The Department of Justice has indicted a Texas doctor on four counts of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) after blowing the whistle on Texas Children’s Hospital for performing “gender-affirming care on patients” as young as 11.
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Christopher Rufo of City Journal originally broke the story of the hospital performing the illegal procedures. Texas Children’s Hospital announced in March 2022 that they would stop “gender-affirming care” on minors. But whistleblower Dr. Eithan Haim gave Rufo documents showing that not only had the “gender-affirming care” continued at Texas Children’s Hospital, but surgeries on children as young as 11 were being performed.
The hospital “secretly continued to perform transgender medical interventions, including the use of implantable puberty blockers, on minor children, after they announced in March 2022 that they had stopped giving such care.”
The story was a sensation and put the hospital on the defensive. The Texas legislature passed a law banning “gender-affirming care” for minors.
Haim was morally troubled by the hospital where he was performing his residency countenancing such “barbarism” as Rufo puts it. And now, it has cost him.
The Department of Justice indicted Haim on four counts of violating the HIPPA Act’s privacy strictures.
On the morning in June 2023 that Haim was to graduate from Texas Children Hospital’s residency program, federal agents knocked on his door. They had identified him as a potential “leaker,” presumably through forensic examination of the hospital’s computer systems. Shortly thereafter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari began threatening Haim with prosecution.
Now, Ansari has made good on those threats. Earlier this week, U.S. marshals appeared at Haim’s home and summoned him to court to face an indictment on four felony counts of violating HIPAA. His initial appearance is next Monday, where he will learn more about the charges against him.
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Rufo believes that the charges are bogus.
According to one of Haim’s attorneys, Marcella Burke, he is anxious to get to trial to get his side of the story told; she is confident that this will result in the correct decision being made. (For my own part, I can confirm that nothing in the information provided to me identified any individual; all the documents were, in fact, carefully redacted.) Nonetheless, the prosecutor has pressed forward, hoping, at the least, to intimidate other medical professionals who would consider blowing the whistle on the barbarism of “transgender medicine.”
As Rufo points out, Biden’s Department of Justice has not shied from targeting political opponents of the Biden administration: former President Trump; conservative school board protesters; persons praying outside of abortion clinics; and now, doctors who dissent from transgender ideology.”
Rufo is convinced that Haim’s case is an “inflection point.” It’s hard to disagree. If Haim is found guilty and silenced, it will deter other doctors from blowing the whistle on fanatical medical professionals elsewhere who think they have a calling to proselytize in favor of mutilating children and filling their bodies with dangerous drugs.
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Haim’s first court appearance is on Monday.