US woman sues after 'gender affirming' double mastectomy

[ArabellaScott]

'The defendants 'transgressed the bounds of socially tolerable conduct by abusing their positions of trust and authority' by recommending 'unnecessary, irreversible treatment' without weighing Kiefel's mental problems, says the complaint.

Because of the surgery, Kiefel must endure a 'lifelong inability ever to choose to breastfeed a child' and doubts she will ever find a 'life partner sexually and romantically attracted to a woman without breasts,' it adds.

Kiefel has called for a jury trial and seeks up to $850,000 in damages.'

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11399015/Oregon-woman-sues-trans-care-team-abhorrent-misdiagnosis-left-MUTILATED.html

Brace yourselves. The lawsuits are starting.

She was about 30 when it was done though - not a teenager - granted it all sounds a bit rushed in the final stages, but it had been considered by her for 4 years.
Doesn't she bear a lot of the responsibility?

People have successfully sued tattoo artists for tattooing them whilst the recipient was obviously inebriated. Something to do with questionable consent / imbalance of power which would only be strengthened for doctors.

If doctors are treating a patient with known mental health issues and trauma, there should be increased due diligence to check the suitability of the treatment. That's assuming it can ever be considered suitable to treat body dysmorphia with surgery.

Are there any other possibilities of what 'trans' might be? Possibly only the belief system which says that people can be literally 'born in the wrong body'. Which should be treated the same way as any other belief system which has no basis in science.

Yes, entirely. The third alternative that you suggest looks and operates very much like a religious belief, I'd say. Which is fine, but we should not be basing healthcare on it. And we should be very, very clear that it is one belief among many.

I wonder why the doctors who performed the mastectomies are not also being sued?

Presumably they're seen as just 'carrying out orders'.

But isn't this where we are headed with a potential ban on talking therapies for people who believe they have gender dysphoria?
If a specialist isn't allowed to explore WHY a patient isn't comfortable in their own skin and has to only affirm their belief, this is where we end up - with people who were never challenged on their belief and therefore truly believed that hormones/surgery would sort them out, only to find out when it's too late that they didn't.

The question for me is: is it ever acceptable and ethical to perform a double mastectomy on a healthy woman with no sign of breast cancer or no genetic risk of breast cancer?

To put it another way, is there a case for saying that women who are genuinely trans should, with appropriate counselling and time for reflection, be able to take an informed decision that they want their breasts removed?

Or is it more the case that the desire to have one's healthy breasts removed is itself a sign of psychological disorder that needs treating, and that doctors should never agree to it?

A lot hinges on the way the courts answer that question.

This was always going to happen, it was only a matter of time.
The lawyers have already started circling, it’ll be as common a lawsuit as PPI in a few years

Was there not a case or was it disproven as not true where a Dr was told if they didn't perfom trans affirming surgery they'd be struck off?

She was 30 years old at the time of having the procedure and it didn’t occur to her then that having her breasts cut off meant she wouldn’t be able to breastfeed?!

That’s the other issue… if she’s inclined to be litigious then chances are she’d have sued them at the time if they refused.

Except that the UK criminal courts have found that having consent from the patient is not a defence for body modifiers, and they cannot remove healthy ears, split tongues without expecting a jail sentence: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/21/tattooist-dr-evil-jailed-for-performing-ear-and-nipple-removals

What is the difference between removing breasts at the patient's request and removing an ear? The only difference I can see is that one was done by qualified doctors and the other by a body modifier.

If I got a tattoo and then changed my mind about it, how far would I get if I sued the tattoo artist for disfiguring my body ffs 🙄

The more accurate analogy is, if the tattoo artist is in a position of authority and has convinced someone, with mental health issues, that having a life altering, extreme and damaging tattoo is necessary in order for them to become neither male nor female.

This girl identifies as non-binary. There's no such thing. It's a completely made up concept which is being pushed as legitimate enough to have life altering surgery to achieve.

People wondering whether or not she should just accept her own decision are missing the massive issue that her decision is based on a society wide fantasy that particularly targets vulnerable individuals.

@AngeloMysterioso the much publicised UK trans activist Freddy Mcconnell recently tweeted that Freddy didn't realise removing Freddy's breasts, including nipples, meant Freddy would be unable to breastfeed.

I suppose if at the time she was convinced that she would never want to have children - being trans and therefore not a woman - it might not have been in her mind. And back to the affirmation only approach, if no one challenged her on the reality of losing her breasts, some of the responsibility is on them, surely?

Didn't Freddie McConnell have a similar problem in that she was disappointed she couldn't breastfeed the children she had due to having had a double mastectomy? It seems to be a real blind spot in people who are so deep into this ideology.

Good.

I expect the inevitable lawsuits from people who were mutilated as children will have higher success rates than those who were operated on as adults because the issue of capacity is far far clearer and therefore more difficult for defence lawyers to argue about.

And by blind spot I mean that they suspend reality in order to satisfy the belief.

If you're going to perform mutilating, irreversible surgery on a healthy person, you would need to be damn sure of

a) what the surgery is going to do to improve their lot (evidenced based)

b) that there aren't other less invasive approaches that would achieve the same ends

c) that the patient fully understands the implications of what they're consenting to and are able to give that consent.

In this case, there's an argument that none of those conditions were achieved.

This is absolutely on the health professionals btw. First, do not harm. There is a Hippocratic oath for a reason.

There will be a tsunami is these cases soon. It's going to be horrifying. And the medical profession's reputation will be seriously impacted.

Could the same argument be made for someone who's had an abortion and then goes on to regret it/finds they are unable to have more children?

Yes. Having a very ambiguous conversion therapy ban will mean that there will be less talking therapy.

I think a generation of youngsters is growing up believing breasts are just bouncy castles for men.

'her decision is based on a society wide fantasy that particularly targets vulnerable individuals.'

Exactly. It's a bit of a fallacy that these two particular doctors/therapists are to blame, because as far as I can see they are following current accepted practise, which is to 'affirm' a trans identity in cases of gender dysphoria, and proceed with body modifications accordingly.

No.

Looking at this doctor’s ad on TikTok, it may be that the doctors carrying out these procedures are also mentally ill…

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11303919/Florida-sex-change-surgeon-dubs-Dr-Teetus-Deletus-REPORTED-consumer-watchdog.html

Exactly. If you can have girl-dick why can't you have boy-breasts?