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DAILY MAIL
A UN panel setting global care standards for trans adults has been accused of cronyism, with four fifths of its members being flagged for conflicts of interest and even of having a financial stake in the group’s work.
The LGBT Courage Coalition, a US-based campaign group, has accused the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) of appointing experts who are set to gain from the guidelines they’re tasked with writing.
Several are medical professionals with practices that provide cross-sex hormones and other care to trans people, and stand to gain from such care becoming more widespread, it is alleged.
Jamie Reed, a former case manager at a Missouri trans clinic who blew the whistle on kids being fast-tracked onto puberty blockers, bashed WHO for appointing panelists with a financial stake in the work.
‘A lot of organizations struggle when managing intellectual conflicts of interest, but a financial conflict of interest is kindergarten level,’ Reed, a member of the coalition, told DailyMail.com.
‘The fact that they could not manage basic financial conflicts of interest demonstrates that they are not in a position to manage something as complex as a global guideline, and they need to go back to the drawing board.’
Some 13 members of the panel have ‘significant’ conflicts of interest and another three appear to be compromised, she said in a report.
WHO should kick them out and let in people with a wider range of expertise, including in autism, which may contribute to gender dysphoria, and people who have transitioned and later come to regret it, she added.
Another group, the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM), agreed, saying the conflicts of interest could ‘interfere’ with members’ ‘ability to impartially assess the evidence and issue evidence-based recommendations.’
SEGM said this was likely by design — that WHO chose experts on one side of a hotly-contested medical debate to deliver guidelines that promote affirmation-on-demand, drugs and surgeries for trans people.
‘The fact that these affiliations were not viewed as problematic and passed the … review sent a strong signal regarding the direction of the guidelines,’ the group said in a statement.
