The battle to expose and stop transgender medical interventions in hospitals is a lonely effort.
Introducing a panel Thursday at the 2024 Social Conservative Conference, Autumn Leva, senior vice president of strategy at Family Policy Alliance (FPA) was blunt:
Leva’s introduction drew thunderous applause for Dr. Eithan Haim and nurse practitioner Vanessa Sivadge, the whistleblowers who exposed Texas Children’s Hospital’s (TCH) secret transgender medical program.
The embattled medical professionals took the stage together for the first time Thursday to discuss their experiences combatting gender ideology in medicine.
TCH discontinued transgender medical interventions in 2022 after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote such procedures could be investigated as child abuse. But Haim and Sivadge, then unknown to one another, knew the hospital was lying. TCH not only continued performing so-called “gender-affirming care,” but expanded the program in secret.
Sivadge recalls showing a teenage boy how to inject himself with medication, only to discover he would be injecting himself with estrogen.
“It was a crisis of conscience,” Sivadge told the crowd. “I had helped put that [healthy] teen on [the path of life-long transgender medical procedures].”
Then a surgical resident at TCH, Haim leaked redacted documentation of the secret procedures to investigative journalist Christopher Rufo in May 2023. Sivadge gave Rufo a corroborating interview less than a week later.
“[Backing up Dr. Haim] felt like redemption for me,” she said on stage.
Their courage helped pass Texas’ “Help Not Harm” bill and stop TCH’s dangerous experiments on kids — but no good deed goes unpunished.
Armed agents from the Department of Health and Human Services visited Haim’s home in June 2023, just hours before his graduation from residency. He credits his wife, Andrea — a federal attorney herself — with helping him resist the agents’ pressure to conduct an impromptu interview.”
“I sort of think of her as my consigliere, like in [the movie] The Godfather,” Haim laughs with the audience. “She’s just tough as nails.”
That fighting spirit helps the Haims stand up to the Department of Justice (DOJ), which charged the surgeon with four felonies in June for violating medical privacy laws.
“The corruption was so much worse than anything we could have expected,” Haim tells the crowd, recalling when the assistant U.S. attorney bringing the case against him threatened to stall his wife’s DOJ background check if she continued being “difficult.”
“This [case] is not about justice, but rather, destruction,” he muses. “[The attorney] said she’d take me to court even if she knew the DOJ would lose.”
Indeed, though Haim’s lawyer, Marcella Burke, previously told the Daily Citizen that HIPAA violations have never been prosecuted as a felony “absent some additional significant criminal conduct,” Haim faces up to $250,000 in fines and 10 years in prison.
Sivadge received her own visit from federal agents in July 2023 — this time from the F.B.I. She remembers them asking for information about Haim, who remained anonymous until January 2024.
“They weren’t armed,” she clarified. “They try to seem like they’re your friends, like they’re on your side. But when you’re in that position, you just realize the police state has been mobilized against law abiding citizens. As soon as they left, I told my husband, ‘We will never help them.’”
And she hasn’t. Despite TCH launching an investigation against her, Sivadge began investigating some “red flags” in patient paperwork. In June, she publicly accused the hospital of Medicaid fraud — using taxpayer money to pay for transgender medical interventions, despite it being illegal in Texas.
“There’s two kinds of fraud going on,” she explains. Doctors at TCH both illegally offer “gender-affirming care” to patients enrolled in Medicaid programs and intentionally misdiagnose patients with hormone deficiencies to fool Medicaid into paying.
“They will misdiagnose a healthy boy as ‘estrogen deficient’ to get [opposite-sex hormones],” Sivadge reveals, “which is so egregiously, horrifically wrong.”
Haim agrees — but he also believes it could help social conservatives hold hospitals accountable for unethical transgender procedures. “This is the most actionable thing we’ve uncovered to date,” he emphasizes. “Get states to investigate the hospitals.”
Leva concluded the panel with a call to action. “There are 150 organizations represented [at this conference]. If each one can give $6,000, we can get [Haim and Sivadge] another million dollars in [legal aid].
In the meantime, Haim and Sivadge urge more people to stand boldly against gender ideology in medicine.
“What we’re doing is an act of obedience for [my husband and I],” explains Sivadge. “There’s a verse in Ephesians 5 that reads, ‘Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them’”(Ephesians 5:11, ESV)
We hope you will join the Daily Citizen in prayerful support for Haim and Sivadge, their families, and the people they will inspire to defend the importance and integrity of male and female.
If you wish to donate to Dr. Haim’s legal fund, click here. If you wish to donate to Sivadge’s legal fund, click here.
Additional Articles and Resources
Texas Children’s Hospital Embroiled In Fraud Scandal as Haim Case Kicks Off
Focus on the Family exists to help families, and that includes help navigating the issues of homosexuality and transgenderism. Focus offers a free, one-time counseling consultation with a licensed or pastoral counselor. To request a counseling consultation, call 1-855-771-HELP (4357) or fill out our Counseling Consultation Request Form.
Addressing Gender Identity with Honesty and Compassion