‘No Regrets’: Fired Whistleblower Vows to Continue Exposing Texas Children’s Hospital

Embattled for its persistence in subjecting minors to Medicaid-funded gender transition procedures in violation of state law, Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) has now fired a whistleblower who exposed its malfeasance. The hospital giant on Friday informed Vanessa Sivadge, a nurse in the endocrinology department, that she was fired, effective immediately. Sivadge responded that she had “no regrets” about blowing the whistle.

TCH had publicly discontinued its gender transition program for minors in 2023 but continued it in secret, a whistleblower revealed. Shortly thereafter, the Texas legislature prohibited health care providers from providing gender transition procedures to children, including cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers. The new Texas law also prevented public funds or insurance plans from covering gender transition procedures for minors.

That whistleblower, Dr. Eithan Haim, faces a federal investigation and indictment for his courageous action in exposing the hospital’s deceitful practices. The FBI charged him with violating HIPAA, the health information privacy law, even though Haim redacted personal identifiers from the information he shared.

After Texas banned gender transition procedures for minors, TCH continued providing them anyways — although even more secretly than before. Sivadge, a nurse working her dream job, realized this when she was asked to show a teenage boy how to self-administer injections — and then learned the injection was estrogen, a cross-sex hormone. Sivadge realized that she was being asked to participate in the provision of cross-sex hormones to minor children.

On May 31, Sivadge submitted a religious accommodation request “to transfer out of the endocrinology clinic and return to my core competency at the cardiology clinic.” She explained her objection to even “indirect participation in the care of children on cross-sex hormones,” due to her “religious beliefs upholding men and women as image bearers of God with intrinsic, biological differences that cannot be erased or reassigned medically.” After this, two plainclothes FBI agents arrived at her home and threatened to make life difficult for her.

Sivadge also reached out to Christopher Rufo, the investigative journalist who published Haim’s whistleblowing revelations, to corroborate Haim’s account and affirm that TCH’s secret provision of gender transition procedures to minors was still ongoing. She also said the hospital was engaged in Medicaid fraud by manipulating the records so that their illegal provision of gender transition hormones to minors would be covered by state taxpayers, in contravention of state law.

Two weeks later, TCH placed Sivadge on leave in a recorded phone call. Neither reason they cited had to do with unsatisfactory performance of Sivadge’s assigned duties. Instead, the two reasons they cited were 1) her religious accommodation request and 2) her anonymous whistleblowing report, which did not involve the release of any privileged patient information.

TCH’s decision to fire Sivadge is “unlawful for two reasons,” she argued. “It is retaliation from my coming forward with information on TCH’s egregious pattern of deception and Medicaid fraud, and this action also illegally disregarded my request to transfer due to my belief that these procedures bring irreversible harm and lifelong regret to children confused about their sex.”

“It is not a simple thing to become a whistleblower,” Sivadge reflected. “One’s private life immediately becomes public, new employers are wary to hire, and, as things break down, even friends and family begin to find fault with a public-spirited decision they otherwise would consider noble.”

For most whistleblowers, she wrote, “our decision to go public is often — and certainly in my case — non-ideological. It does not have to do with political beliefs or an ‘agenda.’ We see something we believe is morally wrong — very wrong — and instead of ignoring the truth, we speak.”

Sivadge’s next step is “to fight back against the illegal retaliation on whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing,” she told The Washington Stand.

Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. “I just lost my job, and now I’m facing an expensive legal battle,” she explained. Sivadge has launched a fundraiser on GiveSendGo, a cancel-resistant alternative to GoFundMe, to help with her legal expenses. The funds raised had nearly reached $34,000 as of 2 p.m. on Tuesday, a nearly 50% increase from 2 p.m. on Monday, but still far short of the goal.

Nevertheless, Sivadge is determined to keep fighting. She draws her strength from Paul’s exhortation in Ephesians 5:11-13, “take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible.” When truth-telling wins you adversaries like a children’s hospital that sterilizes children and the Biden administration’s weaponized DOJ, you know it’s a worthy fight.