The WPATH Files Revealed

The WPATH Files are leaked internal conversations that were sent to Michael Shellenberger last year. The Files include verbatim leaked conversations, a report as well as an executive summary.

I remember my heart skipped a beat when I first heard about the WPATH Files. It was at a party last November, the night before our conference in Denver was due to start. Everyone was meeting each other for the first time and I was busy doing the introductions. Then Michael Shellenberger took me aside and explained to me that a whistle blower – or whistleblowers – had leaked files to him of internal conversations from WPATH members. The party faded away as the consequence of what Michael was saying dawned on me.

For some years now I had searched for an investigative reporter who reached beyond the research bubble and brought this complex issue to the hearts and minds of the general public. Then Michael Shellenberger and his team landed on my doorstep.

The WPATH Files reveal that clinicians are carrying out medical malpractice. Great harm is being caused and the WPATH clinicians know this.

The WPATH Files also show that WPATH is neither a scientific nor medical organisation. 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.

Since approximately 2007, when the “Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association” became the “World Professional Association of Transgender Health”, activists have been shaping WPATH’s policies and decisions. Concerned clinicians are discouraged to demonstrate any caution in their clinical work. One activist-clinician revealed “In the last 15 years I had to regrettably decline writing only one letter, mainly b/c the person evaluated was in active psychosis and hallucinated during the assessment session. Other than that - nothing - everyone got their assessment letter, insurance approval, and are living (presumably) happily ever after.”

(The word “presumably” is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence.)

This gender therapist from California also revealed, “I have also intervened on behalf of people who have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, cPTSD, homeless and got at least an orchiectomy…”. We have now reached a point in gender medicine where homeless people with mental disorders receive surgeries, even when they have little chance of being able to carry out the necessary post-surgical self-care to ensure their body will recover.

The words in the WPATH Files speak for themselves; their clinicians work with “clients who identify as non-binary, agender, and Eunuchs who have wanted atypical surgical procedures, many of which either don’t exist in nature or represent the first of their kind and therefore probably have few examples of best practice.”

These “non-standard” procedures, such as “top surgery without nipples, nullification, and phallus-preserving vaginoplasty”, have no evidence-base to support them. Nobody has any idea about the long-term prognosis for a male who preserves his phallus and adds a neo-vagina.

The subtitle of the WPATH Files are “Pseudoscientific Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children, Adolescents, and Vulnerable Adults” is perhaps the most important point. Mia Hughes’ insightful report on the WPATH Files details how this fringe organisation that started in 1978 as a loose affiliation of clinicians and activists came to self-identify as the leading authority for medical transition. For many years nobody challenged their position. Suddenly, as a result of a perfect storm of social movements, WPATH recently found itself in the centre of the public discourse.

Perhaps the most egregious aspect of the Files is the revelation that the WPATH clinicians are aware of the carcinogenic aspect of testosterone and discuss patients who appear to have died as a consequence of hormone treatment.

The clinicians are also well aware of the regret experienced by young people who medically transition. Dr Daniel Metzger, a Canadian endocrinologist, pointed out that “Some of the Dutch researchers gave some data about young adults who had transitioned and [had] reproductive regret, like regret, and it’s there, and I don’t think any of that surprises us.”

The cavalier, callous response to the devastation of young people’s lives is reflective of WPATH’s abdication of responsibility over the harm they are overseeing; “I think now that I follow a lot of kids into their mid-twenties, I’m like, Oh, the dog isn’t doing it for you, is it?” They’re like, ‘No, I just found this wonderful partner, and now want kids…’.”

These young people, who now have an average age of 32, regret their infertility. In my clinical practice I often work with people who experience infertility; the age for infertility regret becomes heightened in the late thirties and typically is most intense around the early forties, and so the enormity of the impact of their infertility has yet to unfold.

Lack of sexual functioning is also a significant source of distress, as these young people now find that their lack of sexual functioning is impairing their ability to form long-lasting intimate relationships.

The WPATH Files reveal the smoking gun whereby it is clear that the consumers of gender medicine believe that the clinicians know what they’re doing. But they don’t.

“First, do no harm” has changed to “buyer beware”. WPATH clinicians are operating without an evidence-base and the Files show that they know their work is hurting children, adolescents and vulnerable people.

We anticipate people will try to undermine the WPATH Files by reframing this material as just a series of normal conversations between doctors and therapists. Yet these files show that this is an unfolding medical scandal of catastrophic proportions.

Everyone who reads the Files will see that real lives are being harmed, and that WPATH’s leaders know that children, their parents, and mentally ill people aren’t giving consent. If you want to help advance this potentially landmark release, please read, like, share and highlight these Files.

Genspect and Fair will host a series of FREE webinars about the WPATH Files over the next 4 Tuesdays at 7pm EST.

Register in advance for this webinar:

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IXINvva0QKeC0O4M9rCo0A

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Join Genspect and FAIR in Medicine to discuss the WPATH Files Report released on March 4th by Michael Shellenberger’s Environmental Progress. The four part webinar series with Stella O’Malley, Carrie Mendoza, MD, and Mia Hughes, the report’s author, will discuss the key insights from the report and leaked documents, the perspective from the harmed patients, physicians explaining the misuse of medicine, and writers and reporters thoughts. The series will run on Tuesdays in March from 7pm-8:30 pm eastern standard time.

Tue Mar 5th, Key insights with author Mia Hughes

Tue Mar 12th, Detrans Awareness Day with Laura Becker, Abel Garcia, Forrest Smith

Tue Mar 19th, Physicians’ Peer Review with Eithan Haim, MD

Tue Mar 26th, Writers’ Roundtable with Eliza Mondegreen