A startling revelation emerged this week with the release of leaked files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). These documents, obtained by journalist Michael Shellenberger and published as The WPATH Files: Pseudoscientific Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children, Adolescents, and Vulnerable Adults by researcher Mia Hughes, decisively expose what many conservative voices have been saying for years: that so-called “gender-affirming care” is the greatest medical scandal of our time. 

“The WPATH Files show that what is called ‘gender medicine’ is neither science nor medicine,” said Shellenberger, President and founder of Environmental Progress, the think tank that published the report. “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.”

The extensive WPATH Files, spanning over 240 pages, comprise numerous practitioner communications, conversation transcripts, and extensive recordings of internal Zoom meetings. These documents unequivocally reveal that:

• Minor patients and their parents are not giving informed consent.
• Cross-sex hormones are causing cancer.
• Doctors are performing “non-binary surgeries” to replicate body types that do not exist in nature.
• Patients with severe mental illness are being cleared for gender surgeries. 
• Complicated genital surgeries are being done on minors.

With the release of this groundbreaking report, WPATH has been discredited as a legitimate medical organization. Yet, its tentacles still run deep in MA, where MFI learned via a public records request that MA taxpayers have spent millions of dollars on WPATH-approved “gender transition” treatments for minors. 

Equally scandalous is the recommendation of WPATH by the MA Attorney General’s Office as a resource in its Mental Health and Gender-Affirming Care Resource Guide for Massachusetts LGBTQIA+ Young People and Their Trusted Adults (p. 66). Additionally, the discredited WPATH is referenced in the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth’s 2024 Report and Recommendations (p. 88). WPATH’s unscientific guidelines are used to support the MassHealth Guidelines for Medical Necessity Determination for Gender-Affirming Surgery (pp. 6, 9) as well.

Amplifying the concern regarding WPATH’s influence in the state, the organization maintains robust affiliations with prominent MA hospitals, including the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, whose Director of Transgender Medicine serves as a WPATH faculty member and co-authored its controversial Standards of Care 8. Furthermore, WPATH is set to conduct a training for endocrinologists in Boston this May. This seminar, steeped in pseudo-science, will feature multiple sessions on “gender-affirming care” for children and adolescents.

With WPATH now officially exposed as a radical activist group that knowingly endangers minors and vulnerable adults, it is imperative for MA elected officials to take decisive action to safeguard Baystate children from the threats posed by this predatory organization.

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