Ask Dr. Drew
Dr. Eithan Haim: Surgeon Alleged Texas Hospital Ran Secret Sex-Change Program For Minors, Risked 10 Years In Prison To Tell His Story – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 459
Sat, 01 Mar 2025
In 2023, the Biden DOJ indicted Texas surgeon Dr. Eithan Haim for allegedly violating HIPAA by leaking redacted patient data that exposed Texas Children’s Hospital’s secret sex-change operations for minors — despite the hospital’s claims that they had halted. Facing up to 10 years in prison, Haim, a self-described whistleblower, pleaded not guilty, arguing no patient identities were revealed. Charges were dropped in January 2025. Eithan Haim is a General and Trauma Surgeon at Hunt Regional Medical Center in Greenville, TX. He graduated as a General Surgery Resident from Baylor College of Medicine and earned his MD from Florida Atlantic University College of Medicine. Dr. Haim gained national attention for whistleblowing on Texas Children’s Hospital’s illegal sex-change program, facing DOJ charges that were later dropped. Find more at https://x.com/EithanHaim 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors • FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at https://drdrew.com/fatty15 • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is Dr. Eithan Haim's background?
You can follow Dr. Haim on X. Ethan is his first name. It's called E-I-T-H-A-N. Haim, H-A-I-M. Or also, GiveSendGo.com forward slash Texas underscore whistleblower. Dr. Haim, welcome to the program.
Yeah, thank you for having me on.
It's a privilege. So tell us this story. I mean, I read some of your bio. You were a decorated resident. You were a great teacher. You were doing your job. You thought you had an important job and you thought you were... Let's see how we say this. You were responding to the highest ethical standards that the profession maintains. And just by speaking your mind, shit went down.
Yeah, I would say that's exactly how it happened in an encapsulated version. But all this happened in 2023, right? Between 2018 and 2023, I was a surgical resident at Baylor College of Medicine. I was doing general surgery. And this is one of the most prestigious surgery programs in the country. Yep, it is. Yeah, and you know, it's where trauma was born.
You had Michael E. DeBakey and, you know, Cooley, you know, yeah, yeah. And, you know, we heard stories about these guys, you know, as we progressed in our training and these guys were legends. So it was a privilege to be at a place like Baylor College of Medicine. So, you know, I took these things seriously about being a doctor and what it meant to be a surgeon.
and in 2022 in part of the residency training we spend a lot of time at texas children's hospital it's part of the consortium which baylor college of medicine is right because you rotate at a couple of hospitals So in 2022, this is after COVID, after the world has gone completely insane. The hospital releases a public statement saying that they're no longer going to prescribe or
participate in the transgender interventions because of potential criminal ramifications, right? So they're saying they're shutting down their transgender program. And this was in response to a opinion that was released a few weeks earlier from the AG of Texas, Ken Paxson, that was saying this could be criminal child abuse, which it is.
So it makes sense why the hospital would release that statement. But I knew that this was a lie because I worked there. I was a surgeon there. The people who were doing these surgeries told me they were doing it. And it continued on behind closed doors. And it not only continued, but it was expanded into a multidisciplinary clinic. And this was horrific what they were doing.
So in the same operating rooms where we would take children and heal them, These were the same operating rooms where they were taking perfectly healthy children and implanting pure reblocking devices and turning them into chronic medical patients. So I anonymously blew the whistle in May of 2023 because for a bunch of months during 2022, I didn't believe it, right?
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Chapter 2: What allegations were made against Dr. Haim?
But, you know, there were a bunch of other things that happened that were, you know, frankly, illegal for her to do. Right. Like like outside the boundaries of what a prosecutor does.
and do and we know this because my wife's prosecutor but there was one thing that pushed me over the edge she said that she was going to prosecute me bring me to a jury trial even if she was going to lose even on a technicality and the implication of that is well it's not about justice this is about destruction so that was it yeah yeah and that was like a few weeks after i started my first job as a general surgeon
and um at the same time during these six months between june 2023 and january 2024 the hospital had leaked my name to people within the hospital who were leaving these malicious reviews about me online on my doctor profile accusing me of sexually abusing patients
And we did our own investigation and found out that the person who was writing those reviews, it was the same IP address and it all came from someone inside the hospital. So it's like these people are gonna do everything to destroy me. The only thing I can do is to take my story public.
And by that point too, we were completely broke because we had like $250,000 saved, but all that was gone in legal fees. And we're still about a million dollars in the hole. But yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a tough situation, but it is what it is. And then I took my story public in January of 2024.
But the indictment only came six months after that, about a year after they first showed up to my home. And the indictment came in June of 2024.
um and that was when 7 a.m you know three heavily armed u.s marshals came to my home right to serve me this indictment and my wife actually recognized them she knew one of them because she works at the federal office so she knows the u.s marshals you know um and you know what followed was a series of events that is it just boggles your mind like
What their case involved was so corrupt, was so manifestly corrupt, it's hard to explain because they were using HIPAA as the basis of their indictment. But they were not saying any patient information was exposed. They were saying the victims of their HIPAA indictment was not any patient, but rather the hospital and its physicians, TCH and Baylor College Medicine.
But the prosecutor who was bringing these charges had so many conflicts of interest. I mean, you couldn't throw a tennis ball at her Thanksgiving dinner without hitting a TCH fundraiser, a board member, or a CEO of a business who had contracts with... hospitals under the Baylor College of Medicine academic consortium. And once we found this out, she had to remove herself from the position.
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Chapter 3: What did Dr. Haim witness at Texas Children's Hospital?
I mean, it all came to a head ultimately after Trump was inaugurated. His executive order ending the weaponization of the Department of Justice We heard behind closed doors that they were escalating the case when obviously this was in contradiction to his EO. So I decided to speak out against the judge's de facto gag order and he went completely off his rocker.
And I heard from multiple sources that this guy was gonna issue a warrant for my arrest unless I signed an agreement with the government. So I signed an agreement that was obviously made under duress. So I completely had the intention of violating that agreement.
But the good thing is that agreement was torn up the next day because the Department of Justice, the transition team issued guidance to the Southern District of Texas that they had to drop this case with prejudice because it had no merit. It was completely corrupt. And that's what happened. Two days after I broke the judge's fake corrupt gag order, he had to sign the dismissal of my case.
And let me go back around, I've got so many things I wanna go back around. And just to be clear, no information was given out about any children or any family or any specific case, true?
Yeah, that's true. In fact, the Department of Justice were the only ones who released patient information in their indictments. And every time I use the criminal indictment in an ex post, I censored the initials because you shouldn't do that. I mean, this is patient information that shouldn't be released. So I didn't, the Department of Justice did.
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Chapter 4: How did the legal battle affect Dr. Haim's life?
And they invented this HIPAA violation of the hospital thing, which is, again, I mean, this is how Martha Stewart ended up in prison, right? Yeah. They kept at her until she made a little slip on something or couldn't remember something and boom, that's it, you're in prison. And that seems to be the way, I mean, it's easy to weaponize the legal system. It really is pathetically easy.
Was your wife shocked by this?
Yeah, because my wife knew about me blowing the whistle anonymously before. So she kind of did her own analysis. And she's like, of course, there's no chance they can come after you because there's no HIPAA violation. I was working at the hospital. The DOJ tried to say that I hacked into the system, that I wasn't working there.
Did you ever find out who was at that IP address that was saying slanderous things about you?
Yes, yeah. Okay, are you gonna sue all these people? I hope. So the statute of limitations for the person who is writing these reviews pass. In terms of suing the government, it's like one of those things where it's a whole lot of squeeze, not a lot of juice. Based on my experience so far, it's like going through the court system, these people protect their own.
And plus, we don't have any money, right? We can't pay lawyers to go after this.
So it's like- And then you have a big expose coming out tomorrow, is that correct?
I think I saw your post on that today. Yeah, it came out yesterday with casting marriage.
Yeah, two days ago. I saw clips of it here and there and stuff. How was that received?
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the whistleblower case?
being mainstreamed into elementary schools and general pediatricians, which is what was happening at Texas Children's. Man, that's a whole different thing. And this is a crime of the greatest degree.
So you're thinking like a surgeon, and as somebody who worked in a psychiatric hospital for 30 years, I will tell you there's almost nothing that has an objective. There's no Koch's postulates in psychiatry, right? And it's one of the big criticisms of psychiatry is there's not reproducible biology too.
And psychiatry, when I started in the 80s, it was just beginning to have a biological basis to it. It was all psychoanalysis before that, really out there stuff. And did horrible things, mind you, psycho surgeries and all kinds of crazy stuff. But you can do neuropsychiatric testing, and those are reproducible quantitative measurements. Those are measurements.
All measurements are not done in the radiology department, right? And people aren't doing it, unfortunately, but you could do that. And to some extent, the mental status exam as issued by a well trained mental health professional is your stethoscope, is your hands on, is your otoscope. It has meaning, it's not zero meaning. But I get your point, I get your point.
And I think the fact that it's affecting children, And it's being done so liberally is really what you're responding to. And again, I've seen it help. I've seen it help people. It's not like it doesn't help. And I've seen it hurt. And I blame our profession when it hurts, not the patient. We should never be blaming the patients. It's us, it's our profession. And We need more data, it seems to me.
And remember, and you're also saying, I want to push back on one other thing. You're saying that you don't want somebody to take dangerous medication for a psychological disorder. But we do that all the time with SSRIs and antipsychotics and things like that. Why is a estrogen compound in a wholly different class than an SSRI in terms of risk benefit analysis?
But there's a question here from someone. Okay, please cover if any support comes down from SSRI recovery farms. Thousands of PTSD patients are desperate to get rid of the SSRIs, get real PTSD treatment. Okay, so Philip is getting at the fact that he's saying that we shouldn't use medication.
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Chapter 6: How did the prosecution’s actions impact Dr. Haim's career?
We should do more talk therapy and regulatory sort of interpersonal kinds of therapeutics or behavioral therapeutics. Mental health is a very complicated area. This is why you became a surgeon. You don't want to deal with the stuff I deal with. I'm too simple. I'm like a simple person. Well, and I just know how you guys think. And it's great. And I am in awe and grateful for surgeons.
Nothing but good things to say. But it's different on the mental health.
It's so different. It's true. And that's kind of where I live for many years. I have to concede, yeah, I mean, there is a lot of things that are beyond my realm of understanding just because there's something to say about decades of experience working in a certain field. Especially you, I mean, I've been listening to you for a long time. I mean, you were in the trenches, right?
The one thing I would say that's slightly different about puberty blockers or hormones versus SSRIs and antipsychotics is the physiological impact on the multiple organ systems. Because when you look at like, for example, puberty blockers, when they're used in Tanner stage two, you know, there's no surgery in the world that can affect the changes that puberty blockers do, right?
They affect the bones, the blood vessels, the brain, the secondary sexual characteristics, for example, and then hormones too. SSRIs and antipsychotics to a certain degree, and I see your point too. But they have a profound effect on the blood vessels, the heart, the brain, similar to- But this is the point you made out loud though, which was the risk reward has to be there.
Exactly. And has to be presented to the patient and the family and discussed accordingly. And be done very, very, very seriously. Again, we have a friend who's transgender and she always talks about how serious it is, how seriously she takes her condition and her treatment. And she got going around 14 or 15, not with blockers, just with estrogenizing hormones. And it's been just great.
And therapy. And therapy too, right? Well, but listen, mostly I'm just mortified Well, here's one last question. I'm mortified that the hospital and the legal system put you through this. And you said something a couple of times, you said my job is so important. And so many of us went into medicine because we believe that it was just so important what we were doing.
And part of that means doing the right thing and speaking up when we think we have to. And I have sort of two questions. Did you have to think long and hard about speaking up or you just felt you had to, which I suspect is the truth? And maybe you consult with the federal prosecuting wife to make sure you're not going to hurt yourself. And number two, what has happened to our hospitals?
The fact that they have so much control over physicians is out of control, out of control.
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Chapter 7: What was the outcome of Dr. Haim's legal battles?
Is she working? Your wife working? You're working? Okay.
Yeah, I mean, I was doing surgery earlier today and still busy.
Well, listen, thank you. Thank you for doing your interview. Thank you for speaking your truth. Thank you for pulling the curtain back on the way our Justice Department seems to have been working or could potentially work again, I guess, right? I mean, unless Congress gets involved in some way, but I don't know how laws could possibly protect you from something like this.
If you have somebody who is wielding their power as a federal prosecutor. They can get away with hurting people and they don't care.
Yeah, well, there actually are already laws that make this legal. It's just whether they're going to be enforced. Got it.
All right, well, listen, thank you for the interview. Appreciate it. And hope you'll check back in with us as this further unfolds. Thank you. All right, Ethan Haim, thank you so much. Now we're gonna take a little break here. We're gonna talk to an attorney coming up. Was Marcella able to hang out, Caleb, and get to this part of the show?
I don't think so. I don't think she was able to come in just because of all the technical issues and everything on my side.
Oh, damn. I wish somebody had told me that. I would have kept going with Ethan. Is Ethan still there? No, he just logged out.
He just logged out. He had a hard out.
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Chapter 8: What message does Dr. Haim want to convey about speaking up?
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