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Sorry Works! Blog

Making Disclosure A Reality For Healthcare Organizations 

Prominent Trans Doctor Sued.  Risk Managers, Patient Safety Advocates Hiding Behind Their Pronouns?

Dr. Johanna Olsen-Kennedy, a leading physician in transgender youth medicine, is being sued by a former patient who alleges she and her parents were rushed into life-changing medical care without adequate informed consent.  Kaya Clementine Breen, now age 20, claims Dr. Olsen-Kennedy pushed her into puberty blockers at age 12, cross-sex hormones at age 13, and a double-mastectomy at age 14 without speaking with other physicians and without adequately considering her mental state and history of sexual abuse.  Breen is claiming Dr. Olsen-Kennedy pressured her parents by asserting that Kayla would commit suicide without the treatment, and then allegedly lied by saying puberty blockers are completely reversable.  Breen claims her body is ruined, including bone density problems and severe mental health challenges.  She has detransitioned.  The lawsuit has been filed in Los Angeles

Here is the lawsuit.

Read that paragraph above again.  Go ahead...read it againClick on the lawsuit link and read it. Sure, good people can disagree about informed consent, he said/she said, the standard of care, buyer's remorse, etc.  This is the usual grist of medical malpractice cases. However, I cannot imagine there will be any debate about the basic fact pattern of this case in that a 12-year old was given puberty blockers....a 13-year old was given cross-sex hormones...and a double-mastectomy was performed on a 14-year old.  Let that sink in. 

In case you are keeping track, Dr. Olsen-Kennedy is the same physician who was recently criticized by the New York Times for refusing to publish the results of a $10M NIH sponsored study that was supposed to show the mental health benefits of puberty blockers -- except the data did not support her cause.   

Where are the risk managers in this mess?  What about the patient safety advocates?  And how about the medical ethicists?   Are these healthcare heroes hiding behind their pronouns?  If there was any other type of untested or experimental care that was being pushed on a different patient population the risk managers would be clamoring to shut it down, medical ethicists would be shaking their heads, and patient safety advocates would be screaming (and rightly so).  

How many kids have to be hurt before people re-discover their ethics...and common sense?   

Didn't the just-completed presidential election provide some cover for these folks?  Middle America, including a large portion of minority voters, said this stuff is not OK.  And don't forget the recent actions of our European colleagues to stop transgender care for minors.    

There is no amount of "sorry" that can fix Kaya or the thousands of other kids like her. This is sad and disgusting. Read that first paragraph again, drop your pronouns, and do right by the kids.     

Sincerely,

- Doug

Doug Wojcieszak, MA, MS
Founder and President
Sorry Works!
618-559-8168
doug@sorryworks.net 

Doug Wojcieszak