Whistleblowers Risk Everything To Expose Shocking Practices At Texas Children’s Hospital

Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston is the largest children’s hospital in the world. They treat more than four million patients under the age of 21 every year, most of them minors. And because of the hospital’s size and prestige, what happens at TCH doesn’t just affect those patients. What happens at TCH also influences how ...

Aug 21, 2024 - 15:28
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Whistleblowers Risk Everything To Expose Shocking Practices At Texas Children’s Hospital

Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston is the largest children’s hospital in the world. They treat more than four million patients under the age of 21 every year, most of them minors. And because of the hospital’s size and prestige, what happens at TCH doesn’t just affect those patients. What happens at TCH also influences how other major children’s hospitals all around the country conduct their operations.

That’s what makes the reporting out of Texas Children’s Hospital this year — most of it done by Chris Rufo — impossible to ignore. In the span of a little over a year, two whistleblowers have come forward to allege that TCH is systemically deceiving the public and potentially violating the law.

The first whistleblower, a general surgeon named Eithan Haim, provided records to Rufo which demonstrated that TCH had not, in fact, shut down its child sex-change program as promised. This was significant because the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, had just released a legal opinion stating that child sex-change surgeries — as well as cross-sex hormone treatments — constitutes child abuse under Texas law. So TCH claimed that they shut the program down in order to avoid prosecution. As the hospital put it, they wanted to:

safeguard our health care professionals and impacted families from potential criminal legal ramification.

So they stood by the child sterilization, but they said they had no choice but to comply with the attorney general.

According to Rufo’s reporting, Haim provided redacted records proving that TCH then quietly restarted the program without informing the public. In effect, they didn’t really shut it down at all. Haim didn’t give Rufo any personally identifying information about any patients, and no personally identifiable information was ever released publicly. He provided only the information that was necessary to verify that TCH was continuing to perform procedures related to child sex-changes, in apparent defiance of the attorney general.

For example, the records reportedly demonstrated that TCH allowed a doctor to, “insert a non-biodegradable drug delivery implant” into an 11-year-old girl who identified as transgender. The records also indicated that several children between the ages of 11 and 15 received these implants, among many other procedures.

The Texas legislature clearly thought Haim’s revelations were worth acting on. The very next day after Rufo published his report on Haim’s claims, the Texas legislature voted — in bipartisan fashion — to ban so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors. So the attorney general’s legal opinion wasn’t just an opinion anymore. It was binding on hospitals like TCH.

WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show

On these facts, there’s no question that Eithan Haim is a whistleblower by any definition.

He chose to risk career — which was just beginning — to provide information that his employer might be systematically violating the law. And not just any law — but a law designed to protect children from being abused and permanently sterilized. On top of that, Haim’s evidence indicated that TCH might be lying to the public, which is a pretty big deal when you’re talking about a children’s hospital. If they’re willing to lie about castrating children, it might lead you to wonder what else they’re willing to lie about, and how deep the corruption goes. Haim’s disclosures directly led to a substantial change in Texas law, in record time, which means that by definition, they were highly relevant to the public interest. You cannot define “whistleblower” anymore clearly than this.

But Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ DOJ didn’t see it that way.

A month later, they sent federal agents to his door to inform him that he was under investigation for HIPAA violations.

Shortly afterwards, he was indicted. Watch:

So according to the DOJ, Eithan Haim wanted to cause “malicious harm” to the hospital. They’re not concerned about the permanent harm that this massive and well-funded hospital may be causing to children. Instead, the prosecutors are worried about the “harm” that the hospital might suffer when the public learns what it’s doing, in defiance of the attorney general and Texas law.

This is a hospital that, by the way, receives a lot of money and tax breaks from the government. We have every right to know what it’s doing. But apparently the hospital’s employees are not allowed to “harm” the hospital by informing the public about the procedures they’re performing.

You might remember that Democrats didn’t always treat whistleblowers this way. During the Trump administration, a CIA operative who was assigned to the White House leaked classified recordings of Trump to Adam Schiff. That led to the first impeachment trial. We weren’t even allowed to know the CIA operative’s name at any point during the proceedings. Corporate media outlets refused to tell us. Even in Congress, lawmakers were told it was off-limits to reveal his identity. John Roberts, who was presiding over the impeachment, enforced that rule. This was a “whistleblower” who wasn’t even alleging that Trump had violated any law. And yet, this CIA employee was treated with such reverence that, to this day, we’re not allowed to say his name in public.

But Eithan Haim — who actually displayed real bravery, and who disclosed relevant information about a children’s hospital — now faces up to a decade in prison if convicted. His life gets destroyed and his career is ended, all for telling the truth. And he’s not the only one.

This week, a nurse named Vanessa Sivadge revealed that she was recently fired by Texas Children’s Hospital. Her crime was alleging that TCH bills Medicaid to provide puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children, in violation of federal law. TCH immediately denied this allegation.

Then the Biden administration sent more federal agents to harass her at her home, because that’s what happens when you start saying inconvenient things about so-called “gender affirming care.” Watch:

 

The only reason these agents showed up to Sivadge’s home was to intimidate her. They weren’t there to arrest her. They weren’t there to inform her that she was the target of any investigation. The point was to imply that she’d better keep her mouth shut because the federal government was watching her.

In a letter to Rufo, Sivadge said she had attempted to transfer away from the endocrine unit as a last-ditch effort to avoid working in this area of so-called medicine, but the hospital refused her request:

This past Friday on August 16, TCH fired me effective immediately. This is unlawful for two reasons: it is retaliation for my coming forward with information on TCH’s egregious pattern of deception and Medicaid fraud, and this action also illegally disregarded my request to transfer due to my belief that these procedures provide irreversible harm and lifelong regret to children confused by their sex.

If it’s true that TCH is defrauding Medicaid, it wouldn’t be particularly surprising. Last year, I posted a Twitter thread looking to two of the largest so-called “trans healthcare” providers, known as Plume and Folx. And both of these providers indicated that they diagnose patients with “dysphoria,” even if they don’t really have it, in order to ensure that insurance pays out. In fact, Folx openly admitted doing this on their website. This is the kind of apparent fraud that can take place openly when your industry has the full backing of the Biden DOJ. When you know the government’s on your side, you can admit to fraud in public and no one does anything. It’s the people who point out the fraud who get harassed and even jailed.

What’s particularly troubling about the situation at TCH is that Vanessa Sivadge was clearly in a position to know if the hospital was defrauding Medicaid. She interacted with doctors who were ordering various procedures and medications, and she coordinated prescription refills all the time. She once taught a child how to inject sex-change hormones. It was her job, which she performed up until the moment she realized how immoral it was.

As Sivadge put it:

In the cardiac clinic, we were taking sick kids and making them better. In the transgender clinic, it was the opposite. We were harming these kids.

So there’s only two possibilities here. Either this nurse is, for some reason, lying about her own first-hand observations, knowing it would completely destroy her career and her life. Or, like Eithan Haim, she’s telling the truth. And right now the latter explanation seems a lot more believable.

In response to her termination, Sivadge posted just two words on social media: “Worth it.”

That’s the kind of response you’d expect from someone who knows that the Texas attorney general’s investigation is going to validate everything she said. It’s a rare example of bravery in an industry that’s sorely lacking it. And it’s exactly what it will take to end this insanity and stop the mutilation and sterilization of children. 

These two whistleblowers alone have had a major impact. What happens next at Texas Children’s Hospital could determine what happens not just to the millions of children in their care, but to all the other children’s hospitals that look to TCH for guidance.

What’s needed now is for more whistleblowers to come forward, to follow their conscience and to expose this fraudulent industry for what it is.

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Fibis I am just an average American. My teen years were in the late 70s and I participated in all that that decade offered. Started working young, too young. Then I joined the Army before I graduated High School. I spent 25 years in, mostly in Infantry units. Since then I've worked in information technology positions all at small family owned companies. At this rate I'll never be a tech millionaire. When I was young I rode horses as much as I could. I do believe I should have been a cowboy. I'm getting in the saddle again by taking riding lessons and see where it goes.