Former Gender Clinic Worker Addresses Factual Inaccuracies in Affidavit

Jamie Reed, who once worked at the Washington University Pediatric Transgender Center in St. Louis, answered questions about false statements included in her affidavit in a contentions twitter conversation.

by Evan Urquhart

In a series of tweets yesterday evening, former Transgender Center staff member Jamie Reed offered greater insight than ever before into the process that led to false information being included in her sworn affidavit. In her comments, which took place in a contentious back-and-forth with Assigned Media, Reed's focus continually returned to what she believes to be the broader issues in gender affirming care. Reed treated questions about why a falsehood made it into her affidavit as less relevant than this bigger picture.

Describing the decision to include information in her affidavit about a patient whose chart she’d never seen as “difficult,” Reed explained in a tweet why she’d included it anyway. “My concern was more about a drug being used in a pediatric area of medicine that the adults would not use within the same hospital,” Reed said, suggesting that the truth of the claim itself was not her highest consideration.

The mother of the patient in question who uses Heidi, her first name, to protect her family’s privacy, shared documentation contradicting Reed’s account with Assigned Media, the New York Times, and with KMOV 4, a local CBS affiliate serving St. Louis. Heidi’s daughter started transitioning as a minor, and is now a college age trans woman.

The family have never wavered from considering her treatment medically necessary, even lifesaving. This runs contrary to the way their story was described in Reed’s affidavit.

screenshot from Reed’s affidavit to the MO Attorney General

None of this proved to be accurate. In truth, the family never mentioned suing the hospital. The reference to a “PR problem” mischaracterizes an email referring to issues with a non-supportive family member which Heidi called “a PR problem in our world” and even the connection between bicalutamide and the liver damage experienced was far less clear cut than the affidavit suggested.

In the NYT story, Reed’s response to being confronted with this was summarized thusly, “Ms. Reed said that she learned about the case from Ms. Hamon [a nurse at the Center], who helped compile examples for the affidavit, and that she regretted citing the case when she had not seen the medical record herself.”

However, until last night Reed had never publicly answered questions about what other pieces of information in the affidavit may have come from Hamon, or how Reed feels about the fact that some of Hamon’s information had proven inaccurate.

On Twitter yesterday, Reed finally answered these questions for the first time, in the course of a contentious conversation with Assigned Media. The exchange started when Reed replied to this tweet from our Twitter account, where we speculated Reed may believe her lies serve a greater truth. (Lie is a word often avoided by reporters because it connotes intentionality, but in addition to the known false statement regarding Heidi’s daughter Reed’s statements are, at the very least, riddled with inaccuracies about gender medicine.)

In response to a question from Assigned about how many other patient histories Reed shared based on secondhand information, Reed claimed that the story about Heidi’s family was the only time she did so.

It is impossible to verify whether the affidavit contained other patient histories based on secondhand information as this one did. Apart from Heidi, none of the other patients or families whose medical details Reed included in the affidavit have come forward to confirm or deny Reed’s version of events. 

Assigned also asked Reed about her feelings when she learned the information from her colleague was inaccurate, and the possibility her colleague could have lied to her about the details of the case, Reed instead disputed the facts, insisting that the disproven information was still plausible, tweeting, “Since I have never seen the chart I can not definitively state that the parent did not in fact make a similar statement in a different means.” She rephrased this in a subsequent tweet where she suggested the mention of a lawsuit could have been made in a phone call, rather than via email.

screenshot from twitter.com

Reached for comment, Heidi reiterated that the version of events in Reed’s affidavit was completely false. “We did not say anything about a lawsuit. It never even crossed our minds. We never said it, we never even thought it.”

However, Reed’s insistence that “the point of [including this story] was to draw attention to a medical practice that deserves scrutinizing,” suggests that in her view, the specific facts and patient histories she shared aren’t nearly as important as her questions and criticisms of gender-affirming care for youth more generally speaking. This is a concerning viewpoint for a self-described whistleblower. Reed’s affidavit is a legal document that alleged serious wrongdoing and has been relied on as evidence that gender-affirming care has been practiced unethically. It has been cited as a justification for legislation in Missouri that banned access to these treatments.

Reed’s statements suggest she views the information in her affidavit as an extension of her subjective opinions about gender-affirming care, rather than as a legal document alleging serious, intentional wrongdoing and malpractice on the part of her former workplace. If Reed’s allegations were true in their entirety, it would mean something went badly wrong at that particular center and minor patients were terribly harmed, a very grave matter.

Whether these things actually happened the way Reed says they did, or if Reed included stories of dubious accuracy so that she could “draw attention to a medical practice that deserves scrutinizing” is important. It’s important for the youth who were patients at the St. Louis clinic and their families, it’s important for families of gender diverse youth at all stages, and it’s important to the legislative decisions America makes about these treatments.