Trans Surgery Is Medical Malpractice

Sometimes being wrong would feel easier. It would be so much more comforting to believe the distressed children who claimed to be the opposite sex. That the clinicians who medicated them were abiding by the golden rule of medicine: first, do no harm. That the politicians and celebrities who championed ‘trans kids’ had done their homework. That they all knew something the rest of us did not. But, with $2million awarded to a young American woman who had a double mastectomy at 16, because she believed she was a boy, it seems the so-called transphobes and bigots were, depressingly, right.

Earlier this week, 22-year-old Fox Varian won a case against her former psychologist, Dr Kenneth Einhorn, and the plastic surgeon, Dr Simon Chin. At 16, she had her healthy breasts removed on the recommendation of the former and under the scalpel of the latter. A jury in New York state found that basic safeguards were skipped, informed consent was not obtained and accepted standards of care were ignored. Einhorn and Chin were found liable for medical malpractice. The $2million payout may sound substantial, but no amount of money restores amputated body parts, particularly when they were removed from a psychologically unwell teenager by professionals tasked with protecting her.

Varian’s backstory is a full bingo card of ‘trans kid’ red flags. At seven, her parents separated acrimoniously, leading to a custody battle and estrangement from her father. By 15, she believed she was a boy, bound her breasts and changed her name to Rowan. She carried a dossier of mental-health problems: autism, depression, anxiety and an eating disorder. Yet instead of helping her, Einhorn affirmed her belief that she was really a boy and, within months, she was on a pathway to surgery.

Varian’s lawyer, Adam Deutsch, stressed that Einhorn had no experience treating patients ‘questioning their gender identity’. That she was not referred to an ‘LGBTQ specialist’ counsellor counted against Einhorn, as did the fact he had labelled her distress ‘body dysmorphia’ and not ‘gender dysphoria’.