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NOTE: This article may include commentary reflecting the author’s position.
Michael Shellenberger calls the medical interventions for transgender-identifying individuals “pseudo-science”, “quackery”, and “witchcraft.”
He made the comments in a recent appearance on The Hill‘s The Rising to discuss the bombshell WPATH Files report published on his think-tank’s website, Environmental Progress.
The exposé provides leaked video from the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), the body of medical professionals that devise the regulations and alleged best practices in medical care for people suffering from gender dysphoria.
The videos show that there are some major issues with the basis of so-called “gender-affirming” medical care and that the clinicians at WPATH show a blatant disregard for informed consent and appear to have violated medical ethics.
Videos reveal that clinicians have little consideration for other mental health issues or individual situations that may contribute to a patient’s discomfort with his/her natal sex.
Moreover, the WPATH Files exposes that the medical interventions — especially those for minors — do not meet the standards of evidence-based medicine.
Leaked video shows WPATH clinicians admitting that informed consent is not possible since children and teens cannot comprehend the long-term consequences of these medical interventions and neither can their parents.
It also reveals that some clinicians have performed extreme surgical interventions such as “nullification” (the removal of external genitals) to modify the body to “create body types that do not exist in nature.”
The leaked files include screenshots of posts from WPATH’s internal messaging forum dating from 2021 to 2024 and a video of an internal panel discussion. 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.
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 characterize 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.
Source: Environmental Progress
Environmental Progress‘s President and founder, Michael Shellenberger, said of the report, “The WPATH Files show that what is called ‘gender medicine’ is neither science nor medicine. The experiments are not randomized, double-blind, or controlled. It’s not medicine since the first rule is to do no harm. And that requires informed consent.”
“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,” added Shellenberger. “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.”
As more and more countries in Europe are pulling back on interventions like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, the United States and Canada are lagging behind in their realization that there are significant long-term consequences to these so-called treatments. As Shellenberger noted, these consequences can range from increased depression, sterility, lack of sexual function, inability to orgasm, and, despite what activists say, an increase in the risk of suicide for some patients.
Shellenberger posted a thread on X with the video of some WPATH members making absurd claims about children and gender interspersed with clips of critics of the interventions including detransitioner Chloe Cole who was put on testosterone at age 13 and a double mastectomy at 15. She suffers from permanent damage from these medical interventions and is now suing the hospital that she feels pushed her and her parents to consent to them.
WPATH President, Marci Bowers, can be seen in the video below falsely telling CBS News, "Face the Nation," that "WPATH standards of care are… science-based guidelines."
In the video, you can see other trans quack doctors making false claims: pic.twitter.com/Xh0u4L8EuO
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) March 19, 2024
There is growing evidence that WPATH has engaged in fraud as well as medical mistreatment for years:https://t.co/iMc3m9HcO6
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) March 19, 2024
“The fact that an 8 or 9 year old could potentially be prescribed puberty blockers is terrifying," said @JamesEsses who was fired from his Master's program for blowing the whistle. "It is one of the most shocking indictments of ideology infecting medicine that I have ever come…
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) March 19, 2024
Trans quack medicine is the greatest medical mistreatment scandal in recorded human history. Worse than lobotomies. Worse than Tuskegee.https://t.co/knboOxxDzc
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) March 19, 2024
I have been told that WPATH's Board of Directors met last night. Whatever transpired, WPATH appears to have reverted to its 2019 website.
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) March 19, 2024
