A Biden administration official pressured a top gender medical organization to quickly issue 'standards of care' guidelines for transgender individuals to remove minimum age recommendations for transgender procedures, despite a lack of scientific justification, the Daily Caller reports, citing recently unsealed court documents.
According to an unsealed expert report from Canadian sex researcher James Cantor, internal communications suggest that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care Version 8 (SoC 8) were expedited and altered under pressure from U.S. government officials to support political objectives, raising concerns about the scientific integrity of these guidelines.
These documents, part of a broader legal debate surrounding transgender medical care for minors, highlight conversations within WPATH that Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, a well-known advocate for transgender health, pushed for the removal of age-specific recommendations in the SoC 8. The urgency to release these guidelines, as stated in the documents, was to align with the health policies of the Biden administration, with one WPATH member noting the administration's "charge" to finalize the project.
At the core of the controversy is the appropriateness and timing of medical interventions for transgender youth, including the use of puberty blockers. Cantor's testimony suggests that while some WPATH members were aware of the "sloppy" application of such treatments in clinical settings, there was also an acknowledgment of the lack of consensus on the efficacy and appropriateness of these interventions.
Conflicts of Interest
As the Caller notes further:
Cantor further claims that WPATH did not ask SoC-8 committee members to identify conflicts of interest, even though some members worked as paid expert witnesses in legal cases relating to transgender procedures.
Moreover, one member of the development group later explained during WPATH’s annual conference that minimum age recommendations were removed “to protect clinicians from lawsuit should the clinician decide to provide a treatment to someone younger than a specified age minimum.”
"Again, this reflects both the existence and the harmful impact of the financial conflict of interest that WPATH and its members faced while developing SOC-8," wrote Cantor in the unsealed expert report.
The documents were revealed as part of the ongoing case, Boe v. Marshall, which challenges Alabama's ban on gender-affirming procedures for minors. The state's legislation, along with similar laws in other states, has ignited a heated national debate over the rights of transgender youth to access health care.
WPATH released its SoC 8 in September 2022, which marked a significant departure from earlier versions that included age thresholds for certain medical treatments.
The White House, HHS, and WPATH did not respond to the Caller's requests for comment.
