Special Reports > > Features– All 3 doctors might lose their licenses
by Michael DePeau-Wilson, Enterprise & & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today November 20, 2024
In less than a month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has actually taken legal action against 3 physicians who offer gender-affirming care to minors in an effort to impose a state law that prohibits such care.
The very first claim, submitted October 17, declared that May Lau, MD, MPH, of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, “offered high-dose cross-sex hormonal agents to twenty-one small clients for the direct function of ‘transitioning’ the kid’s biological sex,” according to a news release from Paxton’s workplace.
In the legal declare the case, district attorneys declared that Lau misinformed drug stores, insurance coverage companies, and clients by falsifying medical records, prescriptions, and billing records to conceal that she was recommending testosterone for small clients.
A 2nd suit submitted on October 30 declared that Hector Granados, MD, of Pediatric Endocrinology Associates in El Paso, Texas, supplied the age of puberty blockers and hormonal agents to kids, according to a news release.
Granados was likewise implicated of falsifying medical records, prescriptions, and billing records, according to the suit. It likewise declared that Granados composed prescriptions for small clients for “functions of transitioning their biological sex.”
On November 8, Paxton declared that M. Brett Cooper, MD, of UT Southwestern Medical Center, supplied hormonal agents to kids and falsified medical records, prescriptions, and billing records, according to the legal filing.
All 3 statements from Paxton kept in mind that health care experts who break the law can have their medical license withdrawed by the Texas Medical Board.
Texas has actually been coming down hard on gender-affirming care, even before the statewide restriction that entered into impact in September 2023. In 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) bought state well-being firms to examine pediatric gender-affirming care as kid abuse.
Not long afterwards, Texas Children’s Hospital shuttered its gender-affirming care program. In May 2023, Paxton revealed examinations into both Texas Children’s Hospital and Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin around their gender-affirming care programs.
MedPage Today connected to a number of doctors for discuss the 3 claims, all of whom decreased. Many medical groups and expert societies have actually come out in assistance of gender-affirming care in current years.
In a 2021 declaration, the American Medical Association (AMA) prompted guvs to oppose state legislation that would restrict clinically required gender-affirming look after minors. It called efforts to limit such care “a harmful invasion into the practice of medication.”
The declaration likewise highlighted that “empirical proof has actually shown that trans and non-binary gender identities are regular variations of human identity and expression.”
In 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics re-affirmed its 2018 policy declaration advising that youth who recognize as transgender and gender varied must “have access to extensive, gender-affirming, and developmentally suitable healthcare that is offered in a safe and inclusive scientific area.”
Previously this month,