genderreport.ca/bias-not-evide… " Given the rapidly changing epidemiology and treatments in transgender care, seven-year-old guidelines are severely outdated in this field. One case in point is that when the WPATH guidelines were published in 2011, natal males were the primary group...
...presenting to gender clinics in adolescence, but now males have been eclipsed by natal females 3 to 1. Research on male adolescent clients cannot be generalized to females, an age-old fallacy in medicine. "
"This makes the entire recommendation section for adolescent transgender care in the WPATH SOC dubious at best, irrelevant at worst"
"A systematic review of clinical guideline development in 2011 revealed 56 to 87% of the authors had a conflict of interest (COI) in all clinical practice guidelines" ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
"When looking at the WPATH committee who worked on the current SOC document, a cursory examination of the members reveals that every one of the members have significant COIs...
...All of them either receive income based on recommendations in the guidelines, work at clinics or universities who receive funds from advocacy groups, foundations, or pharmaceutical companies who heavily favour a certain treatment paradigm...
... or have received grants and published papers or research in transgender care. The majority..are from the US, and six of them have affiliations with..the University of Minnesota Program in Sexuality..primarily funded by a transgender advocacy organization (Tawani Foundation)"
"Eli Coleman, the committee chair for the WPATH SOC, who IOM guidelines stipulate should be completely free of conflict of interest, has his very position at the University of Minnesota funded by Jennifer Pritzer, a trans person and head of Tawani."
"there are press releases of Eli Coleman in 2017 thanking Jennifer Pritzer profusely for a generous donation, which adds up to 6.5 million dollars that Tawani has given to the university. Tawani also funded WPATH SOC development...
...Another advocacy group, Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES) funded the translation of the SOC into various languages. There was also an “anonymous donor” who supported guideline development...
... Did the anonymous funder want a certain outcome from the recommendations? Who knows? Funding sources must be named, according to the IOM guidelines."
"At least four committee members are or were editors of transgender research journals. In the US, 50% of editors of research journals take industry payments, and yet they do not need to declare conflicts of interest." healthnewsreview.org/2017/11/158902/
"At the 2017 USPATH/WPATH conference, activists protested and shut down a session with Dr. Kenneth Zucker, who endorsed a cautious approach to treating children with gender dysphoria. Rather than engaging with different viewpoints, WPATH agreed to cancel Dr. Zucker...
...WPATH is allowed to discuss only topics and engage with presenters that are approved by activists, which is the antithesis to a professional organization, or evidence-based inquiry."
"WPATH is not the typical professional organization that develops clinical practice guidelines. WPATH is a hybrid professional and activist organization, where activists have become voting members and have served as president...
...In fact, it can be argued that WPATH is activist-led rather than evidence-led, as witnessed at their conferences.
"The document is full of contradicting statements.."the dysphoria persisted into adulthood for only 6 to 23% of children.”..then they later state: “Early use of puberty-suppressing hormones may avert negative social and emotional consequences of gender dysphoria...
...So even though only 6 to 23% of gender dysphoric children will persist into adulthood, WPATH, with no rationale given, endorses suppressing puberty as soon as it starts."
"They briefly state that conversion therapy is not successful. Conversion therapy is not defined but seems to be anything other than the medical model to treat gender dysphoria...
...The references they provide are three chapter books or case studies from the 1960’s that are no longer in print, and an article written in Dutch from 1984..counseling, cognitive behaviour therapy, or psychotherapy is not considered."
"A literature search performed by ECRI shows that no systematic research or review has been conducted to see if any non-medical therapy could be successful, in order to avoid a lifetime of medication and surgeries...
... The assumption that thoughts and feelings are unchangeable, while the body should be changed, is the paradigm that is assumed in this document with no rationale given."
"In light of the COIs described above, we can see that there are many benefits to a medicalized model for the committee members, both financially and for their careers...
... If evidence showed that a non-medical treatment for gender dysphoria was more effective, would committee members be inclined to recommend this treatment, at great cost to their income and careers? "
"When someone says “transition-related care is safe, effective, and supported by the entire mainstream of the medical community”, they are basing their faith unquestioningly on guidelines that were developed by people and organizations with conflicts of interest...
...with no systematic review, and with no evidence of safety or efficacy of treatment. These “guidelines” do not meet inclusion criteria for any clinical guideline database and have not received an endorsement from any professional body in Canada...
...And yet, WPATH guidelines are given as the rationale to support the unthinkable: to physically harm a distressed and vulnerable population."
"The concept of an innate gender identity is unproven, unverifiable, and does not even have a clear definition. In the same spirit of historical psychiatric misadventures, somatic treatments are being prescribed for a psychologically based identity disorder...
...How many vulnerable children, adolescents and young adults will be harmed before we realize that history is repeating itself."
