US doctor facing charges after revealing secret gender transitions for minors at his hospital

A young doctor in the United States is facing federal felony charges after blowing the whistle on a children’s hospital offering gender treatments to children after it had announced it had stopped doing so.

Dr Eithan Haim is a 34-year-old surgeon who discovered that the Texas Children’s Hospital where he worked as a resident was secretly continuing gender transition treatments on minors, despite publicly declaring in March 2022 that it would no longer provide such services.

Dr Haim discovered not only that the treatments were continuing but appeared to be expanding. He recorded online presentations where medical staff encouraged the transition of children. One of the social workers employed at the hospital admitted to deliberately not documenting such treatments in medical charts to avoid leaving a paper trail.

Dr Haim said:

“They were talking publicly about how they were concealing what they were doing. You can’t take care of your patient without trust. For me as a doctor, to not do something about this was unconscionable.”

Dr Haim, like many medical professionals worldwide, has serious doubts about the safety and efficacy of youth gender transition medicine, which he believes pose significant risks to children and young people.

Dr Haim contacted a journalist who published an exposé about the hospital without naming Dr Haim and protecting the privacy of patients at the hospital. Following the publication of the story in May 2023, the Texas legislature voted to ban medical gender transition for minors the very next day.

A month later, however, two federal agents from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services visited Dr Haim’s home. The agents handed him a letter indicating he was a “potential target” of an investigation related to alleged federal criminal law violations concerning medical records. Dr Haim later went public about this threat in an interview with the same journalist who had exposed the earlier story.

Dr Haim and his lawyers are yet to determine the exact nature of the charges.

Despite the potential consequences, Dr Haim has no regrets about speaking up. He remains committed to fighting the charges, stating, “If we don’t fight back, what world are we delivering our children into?”

Here in Australia, doctors like Dr Haim who have questioned gender treatments for children and young people are similarly being penalised.  Child psychiatrist and HRLA client Dr Jillian Spencer was stood down following a complaint about her objection to using pronouns. 

This is despite the fact that around the world, “the tide of ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors is receding”, including significant developments such as the closure of the Tavistock Clinic in England, the publication of the Cass Review, and developments in Sweden, France and Finland, which have all resulted in major restrictions on these treatments for minors.

HRLA represents and defends people like Dr Haim and Dr Spencer, courageous professionals who find themselves penalised for speaking up against ideologies and practices that fundamentally conflict with their consciences.