NEW GUIDANCE: Sex is ‘not limited’ to being male or female, the World Health Organization (WHO) say in new guidance.
Sex is ‘not limited’ to being male or female, the World Health Organization (WHO) will say in new guidance.
The WHO, an international authority on all things health, said it was ‘going beyond’ the use of binary terms to recognize gender and sexual diversity’.
But experts called the move a ‘dismissal of basic biology’ and could lead to medical advice being de-sexed and over-complicated.
The change will be to gender guidance originally published in 2011 and is used by public health officials.
It is not clear exactly what the WHO’s new advice will say, but the agency explained its rationale for the change on its website.
WHO said its guidance would go ‘beyond non-binary approaches to gender and health to recognise gender and sexual diversity or the concepts that gender identity exists on a continuum and that sex is not limited to male or female’.
The global health body risks wading into a wider row about gender-neutral health advice.
Professor Jenny Gamble, a midwifery expert from Coventry University, described the WHO’s change as ‘problematic’.
‘It is a dismissal of basic biology — and mistake,’ she told MailOnline. ‘Biology is a key determinant of health and illness.
‘Not being clear about basic biology opens the door to a range of problems, including very poor health communication but also distorted data.’
