Tierin-Rose Mandelburg was perhaps the Media Research Center’s most rabid transphobe until leaving earlier this year — to the point that we didn’t even catch all the hate and misinformation she spewed before she left. One example of this was her Mandelburg parroted some bad and biased reporting on leaked files in a March 6 post:
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) internal files were leaked on Tuesday night and indicated that transgender medicine that is encouraged by WPATH is neither scientific nor medical. WPATH, which is “globally recognized as being at the forefront of gender medicine,” has formerly been a trusted group for medical advice. Thousands of doctors worldwide, as well as the American Medical Association (AMA), The Endocrine Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics rely on WPATH’s authority and leadership, and the contents of these files expose how detrimental transgender care is and how WPATH has a, now not so secret, agenda.
These files are huge when it comes to the fight against the transgender regime.
A report released about the files is titled “Pseudoscientific Surgical And Hormonal Experiments on Children, Adolescents, And Vulnerable Adults.” The report shows images of many internal conversations, while exposing many instances of injuries as a result of gender affirming “care,” including sterilization, a loss of sexual function, tumors in the liver and even death.
“These internal communications reveal that WPATH advocates for many arbitrary medical practices, including hormonal and surgical experimentation on minors and vulnerable adults. Its approach to medicine is consumer-driven and pseudoscientific, and its members appear to be engaged in political activism, not science,” Mia Hughes, author of the report, indicated, later adding that “gender-affirming care” is “unethical medical experiments” and “causes harm without justification.”
Michael Shellenberger, founder and president of Environmental Progress, published the report in conjunction with Hughes.
You might remember Shellenberger as one of Elon Musk’s stenographers for his selectively edited “Twitter files.” Meanwhile, Reporter Erin Hughes summarized the anti-trans bias and shoddy work in the “WPATH files”:
The factual inaccuracies, incorrect citations, and misrepresentations of both the literature and the “leaks” in the report are pervasive, affecting every section. In many instances, the authors reference their “leaks,” which are not searchable without optical character recognition (OCR) processing, presumably banking on the assumption that readers will not verify the context, thus missing the misrepresentations.
[…]The editorialized report relies heavily on citations that are misrepresented, either in terms of what the citations actually claim, their quality, or whether the arguments in the citations support the point being made by the author. For example, one section claims that the WPATH Standards of Care 8th revision “sent shockwaves through the medical profession,” and “provided the catalyst for the Beyond WPATH declaration, now signed by over 2,000 concerned individuals, many of whom are clinicians working with gender diverse young people.” A closer examination of the “Beyond WPATH” letter itself reveals signatories such as “John Howard – DJ” and “Collin Wynter, yoga instructor.” A majority of the signatories appear to be from non-relevant categories, and a significant chunk are not medical providers at all, such as “concerned grandparent” or “parent.”
Reed highlighted other misinterpretations:
For example, in the editorialized section, the report asserts that transgender individuals who undergo gender reassignment surgery “do not show positive outcomes,”citing four references to support its claim. These citations include a 2004 article from The Guardian, an article from a conservative site called “The New Atlantis,” which self-describes not as an academic journal but as a “public journal of ideas,” the frequently misquoted “Swedish Study” whose author has expressly corrected misinterpretations by anti-trans organizations, and a quality of life study that is 15 years old, evaluating surgeries performed 30 years ago, when social discrimination likely significantly influenced the outcomes. This contrasts sharply with much newer research from peer-reviewed articles that demonstrate a substantial improvement in the quality of life for transgender individuals.
Another claim was that a study supported a “2% fatality rate” for gender affirming surgery for those who have a sigmoid vaginoplasty, of which the report states “This one death represents an almost 2% fatality rate. In any other field of medicine, such a high fatality rate would result in the experiment instantly being halted and carefully studied to investigate what went wrong.” A review of the citation reveals a single case report of a death which occurred from a wound infection, a potential complication for any surgery. What the report leaves out, however, are that there are many recent studies designed to look at surgical complication rates, including a much newer study with a sample size of 366 patients and only 2 who experienced “major complications,” with no deaths.
[…]In numerous cases, the report not only misrepresents citations but also commits outright factual errors about trans care. For instance, it incorrectly conflates gender identity and sexuality, claiming that gender-affirming care is “a new form of conversion therapy” that “sterilizes lesbians and gays.” Gender identity and sexuality are fundamentally distinct. Regarding the claim of transition being a form of “conversion therapy,” evidence indicates that the vast majority of transgender individuals do not identify as straight after transitioning. Therefore, if transition were meant to serve as “conversion therapy,” it is notably ineffective in such an endeavor.
Mandelberg censored that criticism, of course. She didn’t care about accuracy — it was all about parroting talking points against the “transgender regime,” whatever that is, no matter if they have any relationship with reality. Instead, she raged: “You’ll have to read the files yourself to get the full scope of how willing members of WPATH were to skirt around ethics in order to conduct these transgender treatments because, honestly, the situation is heartbreaking.”
Mandelburg’s now-former colleague, Tom Olohan, repeated another dubious attack on WPATH in a June 27 post:
ABC News, CBS News and NBC News couldn’t care any less about a major scandal involving the Biden Administration’s collusion with a radical organization that apparently supports genital mutilation and chemical castration for children.
On June 24, unsealed court documents revealed that Biden’s Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary “Rachel” Levine, who calls himself a woman, pressured the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to avoid stating any age limits for chemical castration, genital mutilation and other hideous procedures.
The Big Three networks ignored this scandal in their evening programming on June 25 and June 26, although even The New York Times, a leftist newspaper, covered it.
Note the scare quotes Olohan put around Levine’s chosen name. He did that again with another transgender person:
However, The Times did not mention that WPATH is heavily funded by leftist billionaire “Jennifer” Pritzker, the cousin of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL). “Jennifer” Pritzker gave at least $237,500 to WPATH from 2013 to 2019.
WPATH acknowledged his donations with a “Philanthropy Award” in 2018, while “Jennifer” Pritzker’s Tawani Foundation has continued to spend thousands on WPATH since 2019. WPATH is also funded by George Soros, taking in at least $57,347 from the leftist billionaire.
What other people choose to call themselves is none of Olohan’s business, and his whining about how those names fail to conform to his bigoted views is hateful and petty. But then, being hateful and petty is how one gets a job at the MRC.