WPATH’s ‘Standards of Care’ Don’t Meet Basic Standards
A formal review says SOC8 doesn’t meet the bar for evidence-based guidelines.
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About the Author
Dr. Colin Wright is an evolutionary biology PhD, Manhattan Institute Fellow, and CEO/Editor-in-Chief of Reality’s Last Stand. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, the New York Post, Newsweek, City Journal, Quillette, The Washington Examiner, and other major news outlets and scientific journals.
Clinical practice guidelines sit in the background of medicine, but they have outsized influence. They shape what doctors do in the exam room, how hospitals write protocols, and what insurers decide to pay for. And in politically charged areas, guidelines often carry even more weight, because people treat them as proof that a particular approach reflects professional consensus and “the standard of care.”
That dynamic is especially strong in so-called “gender medicine.” Activists and advocacy groups frequently cite guidelines as the final word more than they cite the underlying studies those guidelines are supposed to reflect. Which is why the quality of the guideline itself matters. If a document functions as a shortcut to “what experts say,” it ought to meet basic expectations of transparency, rigor, and independence.
A new paper in Archives of Sexual Behavior (published February 19, 2026) takes a direct look at that question for one of the most influential documents in transgender health care: the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care, Version 8 (SOC8), released in 2022. The authors, led by Yuan Zhang, aren’t evaluating whether specific treatments are right or wrong. They’re instead asking a much narrower and more fundamental question: do key SOC8 chapters look like competently-built medical guidelines?
