Newly leaked documents are raising serious questions about doctors with a medical organization that’s recognized internationally for being at the forefront of so-called “gender-affirming care”. In light of the revelations, some are accusing them of violating medical ethics and informed consent for providing transgender procedures while knowing that such efforts included side effects such as cancer in teens, reduced sexual function, and infertility.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) is a controversial organization that transgender advocates and health professionals look to for medical guidance. According to several reports, the group has long been under scrutiny for its standards of care for ignoring concerns about the long-term side effects of experimental gender procedures.
Now documents obtained and published by the U.S.-based think tank, Environmental Progress, allegedly confirm the organization did not meet the standards of evidence-based medicine, and its members frequently discuss improvising treatments as they go along.
According to the report published by journalist Mia Hughes, members of the organization were “fully aware that children and adolescents cannot comprehend the lifelong consequences of ‘gender-affirming care,’ and in some cases, due to poor health literacy, neither can their parents.”
The raw files have been published in a report called The WPATH Files: Pseudoscientific Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children, Adolescents, and Vulnerable Adults.
The files, leaked by a whistleblower, include screenshots of posts from WPATH’s internal messaging forum dating from 2021 to 2024. A video of an internal panel discussion was also revealed.
All names have been redacted other than several WPATH members of public significance, such as Dr. Marci Bowers, an American gynecologist and surgeon who is the President of WPATH, and the Canadian pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Daniel Metzger.
Environmental Progress contends that WPATH members “demonstrate a lack of consideration for long-term patient outcomes despite being aware of the debilitating and potentially fatal side effects of cross-sex hormones and other treatments.”
“The Files provide evidence of how far off the rails this experiment has gone, with discussions about surgeons performing non-binary surgeries to create body types that do not exist in nature,” the group writes.
Physicians discussed life-altering interventions such as vaginoplasty for a 14-year-old and hormones for a developmentally delayed 13-year-old. They are well aware that individuals who undergo transgender treatment often feel regret and reportedly even discussed patients who appear to have died as a consequence of hormone treatment.
Environmental Progress contends that the evidence indicates informed consent is essentially non-existent. Published video footage of a WPATH panel called “Identity Evolution Workshop” held on May 6, 2022, shows members discussing that it is impossible to obtain proper informed consent from young patients.
Metzger explains that doctors find themselves, “often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven’t even had biology in high school yet.”
“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. They’d be like, ‘Ew, kids, babies—gross,'” Metzger added.
Another panelist admitted that it is outside of the “developmental range” of children to “understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.”
And while some members admitted to “struggling internally” about providing cross-sex hormones to patients with severe mental health issues, such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, others dismissed it as unnecessary “gatekeeping.”
Michael Shellenberger, the founder of Environmental Progress, writes, “These leaked files show overwhelming evidence that the professionals within WPATH know that they are not getting consent from children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults, or their caregivers.”
Stella O’Malley, founder of Genspect – an international group that works to advocate for a non-medicalized approach to gender diversity – opposes “gender-affirming” care and contends that WPATH clinicians are “carrying out medical malpractice.”
“The WPATH Files also show that WPATH is neither a scientific nor medical organisation,” she wrote. “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.”
Robert Clarke, Director of Advocacy for ADF International, commented on the report saying, “No child is ever born in the wrong body. Children depend on adults to guide and empower them to feel comfortable and confident in their own skin – not to push them down a dangerous and irreversible path of transition.”
With its almost 2,000 members – three-quarters of members are based in the U.S. – WPATH is dictating treatment and protocols that have been adopted in many countries.
Sex Matters, a human-rights organization based in the U.K., says WPATH’s influence goes beyond “gender medicine” citing how the group is behind software that requires physicians to assign a gender identity to babies.
“Taken together, the files paint a disturbing picture of so-called ‘gender medicine’ as neither evidence-based nor safe. And since the first rule of medicine is to do no harm, it is not medicine,” the group stated.
CBN News reached out to WPATH for their perspective on the leaked materials.
Marci Bowers, M.D., president of the group, told us in a statement that the organization’s professionals “best know the medical needs of trans and gender diverse individuals.”
“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,” she said.
“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,” Bowers concluded.
