On the warpath against WPATH’s harmful guidelines for treatment of gender-confused teens
By Dianna Kenny, Mercator.
In 2024 two significant events have occurred in gender medicine.
The first came in March with the leak of documents from the internal chatboard of WPATH (the World Professional Association of Transgender Health). These shine an unflattering light on so-called “gender-affirming care” (GAC) or “transgender medicine” and suggest that it is leading to widespread medical malpractice on children and vulnerable young people.
The second came in April with the release of the Cass Review in the United Kingdom. This was a long and thorough review of the state of gender medicine commissioned by the UK government. Its conclusions questioned the professionalism and legitimacy of the whole field of gender medicine.
From the point of view of a professional psychologist like myself, the WPATH files are distressing. They demonstrate ignorance of child development, indifference to young people’s co-morbid conditions such as ASD, ADHD, even psychosis, family dysfunction, and social determinants, plus blindness to the cognitive immaturity of young people and their lack of readiness to make life-changing decisions.
Although most of the members of WPATH are Americans and gender-affirming care is strongest in the US, legal authorities in some states—22 have enacted legislation against the medicalization of children—are fiercely critical of the organisation. An amicus curiae brief from Alabama submitted to the US Supreme Court earlier this year is damning. It describes WPATH as base, dishonest, deceptive, delusional, and sociopathic.
The evidence has shown, according to Alabama’s document, that:
- The WPATH standards are not evidence based
- WPATH suppresses scientific inquiry
- Many clinicians do not follow the WPATH standards, particularly regarding lower age limits for medical interventions and surgery
Dr Gordan Guyatt, a pioneer of evidence-based medicine, says that guidelines need to be based on systematic reviews of evidence; “a bunch of experts writ[ing] whatever they felt like” does not constitute evidence-based medicine. Nonetheless, this is how the 2022 SOC 8 (Standards of Care 8) WPATH guidelines were written. Even the authors of SOC8 admitted that the guidelines were just “consensus based expert opinion”.
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