Good news: The Federal Trade Commission and four states are suing the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which sold the world a pack of harmful lies about so-called gender-affirming care.
The suit aims to make WPATH, whose members it claims profit from the surgeries and drugs it praises, pay for the devastation its recommendations have wrought.
As FTC chief Andrew Ferguson alleged in an X post, “WPATH made deceptive and unsubstantiated claims about the necessity, safety, and efficacy of certain drugs and surgeries used to medically transition children.”
This seems pretty straightforward: For years, health authorities around the world considered WPATH’s Standards of Care to be the gold standard of recommendations for treating gender-related distress, a leap of faith-thinking-it-was-science led to thousands of prepubescents going on life-changing puberty-blocker meds.
And some (all too many) actually underwent mutilation under the guise of sex-change surgery.
But these guidelines were never driven by science: It was some mix of ideology and profit motive, aided by professional-advocate types seeking a new cause after gay marriage had won widerspread acceptance.
Leaked documents years ago exposed how WPATH even dropped its recommended age minimums for surgery for fear they would serve as fodder for those seeking to regulate “gender-affirming care.”
Meanwhile, independent medical researchers debunked WPATH’s claims in one country after another — even as the Biden administration under Health Secretary Xavier Becerra (now running to be California gov) stood by the baneful pseudo-science and even encouraged WPATH’s lunacy.
Team Trump began reversing those policies once it took over, and is steadily cracking down on hospitals and clinics still pushing these horrors, but those mutilated and maimed at WPATH’s behest deserve justice.
And other pro-butchery outfits like the American Psychological Association may also face FTC action, even as less-politicized medical societies rise in belated opposition to WPATH’s quackery.
Meanwhile, individual lawsuits are targeting individual mal-practitioners; let us pray all the ghouls are forced to pay up.
Yet many politicians still push these lies, such as New York Attorney General Tish James: Will they ever suffer for it?
In Washington, most Democrats won’t even support the Protect Kids Act, which simply requires schools to get an explicit parental OK before socially transitioning children.
America has a long way to go before this madness ends; let’s hope the FTC suit gets us closer to that day.
