The World Health Organization has prioritized norm-setting over curbing actual disease, adding burnout and gaming addiction to its International Classification of Diseases and removing transgenderism in a politically correct move.

Defining “burnout” as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed,” the WHO’s definition stresses that burnout is more than stress; it’s the “occupational context” that counts. ICD classifications are used by insurance companies for billing purposes; the “only in the workplace” stipulation ensures that a patient burnt out from taking care of a sick family member, for example, or raising a child won’t receive the same insurance coverage as someone putting in 100-hour weeks at the office.

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The World Health Assembly, which governs the WHO, officially adopted “burnout” as part of the ICD-11 at its Geneva conference this weekend, updating the blueprint for its 194 member states’ health policies. That a doctors’ conference made “burnout” its number-one priority is no accident – a paper published earlier this year in the Annals of Internal Medicine claims physician burnout costs $4.6 billion annually in the US alone.

More controversial was the addition of gaming addiction to the ranks of drug, alcohol, and gambling addiction. Described as “persistent or recurrent gaming behavior” with impaired control, disruption of life activities, and persistence despite negative consequences, the WHO’s adoption of “gaming addiction” has made strange bedfellows of addiction specialists and industry groups, both of whom have united in opposition to its inclusion in the ICD-11. A paper published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions implores the WHO to “err on the side of caution” and wait for a stronger body of scientific research to be compiled, while multinational gaming group Interactive Games and Entertainment Association warned the WHO’s decision had been made unilaterally “without the consensus of the academic community.”

“Compulsive sexual behavior” didn’t quite make the addiction category – though the WHO did adopt it into the mental health disorder category, an indication of what happens to conditions with few or no advocates or financial interests involved.

“Gender incongruence,” on the other hand, was lifted out of the mental health category altogether, becoming a “condition related to sexual health.” The WHO’s definition remains more conservative than some countries’ – “gender variant behavior and preferences alone are not a basis for assigning the diagnosis,” the ICD-11 reads, meaning it can’t be applied to adolescents before puberty and intersex people are up in arms over language adopted elsewhere in the document, which refers to intersex variations as “disorders of sex development.”

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While the WHO initially focused on controlling and eradicating communicable diseases like smallpox and tuberculosis, it has more recently spread unchecked into “norm-setting.” While it would be comforting to think that humanity has conquered disease and can shift focus to social malaises, nothing could be further from the truth – abuse of antibiotics has given rise to legions of antibiotic-resistant super-bacteria, and other disease-causing organisms like yeasts have shown signs of mutating to outsmart existing cures. Instead of addressing this problem, the WHO has continued further down the road of social engineering it embarked on in January when it named “vaccine hesitancy” and “climate change” among 2019’s top ten health concerns – on the same list as Ebola and HIV.

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