The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) creates widely-cited standards of care for cross-sex medical treatments. Yet many of the medical professionals who create those guidelines have financial or personal conflicts of interest, according to newly unsealed court documents.
WPATH President Marci Bowers said in a deposition that she made more than $1 million last year from work that primarily consisted of gender-related surgeries. Despite concerns over conflicts of interest, she also said it was “absolutely” important for those involved in creating the medical guidelines to be advocates for the procedures.
The statements came during her deposition in Boe v. Marshall, a lawsuit brought against Alabama over a state law restricting cross-sex medical treatments for minors. There are no federal laws limiting cross-sex treatments for minors in the US, though about half of states have such restrictions. Court testimony and internal communications between WPATH members were collected as part of the case, and revealed that these members were aware of concerns about the safety of trans medical interventions. In some cases, members shared those concerns themselves, but nonetheless endorsed such procedures with no minimum age restrictions in 2022.
Dr Eli Coleman, lead author of WPATH’s SOC-8 guidelines, said conflicts of interest were ubiquitous among those involved. During his deposition, when asked whether “it was your understanding at the time that at least most participants in the SOC-8 [Standards of Care Version 8] process had financial and/or non-financial conflicts of interest”, he responded: “Yes.”
WPATH’s SOC-8 is one of the most widely-read and clinically recognised endorsements of cross-sex treatments for minors. It recommends the use of puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries. The guidelines create a perception of expert medical consensus and were a key component of a brief that was filed in support of cross-sex treatments for children in a pending Supreme Court case over the same issue.
The eighth version of WPATH’s guidelines, released a decade after SOC-7, removed recommended age minimums for cross-sex medical treatments. Internal communications show that WPATH members considered the impact their recommendations could have on the legality of child medical transitions as well as insurance companies’ decisions on which procedures to cover, a major financial consideration for medical practitioners.
In a debate over the merits of removing WPATH’s age guidelines for cross-sex procedures, a co-lead of the adolescent chapter wrote: “I really think the main argument for [age guidelines] is access/insurance. So the irony is that the fear is that [age guidelines] will spark political attacks on access. I don’t know how I feel about allowing US politics to dictate international professional clinical guidelines.”
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SubscribeI encourage all of you to research the WPATH Files. These are private memos, emails and zoom calls between members of the organization that were leaked. What struck me was a zoom call involving seven to nine members. One doctor complained that 13 and 14-year-old girls and boys were not able to consent to transitioning, because they don’t understand what is involved, and they can’t process the the implications of chemical and physical changes. Yet, they all support the transitioning of children. Dr. Marci Bower, who specializes in vagioplasties, has admitted to performing the surgery on 16 and 17-year-old boys. Yet, in a speech at Duke University, she admitted that all of her patients were incapable of having an o****im. Children don’t understand the fact that they never enjoy s**. The most current standards of care includes eunuchs, both boys and men, and their needs. Dancing around the edges, hoping to join WPATH, are MAPS—minor attracted people, aka ped****les. Sorry, but these people are mentally ill—in a really sick way.