Two transgender healthcare professionals specialising in gender reassignment have criticised the transitioning of children, as well as the clinics where such interventions are performed.

Several doctors and experts have started sharply criticising gender reassignment clinics for not treating children with due prudence. Dr. Marci Bowers, a world-renowned vaginoplasty specialist and Erica Anderson, a psychologist at the University of California Clinic of Pediatrics and Adolescents, also spoke to the Common Sense with Bari Weiss blog about children’s gender reassignment and puberty-blocker treatments.

Both providers are transgender and board members of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), a professional association that sets the standards worldwide for transgender medical care and for furthering the understanding and treatment of gender dysphoria.

This is a huge story that the ⁦@nytimes⁩ could have helped break earlier this year. It refused, saying the information “fell outside our coverage priorities.”

Of course it did.

Because it was the truth.

⁦@bariweiss⁩ ⁦@AbigailShrier⁩ https://t.co/q95sbg0RxV

— Caitlin Flanagan (@CaitlinPacific) October 5, 2021

Erica Anderson said she co-authored an op-ed for The New York Times, warning that many transgender healthcare providers were treating kids recklessly. However, The New York Times refused to publish the article because they claimed the topic was not a priority at the moment.

The two professionals also expressed concern about the administering of puberty-blocking drugs and gender reassignment treatment, and they also voiced concerns that appear to question the current health guidelines set by WPATH.

WPATH, for example, recommends that for many gender dysphoric kids, hormonal puberty suppression should begin at the early stages of puberty, as these interventions have been recognised by the organisation as fully reversible since 2012.

However, when Erica Anderson was asked if she believed that psychological effects of puberty blockers were reversible, she said: “I’m not sure.” When asked whether children in the early stages of puberty should be put on blockers, Bowers said: “I’m not a fan.”

In exclusive interviews with @AbigailShrier, two of the most prominent providers in the field of transgender care sound off on puberty blockers, ‘affirmative’ care, the inhibition of sexual pleasure, and the suppression of dissent.
https://t.co/CZ9MHFZjme

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) October 4, 2021

Dr Marci Bowers was of a similar opinion. “This is typical of medicine. We zig and then we zag, and I think maybe we zigged a little too far to the left in some cases.” She added “I think there was naivete on the part of pediatric endocrinologists who were proponents of early [puberty] blockade thinking that just this magic can happen, that surgeons can do anything.”

WPATH had not been welcoming to a wide variety of professional viewpoints, including those concerned about risks, skeptical of puberty blockers, and maybe even critical of some of the surgical procedures. “There are definitely people who are trying to keep out anyone who doesn’t absolutely buy the party line that everything should be affirming, and that there’s no room for dissent,” Dr. Bowers added.