We have sent our open letter urging disengagement from the discredited WPATH to over 750 medical, mental health, education and political bodies across Canada. We encourage you to send the letter, with over 250 signatures, to anyone you know needs the evidence of the lack of safety and efficacy of “gender affirming care”. Read and share here: Open Letter Urging Immediate Disengagement from WPATH or Lettre ouverte appelant de toute urgence à une rupture immédiate avec la WPATH largement discréditée
An Open Letter Urging Immediate Disengagement
from the Largely Discredited WPATH
March 2024
We are a group of concerned parents, most of whom have children struggling with gender ideation and grappling with the largely unrestricted social and medical options being presented to them in Canada. We believe that no child has the necessary cognitive and psychosocial maturity to provide informed consent to the use of off-label synthetic hormones and surgical procedures, often referred to as “gender affirming care,” that have irreversible and damaging effects on their health and fertility. We also carefully follow the results of peer-reviewed research in this area, which, to date, has NOT yielded strong evidence of the safety or efficacy of gender-affirming medical treatments. Therefore, we work to increase public awareness and pressure our social, medical and political organizations to conduct themselves from an evidence-based perspective.
In light of the recent release of the WPATH Files, we are writing to ensure that you are aware of WPATH’s experimental nature, its lack of proper accreditation, and the knowledge among its membership that the gender affirming treatments it continues to recommend are harming children, adolescents and vulnerable adults– to an extent that WPATH members themselves will admit is unknown at best, and dire at worst.
The Canadian Psychological Association, the Canadian Pediatric Society, along with medical and mental health professionals across Canada broadly follow the WPATH Standards of Care– which, we remind you, does not have an accreditation score at all. Continued adherence to WPATH’s guidelines would not be consistent with your profession’s fundamental principle to first “do no harm.”
We urge you, as a regulatory body, representative of, or healthcare provider to the Canadians to whom you are accountable and with the transparency you are charged to uphold, to recognize the discreditation of WPATH and act accordingly.
WPATH’s guidelines for gender affirming care are not evidence-based, but experimental. A 2023 article in the prestigious British Medical Journal confirms this. As parents, we are paying close attention to this, and we are asking that our medical, political, education and regulatory professionals do the same. Your continued commitment to WPATH as an authority for the treatment of vulnerable children, adolescents and adults will show us that you are NOT paying attention and that you are NOT following the overwhelming and growing body of evidence.
We are aware of the common misconception that if trans-identified children and adolescents do not receive synthetic hormones and life altering surgeries, that their mental health will decline and they may even take their lives. If that were truly the case, there would be ample evidence of that from around the world. Unfortunately, the suicide myth is an unsubstantiated claim that has been made by WPATH and other medical professionals and organizations that follow their experimental guidelines. Recent peer-reviewed research, such as this 20-year Finnish study, does NOT show that gender affirming care improves the mental health outcomes of children and adolescents. For example, and perhaps most importantly, this research does NOT find decreased suicide rates in youth who have accessed gender-affirming medical treatment.
Several progressive European countries have found through close examination of the evidence that GnRH Analogues (Puberty Blockers) have risks to children that far outweigh the benefits and have taken strong steps toward banning them for this use. In Canada, puberty blockers have been prescribed to children over the phone prior to an initial consultation, which is not only off-label use of these drugs, to which children cannot consent, but also shows extreme disregard for safety and efficacy. We urge that Canadian medical, political, education and regulatory professionals follow progressive nations including Sweden, Finland, England, Norway and France toward the safeguarding of children and adolescents rather than follow WPATH further toward negligence and harm.
Puberty Blockers are NOT a pause button– the pituitary gland can actually be rendered indefinitely dormant with their use. They are most often followed by cross-sex hormone treatment (up to 98% of the time) and these minors never go through natural puberty. Further, the negative long-term effects of puberty blockers when they are followed by cross-sex hormones are well-documented and dire, as even the president of WPATH confirms in this linked video and with this statement, “Every single child or adolescent who was truly blocked at Tanner Stage 2 has never experienced orgasm, I mean it’s really about zero.” Several countries, most recently England, have corrected their course and banned the use of GnRH Analogues for gender affirming care. Medical associations owe it to the public to provide COMPLETE and TRUTHFUL information, which further commitment to WPATH’s experimental recommendations will NOT do.
We know that bilateral mastectomies ARE being performed on patients UNDER 18 YEARS old in Canada, as WPATH’s SOC 8, which we remind you is not an accredited standard of care, has removed the age limits entirely for this and other gender affirming medical interventions. We know this first-hand, through our lived experience, because it has happened to our own children, and we know that this procedure is completely irreversible. Further recognition of the WPATH SOC 8 or other WPATH recommendations in light of the information now available to you via the WPATH Files would not be conducive to maintaining the trust of the public.
When professional medical associations cease to be guided by evidence-based research and principles, and cease to be open and honest with the public, then the public– rightly and understandably– becomes alarmed and will, in turn, support the intervention of governments and ultimately the courts. While we do respect the doctor/patient relationship, we, as parents and concerned citizens, cannot turn a blind eye to the evidence that is causing several of the most progressive countries in the world to make a U-turn away from gender affirming care. We hope you won’t either.
Children and adolescents DO have the right to safe, evidence-based, non-experimental medical care that protects them from long-term harm such as loss of sexual function and infertility. This right is enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Moreover, children, adolescents and their families ALSO have the right to provide informed consent to drugs and surgical procedures that are recommended to them. This requires doctors and medical associations to be informed and evidence-based, transparent and accountable. These are the responsibilities that any medical, mental health, government, or educational body responsible for children and vulnerable adults SHOULD hold sacred. Full stop.
We strongly recommend, if you haven’t already, that you cease to follow the guidelines put forth by the heavily discredited WPATH, stop promoting medical negligence and harm while operating from a non-evidence-based perspective, and change course now as progressive European countries including Sweden, Finland, England, Norway and France have already done.
Access the WPATH Files HERE
In Support of Children and Families,
Our Duty Canada
With over 250 CO-SIGNERS including the author of the WPATH Files, Mia Hughes. We would like to take this opportunity to thank her for her incredible efforts!
Our open letter was inspired by the release of The WPATH Files…
