Medical professionals have jettisoned the traditional guardrails of wise clinical practice in their rush to put young patients confused about their sexual identity on the path to sex-reassignment treatment and surgery, according to two lawsuits recently filed against local health clinics.
Now, July R. Carlan realizes that he was born a male homosexual. But in a medical malpractice lawsuit filed Oct. 12 in federal court in Massachusetts, Karlan claims he can never live the homosexual lifestyle he was meant to live because medical professionals at Fenway Community Health Center in Boston misdiagnosed him as transgender, recommending an irreversible hormone therapy and surgery to make him a woman.
According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff went to Fenway in 2013 to inquire about hormone therapy to transition from male to full-time female.
The prosecutor states that at that time he suffered from internalized homophobia, which prevented him from accepting his homosexuality. Meanwhile, in advising Karlana to undergo hormone therapy, Fenway staff were predisposed to overlook that diagnosis, the complaint alleges.
the accused actually turned a gay man into transgender because he viewed all mental illnesses through a transgender lens and failed to make a differential diagnosis, the lawsuit alleges.
Instead of asserting a medical malpractice claim, Carlans’ lawsuit is brought under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. The Carlans’ attorney, Mitra N. Forouhar, of San Francisco, bases its clients’ case on the theory that Section 1557 creates an implied private right of action by incorporating by reference the enforcement mechanism of other civil rights laws that permit a private cause of action.
The defendants took an apathetic attitude towards [my clients] sexual orientation, which is a protected status, says a civil rights lawyer. This is what serves as a basis for filing a lawsuit under s [the Affordable Care Acts] provision on non-discrimination.
Forouhar says her client has fully transitioned to female.
My client is gay, he informed the defendants that he is gay, and he informed the defendants that his parents rejected his homosexuality, says Foruhar. However, the defendants did not bother to investigate the impact of social and parental rejection of homosexuality on his psyche and identity. Just because someone feels dysphoric doesn’t mean they will benefit from transition.
The plaintiff alleges that medical professionals at Fenway willfully abandoned established, evidence-based, and generally accepted clinical guidelines in providing transgender health care.
In his decision to abandon evidence-based care, the defendant relied exclusively on those who were distressed and without medical knowledge and those who were satisfied with their transition, and overlooked the experience of regret, thus knowingly disregarding the safety risk for attracted same-sex patients. , the prosecutor’s complaint states. Exclusive consideration of positive outcomes in medical research is known as survival bias and makes any resulting conclusion unreliable and misleading.
Doctors at Lifestyle Medical Group at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence face a similar lawsuit filed Oct. 23 in Bristol Superior Court.
In Ayala v. American Academy of Pediatricsprosecutor Isabelle M. Ayala claims co-defendants Dr. Jason Rafferty and Dr. Michelle Forcier advised her to undergo testosterone therapy as a puberty blocker when her father took her to Lifestyle Medical Group in 2016 for treatment of depression and anxiety related to a past sexual assault.
According to AyalaLifestyles’ pediatric gender team placed too much credence in the teenage girl’s desire, which she claims is partly the result of social media influence, to transition from what she saw as a weak, vulnerable, 13-year-old girl into a strong, confident, independent boy.
Not once during her treatment with the defendants at Hasbro Children’s Hospital did any of her doctors take a step back to reevaluate whether testosterone was improving Isabelle’s health, the complaint alleges. Instead, they just increased her dose despite her mother only agreeing to a low dose (and even then she did so without the full information needed to give true informed consent). As the defendants increased the dosage, not only did Isabelle’s mental health spiral out of control to the point where she attempted suicide, but her body suffered irreversible physical changes and sustained permanent damage.
Ayala is now 20 years old and claims she longs to get her healthy female body back.
The changes that testosterone has had on her body are a constant reminder that she needs an unbiased medical professional willing to evaluate her mental health and give her the care she needs, not a group of ideologues ready to promote their agenda and advance larger conspiracies about her expense, the application states. Isabel suffered from vaginal atrophy due to extensive testosterone use; it deals with excess facial and body hair; she struggles with a compromised bone structure; she is not sure if her fertility is irreversibly compromised; she continues to have mental health issues and faces episodes of anxiety and depression, compounded by feelings of regret.
In addition to the medical malpractice claims, Ayala asserts a civil conspiracy claim involving Lifestyle doctors and co-defendants the American Academy of Pediatrics. The plaintiff places much of the blame for her injuries on the gender transition guidelines issued by the AAP in 2018.
Defendant Dr. Rafferty is the lead author of the AAP’s Gender Affirmative Care Policy Statement. According to Ayala, she is a victim of politics that promotes radical approaches that lack evidentiary support.
These individuals saw an opportunity to pioneer new guidelines in the emerging field of pediatric medicine, the treatment of the rapidly growing number of children and adolescents who present as transgender and gender nonconforming, which would authoritatively enshrine their ideological beliefs, the complaint states.
Jordan Campbell of Campbell, Miller, Paine in Dallas represents Ayala. Campbell says he anticipates a wave of similar lawsuits across the country.
We have already brought four of these cases, and we have many more in the pipeline, says Campbell.
Including the four filed by his firm, Campbell says he has identified another six cases filed by other attorneys and firms.
According to Campbell, Ayala is the only case in which AAP is named as a defendant.
Basic principle [the AAPs] the affirmative care model is that the client is the patient who essentially dictates the treatment, which is a complete inversion of how medicine should be practiced, Campbell says.
Lifestyle Medical Group and Fenway Community Health Center declined to comment on the lawsuits against them. The American Academy of Pediatrics did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
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