WHO publishes 'controversial gender guidance'

This is the announcement.

https://www.who.int/news/item/18-12-2023-who-announces-the-development-of-a-guideline-on-the-health-of-trans-and-gender-diverse-people

In line with WHO policy on conflict of interest, members of the public and interested organizations can access the biographies of the GDG members for this guideline and inform WHO of their views about them. The list comprises 21 members. All comments should be sent by email to [email protected] by 8 January 2024.

I'm not sure if we're being invited to comment on the guidelines or the GDG members (or both). But that does seem a very biased panel composed (almost?) entirely of transactivists.

Oh, look. It's Walter Pierre Boumann.

Dangerously batshit. Is the phrase that keeps coming to mind.

So the majority of the 'experts' are activists and advocates promoting one side of a very controversial issue. As far as I can tell the panel does not have anyone who is critical of, say, the use of puberty blockers given that there is very little longer term follow-up information on those who have been on them for several years. And there is no representation from those countries which have decided to limit puberty blocker use to research purposes, given that lack of longer term health information.

The time period allowed for commenting made me laugh aloud! From December 18 to January 8. If you wanted to find a time slot when people, especially women, in Europe and North America (the continents most affected by these issues) would be too busy to read online or write letters to the WHO then this would be that time period!

So the attempt is to do this behind the curtains, as the Denton papers suggest.

But I would still love to know who it is in the WHO that chose who would be on this panel, what the ideological beliefs of that person or persons are, and why another organisation supposed to serve us all (like the UN Women) seems to be totally captured by ideologues from one secular religion.

Surely what truly should matter here is the overall health and well-being of individuals with gender dysphoria and those who transition (and in some cases detransition), and to study that requires actual data on both the benefits and costs which we do not have. So this panel seems extremely premature.

The biographies of the experts on the panel make for interesting reading!
https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/hq-hiv-hepatitis-and-stis-library/biographies_tgd-gdg_proposed_members_2024.pdf?sfvrsn=5b1e7491_3

"actual side effects of gender-affirming medical care [...] a substantial increase of gender euphoria”

I sincerely hope the member giving this opinion isn't a clincian - because to any clinician or neuroscientist a 'substantial increase in euphoria' would be ringing big alarm bells.

It may sound like a marvellous thing in lay terms, but clinically it's quite the opposite. In fact one thing known to cause a similar effect is the neurological damage from tertiary syphilis.

From one of the members of the panel:

”Puberty blockers structurally place transgender and cisgender hormonal futures in approximate symmetry. Youth who take puberty blockers have their options wide open, their bodies unaltered by either testosterone or oestrogen. Although much remains unknown about the long-term effects of puberty blockers, limited empirical evidence and clinical experience make us more than justified in assuming that whatever risks puberty blockers have do not foreclose future life paths as much as undergoing puberty does”.

Christ on a cracker.

Bloody hell! I hope some of the better informed/less blinkered experts and groups are also going to respond to the consultation. I am surpised (or maybe not) the WHO is not waiting for the final Cass report.

That's terrifying (terfifying?). Blockers as the "default option...* There's so many things children can't do until they're 16, 18 or 21 (USA), why are they allowed to make such a big, irreversible décision on this ?

Well that really doesn't surprise me.