterson responded,
“It’s way worse than both of those.”
The WPATH Files show “without a shadow of a doubt” that the people who are are performing these “mistreatments” are not getting informed consent, Mr. Shellenberger said.
“And then they just sort of throw up their hands and they say, we don’t really know how to solve this problem. At no point in the video, does anybody say, ‘Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this,’” he said. “There’s a basic horror to it, but then at the intellectual level, you can’t help but be slightly fascinated by these people. What is wrong with them that they’re so in the grip of an ideology that they’re doing these mistreatments and never questioning ... that perhaps they shouldn’t be doing them at all.”
Mr. Peterson referenced Dr. Ken Zucker, a psychologist whose studies showed 88 percent of 2- to 12-year-olds in two separate studies of boys and girls clinically referred as experiencing gender dysphoria—who were not socially transitioned—later reported as adolescents and young adults they no longer suffered from the condition and were comfortable with their natal genders.
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Leave them the hell alone till they’re 18,” Mr. Peterson said. “The man who established that was Ken Zucker. He ran the best journal that dealt with childhood gender dysphoria for years up in Toronto. That was his recommendation for treatment, and the bloody radicals ran him out of business 10 years ago.”
Now doctors are doing the opposite and are recommending the “most extreme” treatments and surgical intervention possible and telling people “that if they don’t listen, their children are going to die, that they’re going to commit suicide, which is a complete bloody lie. There was never a bit of evidence for that, not even bad evidence. It was just a lie,” he said.
Then, they offer “this absolutely cataclysmic treatment with unimaginably dire consequences to people who don’t even understand and can’t understand what they’re agreeing to” and tell them “that’s how they’ll find their true self,” he said. “So that’s where we’re at. It’s so sickening.”
