A whistleblower who tried to expose wrongdoing at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) is being prosecuted by the Federal government for allegedly releasing HIPAA-protected patient information. Dr. Eithan Haim is accused of illegally providing the intel, which was carefully redacted to conceal “all personal information,” to Manhattan Institute senior fellow, Christopher Rufo. According to Rufo, the information Haim released “remained within the bounds of privacy laws,” but the Biden Administration is going after him anyway.

At issue is the hospital’s continuation of its gender transitioning program, which it claimed had been halted in 2022 in response to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s issuance of an opinion that transgender procedures and treatments “can constitute child abuse under section 261.001(1)(C), 261.001(1)(A), and 261.001 (1)(B)” of the Texas Practice Guide for Child Protective Services.

In an interview with Rufo last January that appeared in City Journal, Dr. Haim revealed that after the hospital pledged to “shut down” its transgender program, it secretly accelerated it. Just three days after declaring that the program was discontinued, the hospital resumed its transitioning procedures on children “by implanting a puberty-blocking device into an 11-year-old girl with gender dysphoria.”

Haim said: “I was doing surgery at the hospital, and people I knew would tell me how they were implanting these puberty-blocking devices into 11, 12, and 13-year-old kids. They told me how the kids had all these psychiatric issues that were going unmanaged but were being attributed to this one thing,” meaning the need to change their gender.

Haim further disclosed that, seven months after the alleged dissolution of the transgender program, the head of the program, which—to the public—did not exist, was given the opportunity to take part in the hospital’s most prestigious lecture series called “Grand Rounds.” Haim said that during his lecture, the program head bragged about “how he was running this active transgender clinic, seeing patients who were very young, and talking about the algorithmic approach to managing ‘these people’ with social transitioning, puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery.”

While the public believed the TCH transgender program was no longer in operation, it was actually a priority, yet it wasn’t listed on the hospital’s website. “This is important,” Haim said, “because even the hospital departments that treat ultra-rare diseases have a section on the website where people can schedule appointments and learn about the doctors. But the transgender clinic didn’t have a page on the website.”

He explained that the program was being hidden because it was so controversial. “Every kid that walks into that clinic,” he said, “is being told he or she has to adopt this identity.... If parents hesitate to accept it, they are threatened with their child’s suicide.” He made the salient point that, “instead of telling these kids that they’re perfect the way they are, that growing up is hard, but that they could grow up to be something amazing, they are telling them to adopt this false identity, which is based on their own self-hatred.”

As Haim saw all this play out, he felt he had to speak up or never forgive himself for failing to do so. He believes two major factors drive the bizarre belief that doctors can change a child’s (or adult’s) gender:

• The changes that occurred during covid are what allowed the transgender ideology to proliferate and allowed doctors to do this to children on a large scale.... First was the prioritization of ideology over evidence, and second was the censorship of anyone who questioned that ideology with the presentation of evidence. Specifically, it’s the belief that truth is subjective, independent of objective reality. So something is true because they say it’s true, which is especially concerning when it comes to medical recommendations.

Haim believes the transgender agenda should never have been allowed to come this far, but has done so due to the lack of medical professionals speaking out against it. “When you are claiming something to be true that is, in the most obvious way, untrue, but you don’t have voices in the medical community who will speak out and challenge it, these [lies] go unopposed ... and [the ideology] becomes part of the medical standard.”

Charges against Haim

Houston Public Media reported in June that Dr. Haim had been charged with “four counts of criminal HIPAA violations after leaking internal documents” that showed TCH was still performing gender procedures after being admonished that such procedures could constitute child abuse.

One year ago, Governor Greg Abbott signed into law SB 14, which bans the performance of gender-transition procedures on children. Transgender activists whined that “gay and trans people” were being targeted “as part of a broader effort in Texas and across many states dominated by conservative politicians to stigmatize and punish queer people in ways that profoundly upend the lives of tens of thousands of families.”

In the meantime, Dr. Haim is charged not only with disclosing protected health information, but also with committing “‘malicious harm’ to the hospital and its patients.” Although the documents he provided did not disclose any personally identifiable patient information, opponents continue to suggest otherwise. He reportedly faces “10 years in federal prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.”

Conservatives have rallied around Haim, raising “nearly $1 million for his defense.” The son of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and “a prominent former U.S. attorney during the Trump administration, Ryan Patrick,” is Haim’s legal counsel.

In addition to Rufo, Haim’s supporters include U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who, according to The Texas Tribune, denounced what he called “selective prosecution and the weaponization of the Department of Justice against political opponents.” Texas Congressman Chip Roy (R-Austin), “sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland similarly suggesting misuse of law enforcement to ideologically target detractors, and requesting information for the House Judiciary Committee.” Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-Houston) also came to Haim’s defense, claiming he has “done nothing wrong.”

Misuse of Medicaid funds

Amid all the controversy, two Texas state lawmakers, Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) and Sen. Mayes Middleton, (R-Galveston) criticized TCH for using Medicaid funds to cover transgender treatments. And Fox News reported that the U.S. House Oversight Committee “is investigating whistleblower claims related to fraudulent billing to Medicaid programs for pediatric gender transition care, including at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston (TCH).”

Members of the committee sent letters to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) expressing concern that “medical providers at TCH are falsifying diagnosis codes for patients seeking gender transition care not covered under Medicaid.”

The letters cite a specific instance of the fraudulent use of a diagnosis code to hide the gender transition care of a female patient and present it as “testosterone deficiency and hypogonadism, in order to obtain Medicaid approval for testosterone treatment that would otherwise be denied under Texas Medicaid regulations if prescribed for the purpose of gender transition.” The letters were signed by Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services Chairwoman Lisa McClain, R-Mich.

Committee members also “expressed alarm about its perception that the Biden administration is prioritizing action against individuals who made the allegations,” referring to the prosecution of Dr. Haim.

In the same report, Fox quoted Haim as saying: “If they can come after me as a whistleblower, they’re going to come after you.... So we’re going to have to take this to court, and we’re going to have to win.”

The committee is requesting “documents, communication, and a staff-level briefing to learn of any ongoing audits or investigations into fraudulent Medicaid billing related to gender transition care.” Spokespersons for CMS and the HHS Office of Inspector General acknowledged receipt of the letters and said they would “respond to the members of Congress.”

Second whistleblower

Last month, The Washington Stand reported that a second TCH whistleblower, nurse Vanessa Sivadge, may also be facing federal retaliation. The Stand’s Joshua Arnold wrote:

• The feds knocked on Eithan Haim’s door on the day of his graduation from medical school. They knocked on Vanessa Sivadge’s door while she and her husband were hosting friends for dinner. Haim and Sivadge don’t know each other, but they did both witness illegal activity at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH), which was secretly providing gender transition procedures to minors in violation of state law.

Sivadge told Arnold that FBI agents indicated they “knew what I believed,” and that “her beliefs made her a person of interest in an investigation regarding the public release of confidential patient information.” Sivadge said she “had no idea who [Haim] was” at the time.

The agents were seeking to discover the whistleblower’s identity, and were likely focusing on Sivadge as someone who shared his beliefs and therefore might know him. “They proceeded to just say that if I didn’t help them, they couldn’t protect me. They said someone at my job, at my work, had given them my name, and that I wasn’t safe.” She added that they were “very vague” and made “very veiled threats.”

Arnold believes the FBI may have been directed to Sivadge because of an article she wrote that appeared in The Washington Stand in August 2022, titled “What Happened to ‘Do No Harm’? A Nurse’s Firsthand Look at the Transgender Craze.” Arnold says the article “would give the FBI rather reliable information about what Sivadge believed.” She, in turn, admitted that “I really pondered whether or not to use my name with that piece, and I decided at the end to do that. I knew that [it]would carry some risk.”

The FBI ultimately determined Haim’s identity from other sources, and his indictment followed. As for Sivadge, she says the FBI’s visit to her home “was the catalyst for going public” as a second whistleblower. “In the moment, I was just so terrified. And then the anger sets in.... Before, the FBI had at least an external reputation of prosecuting crime, exposing corruption, and fighting terrorists. And I think that things have really shifted and changed for the worse.” She admits that legal retaliation against her “still looms darkly over her shoulder,” and she has proactively hired a lawyer.

It turns out her concerns were valid. The Family Research Council (FRC) reported that on August 16, Sivadge was fired from her position at TCH for her whistleblower activities, noting that her request for a religious accommodation and transfer from the transgender clinic due to her religious beliefs was ignored.

“Employers can’t legally retaliate against employees who exercise their rights under the U.S. Department of Labor’s whistleblower protection laws,” FRC wrote, meaning that Sivadge’s termination was illegal.

Meanwhile, jury selection in Dr. Haim’s trial was set to begin on August 20.

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