The world’s leading advocacy group for “transgender health” has chosen to hide the identities of affiliated medical professionals in the weeks after a top surgeon associated with the organization was exposed as having connections to notorious child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has disabled a search function on its website which had for years allowed visitors to identify physicians who pledge to adhere to their medical protocols.
The function was removed from the website some time in the weeks after surgeon Dr. Jess Ting, who has collaborated directly with WPATH and presented at their conferences, was revealed as having received funding from Epstein, and even performed a medical procedure at the convicted sex offender’s Manhattan townhouse.
At the beginning of February, social media posts began to circulate which had derived screenshots and information from newly released documents contained in the Department of Justice’s Epstein Library.
The financier was found to have donated large sums towards the advancement of “transgender surgeries,” including a $50,000 gift to the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery (CTMS), which Dr. Ting directs.
The CTMS, headed by Dr. Ting, has been a consistent contributor to WPATH’s scientific symposia. Dr. Ting and his surgical team have presented clinical outcomes and multiple research articles at these events to the WPATH professional community. In the weeks following the shocking connection, WPATH disabled a long-standing search function which allowed the public to view the names of doctors and clinics who paid membership dues to the organization and contributed to their academic conferences.
The last available instance of the clinic affiliate search option was archived on March 23. By April, it had been pulled off the site. The current directory has been protected and requires membership status.
While it is not clear what the direct motivation for this change involved, the result is decreased transparency surrounding the medical establishment’s involvement with a lobbying group with massive international influence.
Dr. Ting has had a longstanding professional relationship with the current WPATH president, trans-identified male genital surgeon Dr. Mark “Marci” Bowers. Dr. Ting, a Johns Hopkins-trained plastic and reconstructive surgeon, partnered with Dr. Bowers, who previously performed surgeries on victims of female genital mutilation. In 2017, the two men co-founded the Transgender Surgical Fellowship Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Their program fundamentally transformed the training landscape for transsexual surgery in the United States. The two surgeons’ collaboration has been perhaps the most significant development in the field of “gender-affirming care” in its entire history. Whereas surgeons had previously passed down knowledge of such procedures through apprenticeships, Dr. Ting and Dr. Bowers sought to legitimize, standardize, and expand the field. Over the course of the past decade, that is precisely what they have accomplished.
While Dr. Bowers manages high-level international policy, medical consensus guidelines, and organizational leadership, Dr. Ting’s academic department at Mount Sinai serves as one of the primary sources generating the clinical data that supports WPATH’s Standards of Care – policies that have been adopted internationally in the field of transsexual drugs and procedures. According to the hospital’s website, Dr. Ting serves as the Director of the Transgender Surgical Fellowship Program, as well as the Attending Reconstructive Surgeon.
Dr. Ting has also served as a faculty member and co-chair for educational initiatives directly associated with WPATH’s Global Education Initiative (GEI), which is responsible for the organization’s professional training and certification standards. In 2018 and 2019, Mount Sinai co-sponsored the Live Surgery Conference for Gender Affirmation Procedures alongside WPATH. Dr. Ting and Dr. Bowers served as key panel hosts and featured surgeons, performing live-streamed surgeries for an international audience of medical professionals. In 2024, several research articles co-authored by Dr. Ting were presented at a WPATH conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on the topics of “facial feminization surgery” and “gender-affirming vaginoplasty.”
On January 30, the Trump administration updated the Department of Justice’s Epstein Library. In a highly publicized move, the DOJ publicly released over 3 million pages of investigative files, court records, and FBI documents related to the activities of the notorious child trafficker. The sheer volume of the data leak meant that journalists were working around the clock to parse the information. It wasn’t until weeks later that exchanges between Dr. Ting and Jeffrey Epstein surfaced on social media.
The Epstein files detail a heavy paper trail connecting the surgeon with the pedophile. A search of the Epstein files for Jess Ting reveals a collaboration rooted in institutional funding and off-the-record medical treatments. The connection dates back to as early as 2010, in the context of breast augmentation surgeries. Prominent New York fashion industry figure and the co-founder of Next Management modeling agency recommended Dr. Ting to Epstein after he inquired about a “boob job” for his personal assistant. In 2012 Epstein’s longtime personal executive assistant, Lesley Groff noted that she had “left another message for Dr. Jess Ting.”
In May 2016, Dr. Ting personally emailed Epstein to thank him for a $50,000 grant and to announce his new role as the surgical director of the “brand new transgender surgery program” at Mount Sinai. The funds were provided to the clinic in response to a 2013 request from Dr. Ting, after they had established a working relationship.
However, prior to the hefty donation, Dr. Ting had made at least one house call to Epstein’s Manhattan residence.
In October 2012, Dr. Ting performed a medical procedure on an unnamed female who was said to have fallen off an ATV and required stitches in her forehead. Rather than visiting a hospital, Epstein requested a personal visit from Dr. Ting, who can be seen at the Manhattan residence performing the procedure on the unidentified patient.
An itinerary for December 12, 2016, notes that Dr. Ting was scheduled to “stop by” the financier’s Manhattan residence once more, while a follow-up email confirmed his attendance. Epstein had at this point become a patient of Dr. Ting’s, and multiple correspondences confirm that the millionaire had been seeing the surgeon for medical issues related to his prostate.
More disturbingly, email exchanges in March 2013 between Dr. Ting and Epstein associates indicate that he visited “Jeffrey’s island” in order to “play with his toys.”
“Hello, Dr. Ting. Jeffrey would like you to enjoy a day on his island during your vacation,” reads one correspondence. “We can have you and your family picked up from St. John… [and] brought to Jeffrey’s island to play with his ‘toys’ and have some lunch.” To date, Dr. Ting has not provided a statement clarifying the context of the remark, nor what occurred during his trip.
While Dr. Ting has not been accused of any wrongdoing, he maintained his relationship with Epstein well after the first allegations and charges were filed against him.
When the surgeon visited Epstein’s island in 2013, the wealthy financier had already been required to register as a sex offender, as a result of a 2008 plea bargain. Epstein had pled guilty in Palm Beach County, Florida, on June 30 to charges that included the procurement of minors to engage in prostitution. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail, of which he served 13 months.
The Mount Sinai director was aware of the ongoing controversy surrounding Epstein at the time, as evidenced by a 2015 communication. Dr. Ting had received an email from journalist David Ingram of Reuters requesting an interview. “I’m working on a story about the philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein. I understand he has helped fund some of your work, and I’m interested in learning more about his philanthropy and whether it has been affected by the recent news about him,” read Ingram’s message.
Dr. Ting forwarded the email to Epstein’s assistant Lesley Groff asking whether he should respond to the email. However, the interview never took place.
Dr. Ting is perhaps most well-known for being a part of the team that performed genital surgery on a 17 year-old Jazz Jennings, and featured in several episodes of the popular reality TV program I am Jazz. During a post-operative follow-up evaluation in 2019, both Dr. Ting and Dr. Bowers discuss the appearance of the teen’s genitals. Dr. Bowers takes a photo of Jennings’ private parts while joking that he “could be a porn star” based on the amount of pictures the surgeon had taken of him.
In December 2021, WPATH released the draft version of the organization’s latest Standards of Care (SOC 8). The project was overseen by WPATH president Dr. Bowers, and former president and leading figure Dr. Eli Coleman. While Dr. Ting is not explicitly named in the SOC 8, research provided by his team at Mount Sinai played a role in the development of the protocols.
The SOC 8 was met with public outcry for attempting to establish a “eunuch gender identity.” Reduxx led a series of investigations into WPATH’s collaboration with a castration fetish forum, known as the Eunuch Archive, when developing the eunuch chapter of their guidelines.
The Eunuch Archive hosted a fiction section which contained thousands of erotic stories about boys being castrated – both surgically and chemically – which were among the most popular erotica in the forum. Members also shared graphic media depicting castrations for pornographic purposes.
Additionally, the Eunuch Archive forum was co-founded by a man who is now a convicted pedophile.
Reduxx revealed that WPATH leaders, and specifically Eli Coleman, were said to have personally invited the anonymous members of the pedophilic forum to contribute to the SOC 8 guidelines. In at least one instance, forum administrator Thomas Johnson (using the screen name “Jesus”) uploaded and shared a video of Dr. Bowers performing genital surgery to the Eunuch Archive for erotic purposes.
Following the finalized publication of the SOC 8, WPATH suddenly revised the document by removing specific age guidelines for the medical “transitioning” of minors.