Dr. Phil Teams Up With Christian Media to Promote Leaker Who Exposed Trans Children’s Private Health Records
Eithan Haim admits to leaking hospital records for children diagnosed with gender dysphoria to a right-wing think tank while he was a resident at Texas Children’s Hospital, and says he is the subject of a criminal investigation. Dr. Phil plans to platform his claims of persecution.
by Evan Urquhart
Last December, Phil McGraw, better known as television’s “Dr. Phil” (though he is not a medical doctor), announced that he would be launching his own cable channel in partnership with Trinity Broadcasting Network, according to Variety. The Variety story claimed that “McGraw’s new outlet will not offer any sort of faith-based messaging or programming.” However, an email seeking permission to use an Assigned Media headline revealed that McGraw’s new show will feature a doctor under federal investigation for leaking the private health records of trans children.
If the email is accurate, one planned episode of Dr. Phil Primetime currently in the works will feature Eithan Haim, a doctor who used his position as a resident at Texas Children’s Hospital to leak private medical information from over 20 young patients who had received treatment for gender dysphoria. The treatments overwhelmingly consisted of the removal or implantation of a puberty blocker, a reversible procedure that has been misleadingly referred to as “sex change surgery” in some conservative media retellings.
Private health information is protected under federal law, and merely removing a patient’s name is not considered sufficiently anonymizing to allow the release of patient records without a patient’s permission. Haim’s leaked documents removed all patient names, but included identifying details such as the exact date and time of the appointment, the patient’s age, their doctor, diagnosis, and the procedure they’d been scheduled for.
In the email, sent to Assigned by Judy Park who listed her title as Media Supervisor for Dr. Phil Primetime/Merit Street Media, Haim’s potentially criminal actions are described in glowing terms. Park referred to Haim as “a surgeon with TX Children’s Hospital, who became an anonymous whistleblower for exposing secret transgender procedures that were being performed on minors.”
screenshot from an email sent to Assigned Media
Before its cancellation in 2023, Dr. Phil’s long-running show on CBS had become a regular forum for far-right personalities to discuss culture war grievances according to reporting by Media Matters. Assigned reached out to Park via email to request further comment for this story, but have not received a reply several hours after our inquiry. This story will be updated if any comment is forthcoming.