A former transgender teen has won a landmark medical malpractice lawsuit over surgery performed when she was a minor.
Jamie Reed, a former caseworker at the Washington University Transgender Center, said the $2 million verdict validates warnings she has made for years about doctors pushing minors toward irreversible surgeries.
“She deserves justice for this,” Reed said Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.”
“She really is the tip of the iceberg on how this industry has been treating these young people and their families.”
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The plaintiff, Fox Varian, was 16 years old when doctors performed the double mastectomy. She is now an adult and no longer identifies as transgender. Varian argued she was not mentally well or mature enough to make a life-altering medical decision as a minor.
“I was 16, and I was really, really mentally ill, obviously,” Varian testified, according to The Free Press. “I obviously wasn’t mature enough to make the decision to have surgery, and I certainly wasn’t mature enough to handle the aftermath.”
On Jan. 30, a jury found that a psychologist and a surgeon were liable for malpractice, determining they had skipped key steps in deciding whether surgery was the best course of action.
This is believed to be the first malpractice verdict involving a patient who later de-transitioned and won, according to the New York Post.
Reed said families are often pressured into irreversible decisions, including being warned their child could commit suicide if the surgery is denied.
“A lot of this becomes that this is no longer a medical standard. Right now, this is a belief system that has been spread through the medical system,” Reed said.
“These providers have a false belief that they were saving children from the potential of suicide by doing these things.”
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She added that doctors often fail to present non-surgical alternatives, even though surgery is typically considered a last resort.
Reed also mentioned there could be many more similar cases and that there is “no evidence” to support claims of suicide if surgery is denied.
