World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Files

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122152551#Comment_122152551

The British Tory party is highly politicized on this issue and has helped turn the debate very toxic. Lets be clear here their agenda is political and has nothing to do with evidence or good practice. No doubt a more reasonable approach will be adopted when Labour comes to power - before any of this Tory agenda is enacted.

Grandstanding for the base is what this announcement represents.

AllForIt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122152813#Comment_122152813

The Tory party are highly politicised about lots of issues which isn't that surprising since they are a political party. You'd expect them to have political agendas as well, would be a very odd if they didn't.

Nothing whatsoever will change in regards this with Labour in power. When Gillian Keegan proposed the updates in the HoC there was basically no opposition from her counterpart in the Labour opposition. Their exchanges were all very amicable, it was like they were meeting for lunch.

concerned_tenant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122152813#Comment_122152813

This is false.

Labour have said they will not overturn the recent guidelines and, if anything, Wes Streeting has himself confirmed this.

Labour understand that the vast majority of the country agree with the Cass Report and the recent guideline changes.

Better late than never.

The era of activist bullying and gaslighting is over.

cdeb

I like how Shoog's contributions to the thread continue to simply highlight how wrong his viewpoint is, and shows the gulf in debating ability and knowledge between the two sides as well. (Making stuff up versus actually having back-up the main difference - here's an Irish Times article last month where Streeting and Labour confirm they'll be implementing the Cass Report in full if they get into power for example)

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122152938#Comment_122152938

The Cass report has nothing to say about sex education policy - its a medical report for the NHS.

It has also been established that the Cass report doesn't say what you imagine it says.

concerned_tenant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122153027#Comment_122153027

What the Cass Report taught everyone is that activists haven't a clue what they're talking about and their policies always cause more harm than good.

The government is responding accordingly.

cdeb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122153027#Comment_122153027

It hasn't been so established. And it doesn't need to explicitly say anything about sex education for its recommendations to be taken on board by education policy-makers in that area.

But you'll just ignore that (like when shown wrong about the Labour stance) and move on to the next baseless mud-sling.

Which most of us find hilarious of course.

Birneybau

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122152938#Comment_122152938

Total zealotry

Annasopra

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122152813#Comment_122152813

Yep. Like the Republicans they think attacking and punching down on trans people will yield them votes. Despicable bigotry and abuse of trans people as a political football.

cdeb

Yep, that's the abuse that's happening alright.

Not puberty blockers or activists dictating medical best practice or lies being told about suicide or regret rates or any of that. All that is fine.

No, the abuse is keeping strongly disputed ideologies out of schools where they have been shown to be dangerous to kids. Gotcha.

Do you want to explain your analysis any further? Or is that beyond you, like it is with Shoog?

Your post is disgusting. But I expect little better if I'm honest.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122154969#Comment_122154969

The practices of the doctors was established over decades of dealing with gender dysphoric patients. It's worse than slander to accuse them as of doing anything but the best for those patients based upon years of medical experience and expertise. It's also shocking that you imagine that you know better than the clinicians in the field, but I am under no illusions about who is the activist here.

Annasopra

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122154969#Comment_122154969

It's Thatcherite section 28 all over again. It's all about a dogmatic ideology to shame trans people, pretend they don't exist and deconstructing all supports.

concerned_tenant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122154788#Comment_122154788

To the contrary, society has been attacked and punched down by activists for years.

What we're seeing is a pushback against bullying and gaslighting — a return to common sense, evidence-based medicine, and objectivity.

Shrill, unyielding activists need to be totally and completely ignored.

cdeb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122155015#Comment_122155015

Ha! No - the opposite of everything you've said is the case

The practices were established by activists in total breach of the Hippocratic oath (that's straight from the WPATH document, so it's not slander), based on flawed studies rigged to get the answers they wanted (WPATH and Cass), and reinforced by the sort of bullying Annasopra and co specialise in. (Disagreement = TRANSPHOBE!!)

I don't pretend to know better than clinicians in the field - I'm listening to them and hearing what they're saying (in the Cass Report in particular). You should try it

Other than that though, you almost had a good post going

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122155726#Comment_122155726

Rubbish.

The WPATH document is an anti trans campaigners puth piece where the commentary bares almost no relationship to the actual forum posts it claims to analysis. Its ****, really bad **** designed to appeal to people who already came to it with a transphobic agenda.

The WPATH document has gained zero traction outside of the transphobic community precisely because any credible debater knows that to reference it would destroy their credibility.

cdeb

And your evidence for that would be...?

concerned_tenant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122155742#Comment_122155742

Are The Guardian on a "transphobic agenda" when they published a critical piece on the WPATH files?

The leaked messages (and the odd recording) – dubbed the WPATH files – are disturbing.

In one video, doctors acknowledge that patients are sometimes too young to fully understand the consequences of puberty blockers and hormones for their fertility. “It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year-old, but I know I’m talking to a blank wall,” one Canadian endocrinologist says.

Most people who rubbish the WPATH files have either not read the files, or have read the criticisms and downplayed their significance. Unless of course, you are going to argue that the doctors didn't say what they have been shown to have said? This is borderline conspiracy theory territory.

Social media is itself festooned with misinformative hogwash on the matter.

Everyone else who has objectively assessed the files, without any ideological baggage, understands perfectly well how damaging these files are.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122155764#Comment_122155764

The Doctors were in a online discussion forum where they were advising people who were asking questions regarding difficult cases. The comments selected were cherry picked to mispresent the actual clinical practices followed on a daily basis - and none of them were as controversial as the WPATH files suggest.

The commentary is tangential to the actual discussions taking place and frankly are irrelevant to the evidence presented in the files. The discussions were between clinicians and people who paid to have access to their expertise and did not reflect the WPATH best practise.

As I said the WPATH files are activist **** - nothing more.

The reality is that throughout the history of WPATH the body has been fairly negative regarding trans people, but been the gatekeepers of clinical practice those needing clinical help had to engage with them. Only in very recent WPATH guidance have they been open to stakeholder engagement and input.

cdeb

And your evidence for that would be...?

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122155015#Comment_122155015

The first sentence is true but the rest is deeply misleading because it ignores the crucial point that, contrary to other medical fields, the actual research available is of particularly low quality. Basically the Dutch protocol was a best guess, perfectly reasonable at that time but unproven.

And according to the team themselves, it was never intended to be anything other than experimental: back in 2021, the lead doctor on the Dutch team was begging other teams such as the Tavistock to stop following their protocol "blindly" and instead to do what would be the normal approach in any field not invested by activists rather than scientists, namely to peer review it, thus identifying the weaknesses and strengths of the Dutch protocol.

https://4thwavenow.com/2021/03/16/dutch-puberty-blocker-pioneer-stop-blindly-adopting-our-research/

Here is Thomas Steensma himself pointing out one of the biggest problems with his own protocol: the fact that it was set up for an entirely different profile of patients than what has recently become the norm, namely older males without pre existing mental health issues, whereas since about 2015, the majority of new patients presenting are typically young females, often with multiple associated mental health issues and/or often on the autism spectrum:

https://archive.ph/LgttG#selection-2863.0-2863.110

It's in Dutch, but Google Translate will allow anyone who is interested enough to put a little effort into it to see what he's saying. Here's the start of the article (headline plus first paragraph):

More research is urgently needed into transgender care for young people: 'Where does the large flow of children come from?'

More research is urgently needed into gender reassignment in young people under the age of 18. Doctors who provide transgender care in Nijmegen and Amsterdam say they know too little about the target group and the long-term effects. In the meantime, they feel pressured by the long waiting lists. “All the research that exists comes from ourselves.”

And that is why Cass, inevitably, has concluded that the evidence for the affirmative approach as being the best available treatment simply is not there.

That's only one of the problems that Cass has identified, by the way. I won't go over them all here: they've pretty much all been named at various times on this site but generally been dismissed as "you want trans kids to die". Which misses the point spectacularly. Deliberately, I assume.

Shoog

It has been shown that the medical evidence for most fields of medicine is of a similar quality to gender dysphoric clinical practice. So should we stop performing most medicine because the evidence based is poor ?

concerned_tenant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122156131#Comment_122156131

On the one hand, you have argued throughout this the entire thread that the evidence-base for the affirmation model of gender dysphoria is strong.

Now, you are arguing that it's weak but should nonetheless go ahead because other branches of medicine have a weak basis (and I do not accept that contention for a second).

You cannot have it both ways; you either think the evidence base is strong or that it's weak — which is it?

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122156153#Comment_122156153

The evidence is based on harm reduction.

No one should be under the illusion that most clinical practice is based upon what seems to work to the clinician involved. In the case of transgender people the measure is do the individuals treated report reductions in self harm and improvements in mental wellbeing and there is plenty of evidence for this.

concerned_tenant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122156191#Comment_122156191

This is, yet again, untrue.

The Cass Report concluded in strong language that the affirmation model does not reduce suicidality.

cdeb

Actually the Cass Report refers to a "transition or suicide myth", saying that any studies with that conclusion are deeply flawed.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122155991#Comment_122155991

My opinion of the WPATH files is that you are correct that they have been edited to show only the problems that these discussions throw up, such as the fact that doctors are aware of the impossibility for 14 year-olds to grasp the reality of what future infertility might come to mean to them as adults. Similarly, young teens suffering from gender dysphoria are more likely never to have had an orgasm, due to their GD, and so will not understand the problems caused by permanent anorgasmia in an adult relationship.

If the publishers of the WPATH leaked files had published everything, the amount of data would have led to most people missing the point they wanted to make, ie, the problems with these treatments. They don't pretend to be an independent investigation like the one Hilary Cass headed. But unless they have lied about the sections they've posted, the problems they've pointed up are real: doctors are aware of these issues but are prescribing the treatments to young people who may be harmed by them despite that. I don't actually blame the doctors as much as some on here do - I think many of them are well-intentioned but at a loss as to what else they can/should do for their patients. Some however are clearly prioritising their own earnings over patient well-being. That's no secret in the US generally - money is the basis of their healthcare system anyway.

Others just want a quiet life, without attracting unwanted attention from trans activists. Cowardly perhaps but understandable. Doctors are not generally known for standing against the crowd. We saw in Ireland how supine they were for decades in obstetric care, deliberately allowing miscarrying women to actively develop sepsis before carrying out surgical abortions. That's a medical "strategy" that would put a doctor at risk of being found unfit to practise and removed from the medical register in most countries, yet it was considered "best (legal?) practice in Ireland until recently.

(Professor Peter Boylan) said the difficulty in the Irish legislation where a clear and present threat to a woman’s life must exist before an abortion can occur creates a serious ongoing risk, “some cases accelerate steeply and you miss the boat”, he said.  For example, there is up to 60pc chance of maternal mortality with sepsis fever but because the [foetal] heartbeat is there and you start dilly-dallying and that’s it."

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/former-holles-street-master-eighth-amendment-has-caused-death-of-women/36240277.html

TL;DR: the fact that the WPATH files did not publish the totality of the discussions does not devalue them. Only the relevant sections were published, which can be justified by the existence of legal protection of medical confidentiality: the leakers need to be able to prove the public interest of what they made public. If they'd published everything, that would be hard to argue.

There is no evidence that they were edited in a way that changes their meaning.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122156205#Comment_122156205

Unfortunately the highly selective cherry picking entirely devalues the WPATH files, most people reading them would be totally unaware of the editing to a narrative. It's intellectually dishonest and would be totally thrown out in any academic journal - which is why they never even attempted to get it peer reviewed.

It's activist ****.

concerned_tenant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122156263#Comment_122156263

The published files were not edited; the problems the files expose are real. Unless you are claiming the doctors invented those words or that these doctors don't exist, your argument fails.

Second to that, it's utterly ironic to bring up "cherry picking".

That's exactly what activists sought to do by pointing to poorly conducted studies as a means of validating their position — studies that just happened to validate their position (i.e. cherry picked). The Cass Report is being rejected by some precisely due to cherry picking.

The Cass Report done away with that cherry picking by analysing all relevant data from an objective, ideological-free medical standpoint.

cdeb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122156263#Comment_122156263

Any evidence of this "highly selective cherry picking"?

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122156263#Comment_122156263

"highly selective cherry-picking" is your interpretation of what to others looks like removal of all unnecessary information for clarity and legal protection.

For that to be cherry-picking, the meaning of what was edited would have to be altered by the removal of those elements. Can you provide any evidence of this allegation?