A surgeon who spoke out about alleged secretive gender-affirming procedures on minors at a Texas hospital has been charged with four felonies.
The Department of Justice has appointed Dr. Eithan Haim, 33, charged with HIPAA violations and charged with four criminal charges, as first reported by City magazine. HIPAA rules protect an individual’s protected health information.
Haim responded to the accusations, saying, “They wanted to silence me using every technique the federal leviathan had at their disposal. But they failed.
‘The only way to lose is to submit to corruption. It’s time to fight back harder than ever!’
Haim released medical records in May 2023 showing that staff at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) had provided puberty blockers and other gender reassignment treatments to children, even after hospital officials said they had stopped doing so in March 2022.
He has repeatedly said that the leaked documents did not contain any patient’s personal information.
The Department of Justice has accused Dr. Eithan Haim of HIPAA violations and charged him with four criminal counts
Haim’s attorney Marcella Burke said Fox news: ‘My client would like to appear in court to have his side of the story told. I am confident that this will lead to the right decision.’
The surgeon added: ‘At 7am on Tuesday, three heavily armed officers showed up at my door to inform me that I had been charged with four crimes… for lying about the largest children’s hospital in the world lying to the public about their transgender program.”
In January Haim launched one fundraising to cover his legal fees for what he called a “blatant attempt at political intimidation.”
“Just over a month later… two federal agents came to my apartment in a very atypical, unexpected and aggressive show of force,” Haim wrote in his appeal for help covering his mounting legal costs.
Eithan Haim has launched a fundraising campaign to cover his legal costs for what he calls a ‘blatant attempt at political intimidation’
“I received a targeted letter, signed by a federal prosecutor, stating that I was under criminal investigation for a matter involving medical records.”
The prosecution, Haim says, is “driven by a very ideological divide within the Department of Health and Human Services.”
Officials are trying to “silence whistleblowers who expose institutionalized medical corruption and the dangers of these hormone-based interventions for confused adolescent children,” he added.
The FBI declined to comment on the case. DailyMail.com contacted TCH but did not immediately receive a response.
Haim insists he broke no rules. Although he has released private medical records detailing transmedical procedures on children as young as 12, he says patients’ identities have been redacted.
He wants to raise $500,000 through the GiveSendGo.com website to cover his legal costs in a case that he says has already forced him to cash out his pension funds, investments and other savings.
Haim’s whistleblower documents (pictured) show that Texas Children’s Hospital continued to provide gender care to young patients, including the administration of implantable puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
“While we have given this case everything we have, there is simply not enough to keep up with the hundreds of thousands we currently owe in legal bills or the potential millions it would cost to fight this case through litigation.” , he said. wrote.
Texas Children’s Hospital said it would halt gender-affirming care procedures after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ruled in February 2022 that gender-affirming care for children could be a form of child abuse under state law.
However, in May 2023, right-wing activist Christopher Rufo published documents from Haim, then an anonymous whistleblower, showing that TCH doctors continued to provide gender treatments to children within days of the hospital’s decision, and continued to do so in 2022 and into 2023 .
According to the records, a TCH doctor performed transgender medical procedures on minors ages 12 to 17, with “visit types” listed as “gender dysphoria” and “gender identity.”
The revelations showed that Texas Children’s Hospital continued to provide gender reassignment care to children even after officials urged them to stop.
Another visit was listed for ‘HRT [hormone replacement therapy].’
Other documents describe the removal of a ‘non-biodegradable drug delivery implant'[s]’ for ‘gender dysphoria in pediatric patients[s].’
This involves pellets placed under the skin of the upper arm that slowly deliver cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers to trans-identifying minors, without the need for regular injections or pills.
One procedure mentioned in the documents suggests it involved an appointment with an 11-year-old ‘female-to-male transgender’ – three days after the hospital announced it would stop such treatments.
The documents also describe a 19-year-old who was interested in breast removal surgery.
A 15-year-old is listed in the records as “asking about surgery.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said ‘unhinged activists’ are behind a medical system too eager to let confused children take puberty blockers
The documents also include images from a slide series presented in January 2023 titled “Medical and Psychological Care of Gender-Diverse Youth,” in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine.
Following the revelations, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into TCH, and the Houston-based facility again said it was discontinuing gender reassignment treatments for children.
A TCH spokeswoman told DailyMail.com at the time that doctors “provided high-quality care to all patients … within the limits of the law.”
Advocates of gender-affirming care say it is a necessary treatment for minors who are prone to suicide. Critics say children are too young to opt for irreversible gender reassignment treatments, and often just need mental health care instead.