The World Health Organization (WHO) has created a panel which will develop guidelines for “gender-affirming care.” However, National Review has conducted an analysis of the panelists’ past publications and professional affiliations, and has determined the individuals have “clear conflicts of interest that would appear to disqualify them under WHO policy.”
WHO guideline-group policies bar the appointment of individuals who have “any interest” that could affect their objectivity, including “prior publication of a study or systematic review that is part of the evidence base under consideration in the guideline,” “prior public declaration of a firm opinion or position,” or affiliation with a relevant organization.
However, National Review points out that the WHO Guideline Development Group (GDG) tasked with establishing the influential public-health body’s policies on the “health of trans and gender diverse people” is almost entirely made up of activists who have extensive records of advocating a “trans-affirmative” approach that seeks to remove barriers to medicalization.
“The majority of the GDG clearly have strong, one-sided views in favor of promoting hormonal gender transition and legal recognition of self-asserted gender,” reads a January 4 letter by Reem Alsalem, United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, addressed to the WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus. “Of the 21 announced GDG members, not one appears to represent a voice of caution for medicalizing youth with gender dysphoria or the protection of female only spaces.”
A number of proposed GDG members, those included on the original list released in June and those added in December, appear to violate those restrictions. National Review details the disqualifying characteristics:
Florence Ashley, a self-described “biorg witch with flowers in their hair” and also a “transfeminine jurist, bioethicist, public speaker, and activist,” has argued that minors should have nearly unrestricted access to “gender-affirming care.”
“Due to trans youths’ unique knowledge of their gender identity and embodiment, fundamental components of their personal identity, parents and courts should only hold decisional authority in the rarest and most extreme of cases,” Ashley argued in a paper first published in 2022.
Ashley is no longer a candidate, claiming, “I withdrew for personal reasons that are unrelated to (and predate) conservative media flipping its sh**,” Ashley wrote on social media.
Several proposed panel members are affiliated with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an organization whose vision is “a world wherein people of all gender identities and gender expressions have access to evidence-based health care, social services, justice and equality.”
WPATH board member Chris McLachlan, who self-identifies as “gender non-binary, trans masculine,” is among the seemingly compromised WHO guideline-group members. McLachlan’s publication “Que(e)ring trans and gender diversity,” which supports “gender-affirming” treatment, was cited in WPATH’s eighth edition of its “Standards of Care,” published online in 2022.
Fellow WHO proposed guideline-group member Gail Knudson co-authored the WPATH’s seventh and eighth editions of “Standards of Care” and receives an honorarium as a co-chair of the WPATH Global Education Institute. Knudson currently serves on the International Medical Advisory Panel of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which issued a statement in 2023 endorsing “gender-affirming” hormone therapy as “part of the affirmation of gender identity for many TGD [transgender and gender diverse] people,” adding that “providing this service assists them in realizing their sexual and gender rights.”
Walter Bouman, another proposed member of the guideline group, served as treasurer and then president of the WPATH. Bouman was an executive board member and founding board member of European Professional Association of Transgender Health from 2013 to 2017. The group issued a policy position in 2015 stating that “withdrawing care for all transgender youth or adults or threatening to criminalize conscientious healthcare providers who work with transgender patients or clients using evidence-based care is a clear abuse of administrative and legislative power.”