Physicians working with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) admitted in an unearthed video that puberty blockers are not reversible, despite being advertised as such.
The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) first reported that the organization, which publishes guidelines influencing standards of care for transgender-identifying minors at hospitals across the U.S., was recorded in September 2022 revealing that the ramifications of puberty blockers are greater than advertised and are not fully understood by young patients.
During what the DCNF described as “educational sessions” that “were part of a transgender medicalization certification program offered to WPATH licensed clinicians,” WPATH-certified pediatric endocrinologist, Dr. Daniel Metzger, said that puberty blockers slow calcium accrual “back to the prepubertal level.”
Metzger also warned that boys placed on puberty blockers too young are often left with permanently underdeveloped genitalia, which he worries will complicate future procedures such as surgical vaginal construction.
“When you think about vaginoplasty, the creation of a vagina in an assigned male, you need tissue, genital tissue, to create that vagina. And if we are taking an 11-year-old boy, who does not have a lot of genital tissue and blocking puberty right there, we’re preventing the growth of the vagina for down the road,” Metzger told attendees.
The difficulties described by Metzger can be fatal, as explained in a 2016 Dutch study that documented the complications following an elective sex-change surgery, resulting in the death of an 18-year-old male. The patient, who underwent a vaginoplasty procedure as a young adult, had underdeveloped male genitals and a lack of tissue — quickly leading to necrotizing fasciitis and his eventual death.
Regarding fertility, Metzger addressed how puberty blockers prevent males from developing sperm, and said that “Kids have zero idea about their fertility.” Despite this, WPATH guidelines advocate for prescribing the drugs to children as young as 8 years old.
Member of the WPATH Board of Directors and co-lead in the development of the adolescent chapter of the WPATH Standards of Care, Dr. Scott Leibowitz, also claimed that the prescription of puberty blockers is “more invasive than often times the media makes it out to be.” Leibowitz added, “One cannot be on puberty suppression endlessly. You get to a place where physiologically we need hormones.”
Leibowitz, defending his WPATH standards and practices, said that physicians must rely on more than just statistical evidence. “There is an ethical human rights component to treating people,” he said. “We don’t rely on evidence for every single treatment we do in medicine. We have to look at the whole thing. Ethics, human rights, justice for trans people.”
Low levels of testosterone in males and estrogen in females can have detrimental effects. Females are at risk of “premature ovarian failure, anorexia nervosa, athletic amenorrhea, prolactinoma, hypopituitarism, and chronic kidney disease,” according to one study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
