Transgender health: WHO under fire from international critics

Press Release: For Immediate Release

PRESS RELEASE: For Immediate Release

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Transgender health: WHO under fire from international critics

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Geneva, Switzerland/Washington DC, United States 1/9/2024 – To establish international transgender health guidelines, the World Health Organization (WHO) has appointed a working group of agenda-driven activists with little or no scientific expertise to lead the cause. This grave oversight puts the lives and wellbeing of gender dysphoric youth, gay people, and women at serious risk. LGBT rights organizations, doctors’ associations, feminists, parents of gender dysphoric children, and people who regret their medical transition are calling on WHO to allow the voices of experts and stakeholders with diverging perspectives on this complex issue to be heard.

The LGBT Courage Coalition (LGBTCC), which opposes the censorship of critical voices in the issue of pediatric gender medicine, is a U.S. organization founded by Jamie Reed, a whistleblower from a Missouri-based pediatric gender clinic. On December 28, 2023, LGBTCC launched the “who-decides.org” petition, demanding WHO make changes before moving forward with its initiative. Less than two weeks later, nearly 10,000 organizations and individuals have signed the petition.

LGBT organizations, medical and mental health professional organizations, and parent groups have written WHO about their concerns. They point out that the working group does not include any experts in child and adolescent development, nor does it include a single critic of the controversial gender-affirmative model of care. Countries that pioneered LGBT rights, including Sweden, Finland and the UK, have halted hormone treatments for children and adolescents outside the framework of clinical research after systematic evidence reviews showed that the risks of these treatments outweigh their benefits. These countries, which now favor a holistic approach with an emphasis on psycho-social support for treating gender dysphoric youth, are among WHO’s most generous contributors.

The 23 parent groups from 14 countries that wrote to WHO represent the thousands of families affected by the explosion of trans-identification among young people worldwide. Their testimonies include children rushed into experimental and high-risk medical interventions, families torn apart, and young people coping with irrevocable damage to their physical, mental, sexual, and reproductive health.

WHO announced the guidelines just before Christmas, only giving the public until January 8, 2024 to comment on possible conflicts of interest among the appointed experts, whose first meeting is already scheduled for February 2024 in Geneva. Helen Joyce, former editor at The Economist and committee member of Sex Matters (a signatory of LGBTCC’s petition), said, "This is part of a disturbing pattern worldwide, in which trans healthcare guidance and programs are written by small, ideologically driven groups behind closed doors, and then presented as definitive."

Of the 21 members of the WHO-appointed group, the majority have serious conflicts of interest. Some are well-known, radical activists who promote experimental medical interventions and stigmatize exploratory therapy. Among the "experts" is Florence Ashley, a "transfeminist lawyer and bioethicist" whose preferred pronouns are " They/Them/That Bitch," and who says that "puberty blockers should be seen as the default option" for treating young people. Ashley has argued that allowing this vital stage of human development to proceed "strongly favors cis embodiment by increasing the psychological and medical costs of transition.” This careless approach puts countless young people around the world at serious risk of medical harm.

Concerned citizens are calling on WHO to facilitate open and transparent dialogue about proper treatments for gender dysphoria, the importance of recognizing biological sex, and the best way to protect trans-identified individuals without sacrificing protections for gay people, women, and children. The public must be given more time to weigh in. And WHO’s guidance development group (GDG) must include experts with a diversity of perspectives, so that people are helped by this initiative—and not irreversibly harmed.

For further information

United States:

Jamie Reed, Executive Director and Co-Founder

LGBTCourageCoalition@gmail.com

Geneva, Switzerland:

AMQG.ch

Association pour une Approche Mesurée des Questionnements de Genre chez les Jeunes

info@amqg.ch