WHO classification can be dismissed because of COVID guidance
Robby Starbuck said:
“The World Health Organisation also told us that there was, that COVID was totally natural. And they also told us we needed to stay 6 feet away from each other, mask ourselves and keep ourselves inside. So I think that the WHO is probably a bad group to use as your expert.”
Scepticism about WHO pandemic guidance is widespread, and the argument that an institution that got one thing wrong cannot be trusted on another has an intuitive appeal, especially for audiences already distrustful of international health bodies.
The WHO's ICD-11 classification of gender incongruence was produced by a dedicated working group of clinicians and researchers over several years, using a separate evidence base and a separate process from anything to do with pandemic policy. Whether you trust the WHO's advice on social distancing has no bearing on the validity of that classification work, any more than a disputed speed limit would invalidate a hospital's cancer staging guidelines. The same classification position is held independently by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society, none of which were involved in COVID guidance. When an argument against scientific consensus rests entirely on distrust of an institution rather than on the evidence itself, it is the evidence that deserves the scrutiny, and trans people deserve an honest account of what that evidence actually says.
Anyone relying on this interview to understand the state of medical knowledge, who is left with the false impression that there is no credible scientific consensus on the classification of trans identity.