Internal documents from the leading global medical organization on transgender health care show devastating admittance that they had concerns about youth gender interventions, which are largely experimental. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) advocates for minors to seek transition hormones and surgeries if they feel sure of their trans identity.
However, newly released internal documents show that they admitted privately that youth gender interventions are largely experimental and that minors struggle to give informed consent before undergoing the procedures.
National Review reports on the internal documents, obtained by the nonprofit Environmental Progress reveal that WPATH members have acknowledged behind closed doors that young people often lack the health literacy and discernment to comprehend the gravity of the life-altering medical decisions they’re making and their possible ramifications, such as sterility, derailed sexual development, and general regret.
Adolescents who have received a diagnosis of “gender incongruence” should have access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries so long as they demonstrate “the emotional and cognitive maturity required to provide informed consent/assent for the treatment,” WPATH recommends in its Standards of Care 8.
In an internal panel titled Identity Evolution Workshop held on May 6, 2022, WPATH member Dr. Daniel Metzger, a Canadian endocrinologist, explained the challenge of obtaining consent from youth “who haven’t even had biology in high school yet,” the documents show.
Many young people seeking medical interventions such as hormone therapy don’t understand that the injections cause irreversible physical changes that can’t be disaggregated, Metzger explained. Patients don’t always realize they can’t opt for a lower voice without facial hair, for example.
“It’s hard to kind of pick and choose the effects that you want,” Metzger said. “That’s something that kids wouldn’t normally understand because they haven’t had biology yet, but I think a lot of adults as well are hoping to be able to get X without getting Y, and that’s not always possible.”
Metzger said he has had to teach young people that their gender identity may not “be binary, but hormones are binary.”
“You can’t get a deeper voice without probably a bit of a beard,” and “you can’t get estrogen to feel more feminine without some breast development,” he said he’s explained to children.
During the panel, prominent WPATH member Dianne Berg, a child psychologist and co-author of the child chapter of Standards of Care 8, added that children lack the ability to “understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.”
In January 2022, WPATH president Marci Bowers said during a board meeting that the effects of puberty blockers on fertility and “the onset of orgasmic response” are not fully known. Boys who have their puberty blocked early can have “problematic surgical outcomes,” she said, and extreme difficulty climaxing.
