Free Republic

A military family who lost custody of their autistic son after they refused to transition his gender are suing a major DC hospital. The family said their boy had never shown any desire to become a girl until, at 16, he was hospitalized for self-harming after a bitter breakup with his girlfriend in 2021. Staff at Children's National Hospital informed the family that he wanted to be female and should be referred to using she/her pronouns going forward, the suit claims. His army veteran parents, from Prince George County in Maryland, rejected the suggestion, saying their son was 'impressionable' due...

On June 11, a U.S. district court judge ruled as unconstitutional Florida’s law barring doctors from treating minors with puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones for gender dysphoria issues. The judge determined that the Florida law interfered with a minor’s right to be treated in accordance with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)’s Standards of Care Version 8 (SOC-8). Unfortunately, SOC-8 are neither standards of care nor a consensus of standards of care. Let’s explore why.Distinction Between Standards and GuidelinesMedical standards of care are determined as follows:There are a variety of factors that can evidence the applicable standard of care...

A military family who lost custody of their autistic son after they refused to transition his gender are suing a major DC hospital. The family said their boy had never shown any desire to become a girl until, at 16, he was hospitalized for self-harming after a bitter breakup with his girlfriend in 2021. Staff at Children's National Hospital informed the family that he wanted to be female and should be referred to using she/her pronouns going forward, the suit claims. His army veteran parents, from Prince George County in Maryland, rejected the suggestion, saying their son was 'impressionable' due...

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) asserted that cross-sex hormones and surgeries were "medically necessary" so that insurance companies would pay for those procedures, allowing concerns about the treatments' affordability to dictate claims about their effectiveness, newly unsealed court documents show. WPATH's standards of care, which guide clinical practice in the United States, were updated in 2022 to include language about the medical necessity of hormones and surgeries because, as one WPATH official wrote in an email, the group was frustrated with America's "obtuse and unhealthy system of healthcare 'coverage.'" Most private insurance plans and state Medicaid policies...

After they struggled with COVID-19 symptoms for two weeks, Joel Mahoney drove his parents to Pen Bay Medical Center in Rockport, where his mother, Nancy Mahoney, was admitted on Dec. 19, 2021 for complaints of labored breathing, fatigue and a cough. She was treated for COVID pneumonia that required supplemental oxygen. She told the hospitalist treating her that a doctor, Ellsworth internist Meryl Nass, had diagnosed her with COVID “over the phone” earlier that month and prescribed a five-day supply of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin. The proponents of using the drug to treat COVID have been roundly criticized, and the...

The provision of transgender services at Planned Parenthood clinics has surged in recent years, coinciding with the growing profitability of the transgender medical sector that exploits children. Data from regional branches of the abortion giant indicates a significant expansion. Planned Parenthood began selling hormone treatments in 2005. By 2022, 41 out of 49 regional branches were exploiting kids with the sales. However, the past three years have seen a substantial uptick in Planned Parenthood’s involvement in transgender healthcare. Now 45 of its affiliates sell the dangerous hormones. From 2020 to 2022, the number of transgender sales and related visits at...

A group of transgender and nonbinary state legislators sent a letter to the Biden administration criticizing its decision to oppose gender-affirming surgery for minors. In the letter, the lawmakers said transgender youth in America have been under relentless legislative assault by right-wing politicians over the last several years. The biggest thing Republicans have done is placing bans on “evidence-based, mentally necessary healthcare” for transgender kids, they argued. “One bulwark against this wave of demonization and denial of care has been the clear, consisted messaging of President Joe Biden,” the group wrote. Their response comes after the White House said earlier...

In The Detransition Diaries, authors Jennifer Lahl and Kallie Fell show how transgenderism preys on abused and troubled people.The Detransition Diaries tackles one of the thorniest and most scandalous medical movements of the 21st century — the pervasive, perverse spread of genitalia mutilation and hormone experimentation in America, protected under the umbrella of “transitioning.” Nurses and bioethics advocates Jennifer Lahl and Kallie Fell undertake a comprehensive and historical study of the movement, highlighting the personal accounts of seven people who were persuaded in, and fought their way out. (The book is also based in part on a documentary by the...

A top donor to Joe Biden has slammed three of the president's most trusted aides after the president's horror show at the first debate in Atlanta Thursday night. Tens of millions of Americans saw Biden look weak and raspy on stage at the event with Donald Trump. The Biden family gathered at Camp David this weekend for a summit to discuss their patriarch's political future as he slides further away in the polls. While the family remains united in its 'unequivocal support' for the president - and with troubled son Hunter most insistent he remain in the race - others...

A top Biden administration health official successfully pressured an international group of medical experts to do away with age limit guidelines for transgender procedures, including gender-changing surgery, for minors, an unsealed court document shows. Adm. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, feared that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s late 2021 draft guidelines would make it difficult for American transgender youth to obtain access to the procedures, according to email excerpts between WPATH members included in an Alabama court filing. WPATH guidance recommended age minimums of 14 for hormone treatment,...

Back on June 10, we told you the story of Eithan Haim, who blew the whistle on Texas Children's Hospital performing "gender-affirming" surgeries on minors even after they'd been outlawed by the state legislature. Another whistleblower came forward and said that the hospital was billing Medicaid for these banned sex-change surgeries. The Biden administration sent two FBI agents to her house. You see, the FBI is going after Haim for violating HIPAA laws and threatening him with up to 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. Meanwhile, someone is doing something: EXCLUSIVE: Texas Rep. @BrianEHarrison has asked Texas...

Last month, NPR published an article entitled “There are now 25 states with bans on health care for minors.” NPR being what it is, “health care for minors” is a euphemism for the performance of hormonal and surgical procedures that obscure the biological sex of children. In June 2023, Texas passed a law banning puberty-blockers and genital-mutilating surgeries for minors. The Texas law prohibits any sort of procedures like double mastectomies, puberty blockers, sex change surgeries and cross-sex hormones from being performed on underage girls and boys. The law will also prevent state funds being used on such procedures. ......

A Texas registered nurse who accused doctors at the largest pediatric hospital in the United States of committing Medicaid fraud related to gender interventions for minors claims FBI agents threatened her at her home in response to her speaking out. Vanessa Sivadge, a nurse at Texas Children's Hospital (TCH) in Houston, came forward last year to journalist Christopher Rufo to claim that the institution was pushing "gender-affirming care" on young patients while ignoring their underlying psychological problems.Sivadge reportedly approached Rufo following his May 2023 story about Dr. Eithan Haim, who leaked medical records suggesting that TCH was continuing to prescribe...

The bill, proposed by Janae Shamp of the Arizona senate, would have required healthcare professionals to cover the costs of care for patients who choose to detransition. Arizona’s governor, Katie Hobbs, has vetoed a bill that would have required any doctor who provides so-called gender-affirming care to cover the medical costs for patients who later choose to detransition. The bill also would have applied to insurance companies and health care institutions. In her veto, Ms. Hobbs cited the bill as “unnecessary” and one that “would create a privacy risk for patients.” The bill was proposed in February by a Republican...

There has been a great deal of (seemingly warranted) scrutiny directed at Texas Children's Hospital since reports emerged two weeks ago of the Department of Justice going after whistleblower Dr. Ethan Haim, a resident at Baylor College of Medicine, on charges of improperly accessing and disclosing patient information in violation of HIPAA. In 2023, Haim told journalist Christopher Rufo that the hospital was continuing to perform "gender-affirming" surgeries on minors — a practice that was outlawed by Texas Lawmakers in September 2023. The uproar over Haim's targeting was followed by reports of a visit from FBI agents to a nurse...

CV NEWS FEED // The office of Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is reportedly investigating a whistleblower’s allegations of Medicaid fraud on the part of a “transgender” clinic that subjected children to illicit procedures. Scholar Christopher Rufo on Wednesday wrote that he has “confirmed with a spokesman for [Paxton] that the alleged Medicaid fraud is ‘currently being investigated by the Texas Attorney General.’” Rufo has extensively reported on the “massive scandal” involving Texas Children’s Hospital’s (TCH) clinic. On his Substack, Rufo noted that there are “two possible avenues for” Paxton’s investigation into TCH: “civil and criminal.” He further explained:...

Influential U.S. medical bodies are ignoring findings abroad that puberty-blockers and hormonal treatments for children and teens lack supporting evidence. On this side of the Atlantic, the Cass Review has fallen on deaf ears. Dr. Hilary Cass released her final report for England’s National Health Service two months ago, clearly demonstrating that puberty-blockers and hormonal treatments for trans-identified children and teens lack supporting evidence. NHS England has now banned puberty-blockers in clinical care and will be restricting their use to research settings. Yet U.S. medical leaders have responded with silence, inaction, or both, proving that the physical and emotional well-being...

Texas Children’s Hospital allegedly committed Medicaid fraud by billing for transgender procedures, according to a new whistleblower at the hospital.

CV NEWS FEED // The Biden administration sent a pair of FBI agents to the home of a nurse who asserted that staff at her hospital were committing Medicaid fraud in order to subject children to illicit “transgender” procedures. “According to a new whistleblower, doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital [TCH] were willing to falsify medical records and break the law to keep practicing ‘gender-affirming care,’” scholar Christopher Rufo wrote in City Journal Tuesday. This whistleblower, Rufo noted, is Vanessa Sivadge, “a registered nurse at [TCH] who has worked extensively with the hospital’s ‘transgender’ patients.” Sivadge told Rufo that TCH, America’s...

The “gender-affirming care” business has always had an aura of madness around it. Wielding the authority of white coats and prestigious degrees, doctors have convinced large swaths of the public that some children are “born in the wrong body.” The solution? Stop puberty, prescribe cross-sex hormones, and then, with the stroke of a knife, remove body parts—most commonly breasts, less frequently genitalia. These medical practices use scientific rhetoric to affirm what is, at bottom, an ideological program. And gender activists have been successful enough at capturing the legitimizing institutions—medical societies, regulatory bodies, and teaching hospitals—to repel most challenges to the...