The doctor has publicly identified himself as the person who released information to a conservative activist about the transgender care program at Texas Children’s. Citing “whistleblower documents,” the activist published a story in May 2023 saying Texas Children’s provided transgender care, which was legal at the time, “in secret.”
Texas Children’s on Monday declined to comment on the charges against Haim. In previous statements, hospital officials said its doctors have always provided care within the law.
Transgender care has become a popular talking point in Texas and other Republican-dominated states where lawmakers claim such treatment is harmful to children. It describes a range of different social, psychological, behavioral or medical interventions that support people whose assigned sex at birth does not align with their gender identity. This can include mental health counseling, hormone therapy or surgery, which is rare for people under 18.
Such treatment, which is supported by every major medical association in the U.S., was offered at Texas Children’s and other pediatric hospitals in Texas. Lawmakers have since implemented a statewide ban, and Texas Children’s said it would discontinue its program.
Meanwhile, Haim has publicly decried the investigation against him as “political.”
In the arraignment hearing, Ho said the indictment identified three different patients whose health information was compromised. Addressing reporters, Patrick declined to speak about the facts of the case but described the charges against his client as a “huge contradiction.”
Facebook put tracking pixels on all sort of medical websites, including websites that provided abortion services. Many of the companies with the tracking pixels didn’t even have anyone in them who understood tracking pixel technology.
Data brokers regularly obtain medical information about people and even if it can’t legally be used to discriminate against someone, all this information gets in through the back door through personality profiles that measure things like “resiliency” and “tenacity.”
Did you need to take a break from work due to severe depression? Well that can’t be legally used against you when you apply for a new job. However, since you couldn’t tough it out at work, you do have a “less resilient” personality and that will be factored into a personality profile used to exclude you from jobs. They are doing this using AI now to try to get this information in through the backdoor and make it legal, and since many of the pieces of data from data brokers have no clear source of origination or clear consent obtained, these companies claim they are not relying on privileged medical information.
It’s appalling and discriminatory and these companies should all be destroyed, their offices bulldozed, and the earth salted afterwards. The executives running these companies should all be castigated for what they do. They are profiting off of a data brokerage hack turning medical information into discrimination and then trying to white wash it.
Eventually, large greedy law firms will see they can make a lot of money with class action suits for disabled people who were collectively harmed by white-washing medical problems into personality profiles and these companies and their practices will become huge liabilities because they can’t determine the data sources and whether consumers actually opted in. (And almost all consumers exploited by these nefarious practices monetized by sleazeballs don’t opt in.)
This a great write up that expanded my understanding on the issue. So thank you.
I doubt anything will change, the state is actively supporting this behavior.
Best people can do it is try to protect themselves which is mostly a futile exercise.
Everyone who works in these industries is slime and worst of all, they make posts about adhering to regulations with #compliance hashtags to try to trick people that a large part of what they are doing isn’t white-washing backdoor data that includes confidential information. They are tricking the stupid corporations and masses to extract money, but will eventually become a liability because the data lacks consent. But all the scum working at all these terrible companies using AI and feigning compliance will eventually depart once the legal vultures start to circle, leaving shareholders to be the ones losing money. Most of the value of the treachery of these companies is the victims never know that they have been exploited. Someone who takes time off work occasionally for severe depression may in fact be a worse worker and so companies profit from exploiting this trick and companies do not notify job candidates when they have been eliminated as candidates based on personality profiles that incorporate medical information or traits that are proxies for medical information and/or based on medical apps or health websites. Virtually all health sites sell information to data brokers. Where do people think that goes? It goes into personality profiles to eliminate less healthy job candidates. Some of these companies and data brokers are using AI to circumvent the design of laws, and pretend that complex programs are somehow compliant while achieving the same intent, but all the compliance hashtags don’t exculpate them from their sleaze. Many of these companies that try to white wash this data show how their practices aren’t discriminatory to women or minorities and that pacifies governments and seems palatable, but they make their money from getting rid of other protected classes of people that are less obvious. It’s just pure slimebag grifting, the whole thing, and eventually people wise up because their is profit in suing these assholes for their avaricious racket.
Amen!
They also buy your tax data to cross reference income…
Good thing people got nothing to hide tho lol
It was H&R Block and all those other online tax services who did that. It was a terrible violation and wish those companies would all be just broken up, sued into oblivion, and their CEOs personally liable for this on both a civil and criminal level. It was one of the worst data breaches, without being a breach, ever and just vomit inducing treachery.