Breaking Tuesday, the “leading world medical organization devoted to transgender health care deleted guidance urging invasive interventions for child gender dysphoria from its website after internal documents revealed that its members had doubts about the safety and efficacy of the approach” reports National Review.
World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has come under scrutiny after records of internal discussions, released by the nonprofit Environmental Progress earlier this month, revealed that members admitted privately that gender-transition surgeries and hormone therapies are largely experimental and that minors struggle to give informed consent before undergoing the life-altering procedures.
WPATH’s Standards of Care 8 (SOC8) manual, released in 2022, advocates for adolescents who have received a diagnosis of “gender incongruence” to access puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries so long as they demonstrate “the emotional and cognitive maturity required to provide informed consent/assent for the treatment.” Behind closed doors, however, highly-credentialed WPATH members acknowledged that young people often lack the health literacy and maturity to grasp the gravity of the medical decisions they’re making and their possible ramifications, such as sterility, derailed sexual development, and general regret.
The name of WPATH’s president, Marci Bowers, also no longer appears on the website. Bowers was prominent in the internal discussions revealed:
In January 2022, Bowers said during a board meeting that the effects of puberty blockers on fertility and “the onset of orgasmic response” are not fully known. Boys who have their puberty blocked early can have “problematic surgical outcomes,” she said, and extreme difficulty climaxing.
National Review notes Bowers’ hypocrisy: “Yet in public statements representing the institution, Bowers has claimed that opposition to child sex-change operations and pharmaceuticals is a threat to transgender existence. WPATH publishes rare but urgent blanket statements that lack the nuance and caution that its affiliated members have shared behind the scenes.”
As of Tuesday, SOC8 had been removed from WPATH’s website, with the link to the document generating a “page not found” error message. The guidance had been available online as of Monday, according to internet archives.