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A trove of leaked files reveals that the clinicians setting global standards on ‘gender medicine’ brazenly violate medical ethics and informed consent.

Christians and other conservatives were heavily criticised in the mid-2010s for their opposition to same-sex “marriage”. Among their stated concerns were that removing the sex binary from marriage would lead to its erasure from society at large, creating widespread confusion among future generations about gender and sexuality.

At the time, it was difficult to predict how high a price our societies would pay for normalising LGBT ideology. But less than decade on, those who urged caution have been wholly vindicated.

One of the most alarming trends that went mainstream in Western nations was so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors. The harmless-sounding name was crafted to hide the harm. This dangerous dogma insists that any gender confusion in a child must be entertained and acted upon by the adoption of new social personas, the prescription of puberty blockers and hormones, the removal of breasts, and the carving up of genitals.

“Gender-affirming care” was sold to children as an escape from their pain; to parents as the alternative to their child’s suicide; and to the general public as “science”, “healthcare” and the consensus of the “experts”.

But it was never any of these things.

The release of the WPATH Files last week provides incontrovertible proof that the entire enterprise is an ideological cult that has wrought untold damage in the lives of countless young people.

The WPATH Files Revealed

The World Professional Association For Transgender Health (WPATH) bills itself as the leading global authority on “gender medicine”. Over recent decades, its Standards of Care have shaped the guidance, policies and practices of governments, medical associations, public health systems and private clinics all around the world.

Last year, whistleblowers from within the organisation leaked to independent journalist Michael Shellenberger a video of an internal panel discussion and screenshots of posts from WPATH’s internal messaging forum dating from 2021 to 2024.

“After I received these files, my colleagues and I tried to report on them as journalists would,” Shellenberger explains. “We quickly became overwhelmed by the size and complexity of the project, and decided to produce a full report about the files for Environmental Progress, our nonprofit research institute, to provide context of the best available science about gender distress.”

The result is a 241-page report titled ‘The WPATH Files: Pseudoscientific Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children, Adolescents, and Vulnerable Adults’, written by journalist Mia Hughes. The raw files leaked from WPATH, with light redactions, comprise two-thirds of the sizeable document.

What does the report reveal? Shellenberger explains:

The WPATH files show surgeons, therapists, and activists discussing internally how to treat people with gender distress. They reveal that what is happening is neither good science nor good medicine. There is a discussion, for example, of blocking the puberty of a 10-year-old girl and a 13-year-old developmentally delayed child. Another exchange details carrying out genital surgery on people with schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.

At the core of medical ethics is the principle “do no harm”. Doctors and medical professionals obtain what is known as “informed consent” from the people receiving the medicine or their caregivers.

Yet these files outline 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. 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.

The documents also reveal that, despite decades of surgeries and drugs, there is nothing scientific at all about so-called gender medicine. WPATH has produced eight versions of its “Standards of Care”, but they are based on ideology rather than science. As a result, the surgeons, doctors, and therapists practising “gender medicine” are essentially making it up as they go along, conducting uncontrolled experiments and doing barely anything to follow up on whether they work.

“The WPATH Files show that what is called ‘gender medicine’ is neither science nor medicine,” Shellenberger adds. “The experiments are not randomised, double-blind, or controlled. It’s not medicine since the first rule is to do no harm. And that requires informed consent.”

Gender Medicine Was Never What It Claimed To Be

In a press release, Environmental Progress went on to explain:

The WPATH Files reveal that the organization does not meet the standards of evidence-based medicine, and members frequently discuss improvising treatments as they go along. Members are 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…

In the WPATH Files, 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. Messages in the files show that patients with severe mental health issues, such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, and other vulnerabilities such as homelessness, are being allowed to consent to hormonal and surgical interventions. Members dismiss concerns about these patients and characterise efforts to protect them as unnecessary “gatekeeping.”

The files provide clear evidence that doctors and therapists are aware they are offering minors life-changing treatments they cannot fully understand. WPATH members know that puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries will cause infertility and other complications, including cancer and pelvic floor dysfunction. Yet they consider life-altering medical interventions for young patients, including vaginoplasty for a 14-year-old and hormones for a developmentally delayed 13-year-old.

The WPATH Files also show how far medical experiments in gender medicine have gone, with discussions about surgeons performing “nullification” and other extreme body modification procedures to create body types that do not exist in nature.

A growing number of medical and psychiatric professionals say the promotion of pseudoscientific surgical and hormonal experiments is a global medical scandal that compares to major incidents of medical malpractice in history, such as lobotomies and ovariotomies.

“Activist members of WPATH know that the so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ they provide can result in life-long complications and sterility and that their patients do not understand the implications, such as loss of sexual function and the ability to experience orgasm,” Shellenberger has added. “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.”

The WPATH Files can be accessed here.

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