The High Authority for Health (HAS), an independent public authority responsible for issuing guides to good practice in public health, set up in 2022 a working group responsible for redefining medical recommendations relating to the management of trans in the French health system.
This reflection concerns in particular the precautions which govern the path towards gender transition: transactivist associations have long demanded the possibility of more easily accessing transition paths (social, hormonal or even surgical), of being more involved in health decisions relating to trans people, and to obtain the complete
“depathologization”
of transition pathways.
HAS had been asked these questions by the Ministry of Solidarity and Health.
A report delivered in January 2022 by general practitioner Hervé Picard and trans activist (member of the ACCEPTESS-T association) Simon Jutant, with the support of the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (IGAS), already concluded very broadly in in favor of trans demands.
On the basis of this report, the HAS then set up a working group bringing together users and healthcare professionals concerned, in order to establish new recommendations in terms of medical management of gender transitions.
Also read Gender transition: how trans activists infiltrated the High Health Authority
But the HAS categorically refused to communicate its panel of experts, despite our insistent requests, on the grounds that
“the members of the working group must not be subject to external influences”
during their discussions.
Le Figaro
nevertheless revealed in June that the composition of this working group does not respect a balance in the representation of expert points of view.
The refusal by the HAS to officially communicate the list of experts it selected to participate in this working group was reiterated on June 30, 2023, when the association Jurists for Children, which takes a critical look at the demands of transactivist movements, had in turn requested the communication of this list, as well as reports of each session of the working group.
The names are not covered “by any secrecy”
The association decided to bring the matter before administrative justice, after the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents (CADA) concluded, on July 20, partially agreeing with it: if the HAS does not have the obligation to communicate the minutes of the working sessions, it is however required to transmit to anyone who requests it, the list of members of the working group.
In a judgment rendered on February 20 by the Montreuil administrative court, the judge logically concluded in the same direction as the CADA, and therefore ordered the HAS to communicate this list to the Jurists for Children association.
The court gives the HAS one month to execute the decision;
HAS is also ordered to pay €1,500 to the applicant association.
The HAS had argued for its part that
“the communication [of this list] would infringe the private life of its members”
, but the court retorted that
“the names and status of the members are not covered by any of the secrets listed in the Code relations between the public and the administration
.
On its website, the Ministry of Health publishes public declarations of interest from the various people involved in the work of the High Authority of Health.
An advanced search provides access to declarations of interest from 28 people, mentioned as participants in the “Transition journey for transgender people”
working group
: Nathalie Chabert Buffet, Christine Chabrolle, Jean Chambry, Agnès Condat, Laura de Salas Prado, Béatrice Denaes, Jean-Dominique Dewitte, Martine Duclos, Marc Fillatre, Anne Froger, Julie Gilles de la Londe, Thierry Goguel d'Allondans, Claire-Emmanuelle Guinoiseau, Nicolas Morel-Journel, Lucie Jurek, Laurence Kouznetsov, Thelma Linet, Christine Louis -Vahdat, Joël Nziengui-Mabila, François-Xavier Madec, Laetitia Martinerie, Clément Moreau, Paul Neuville, Anaïs Perrin-Prévelle, Olivier Pirrello, Marie Terrouche, Claire Vandendriessche and Louve Zimmermann.
A quarter of this panel is made up of people who have already made a gender transition.
Six of the members only have legitimacy on the subject that conferred by their status as activists within transactivist associations.
Most of the other members are, as
Le Figaro
demonstrated , health professionals who have taken a public position in favor of the demands made by transactivist associations.
Only one of the experts, who has since resigned judging that the composition of this group was too biased, belonged to a movement opposed to the demands of the main transactivist associations, the Ypomoni collective.