EDITORIAL · DECLARED INTERESTS
This is the dated register of the interests behind every Eden Openly paper. Each interest is an entry with the date it began. Entries are added when an interest begins and closed when it ends. They are never edited to say something different, and never deleted.
How to read it
From 30 September 2026, every paper we publish carries the full competing-interests statement, dated: “Competing interests (as at 30 September 2026).” The interests that applied to that paper are the entries below that had begun by that date and had not yet ended. Papers published before then carry a shorter declaration. Where an interest below bears directly on one of them, it has been added to that paper as a dated update, and the rest are brought into line at each paper’s next version.
The statement in each paper is the declaration. This register is the complete, dated record behind it, so that a reader can see what changed between one paper and the next.
We think undeclared interests are the problem, not interests themselves.
Position and declared prior
| Entry | Since |
|---|---|
| Position. The author is a transgender woman receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy and a dermatologist, with a personal stake in transgender health, and treats these as potential sources of motivated reasoning. | Before June 2026 |
| Declared prior (an intellectual interest, declared as a competing interest). Eden holds a declared prior in favour of access to gender-affirming hormones for adults, and of adolescent access to puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones. | June 2026 |
Current interests
| Interest | Since | |
|---|---|---|
| (a) | The author is the founder and sole funder of a non-profit transgender healthcare and education organisation. The author is developing its clinical services, including its clinical protocols, and its education programmes, and is recruiting its clinical staff. Its education programmes include patient and family resources, school resources, and training for healthcare professionals in the organisation’s own standards of care, which address questions in the same field as the guidelines and standards of care this series appraises. | Before June 2026 |
| (b) | The author is the founder and sole funder of Eden Institute (edeninstitute.kr), a transgender health research institute in South Korea, which is intended to include a biobank and associated data infrastructure. | August 2026 |
| (c) | The author, through Eden Openly, is engaged in public correspondence and requests concerning the NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee’s Welsh Gender Service surgical referral pause, including written approaches to the Committee, requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, correspondence with Llais, and submissions to Senedd committees. Eden Openly publishes critical analysis of the decision at edenopenly.com/welsh-gender-service and describes itself as a party to the matter; the correspondence is published at edenopenly.com/wgs-correspondence. The author is not a party to any litigation and has no present intention to become one. | 1 September 2026 |
| (d) | The author, through Eden Openly, is engaged in parliamentary advocacy on the Health Bill’s single patient record provisions: written evidence to the House of Commons Public Bill Committee (published on the parliamentary record as HB130), a submission to the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and briefings to members of the House of Lords proposing an amendment. The advocacy concerns the confidentiality of, and access to, patient records, including a competent young person’s confidential control of their own record. It argues against provisions drafted by the Department of Health and Social Care and engages NHS England’s conduct. Everything filed is published at edenopenly.com/single-patient-record. | 13 July 2026 |
| (e) | The author, through Eden Openly, is conducting a structured appraisal of the Cass Review and the associated University of York systematic reviews. The appraisal is a public undertaking to reach judgements on evidence and recommendations in the field of transgender health. Its methods, stage and record are published at edenopenly.com/cass-review. | 28 September 2026 |
| (f) | The author’s published evidence reviews at Eden Openly assign quality and certainty grades to evidence, and are a prior commitment on that evidence, stated study by study. | June 2026 |
| (g) | The author, through Eden Openly, reports errors in published literature to the journals and bodies responsible for them, and records each report and its outcome in the Evidence Transmission Register. | 12 July 2026 |
| (h) | The author is a co-owner of, and the lead researcher at, a commercial business that develops skincare products and sells them to the general public through ordinary retail channels. The author is also planning, as a joint venture with a surgeon, a general aesthetic dermatology and surgery hospital. It is not open, may not open, and would not target transgender patients. The author may receive a financial return from both. They are the only commercial interests in this register. | Before June 2026 |
Ended interests
None yet. When an interest ends, its entry moves here with its end date and stays here permanently.
Funding
The author accepts no third-party funding for research, publication or appraisal activity, as a standing policy, and neither does (a) nor (b). All costs, including any external review, are paid personally by the author. The author’s funding of (a) and (b) is a financial interest in organisations working in transgender health. (h) is a commercial interest, present and planned, from which the author may receive a financial return. Our full position is set out in our statement of independence.
Memberships
The author holds no membership of WPATH, EPATH, ASIAPATH or any professional body whose guidance Eden Openly appraises. If that changes, it will be entered in this register as an interest, with its start date.
This register records interests, not personal details. The Independence page explains why the author writes under her legal first name, without a surname.
Changes to this register
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| 30 September 2026 | Register created, from the standard competing-interests statement v1.6. The start dates of (d) and (g) are taken from the published record: the filing of written evidence HB130, and the first reports in the Evidence Transmission Register. |
| 7 October 2026 | (a): the organisation’s education programmes are now described, and the entry states that the standards of care it teaches address questions in the same field as the guidelines and standards of care the Verdict Series appraises. The interest and its start date are unchanged. Standard competing-interests statement updated to v1.8. |
| 7 October 2026 | Memberships section added, stating that the author holds no membership of any professional body whose guidance Eden Openly appraises. No interest is added or changed. |
| 10 October 2026 | The pointer to the Independence page now says the author writes under her legal first name, without a surname. It previously said “a first name”. The name is not an interest, and no entry is added or changed. |
If you believe an interest is missing from this register, please tell us through our editorial contact page. Omissions are corrected in public and logged on our corrections page.