Chloe Cole, a detransitioned 18-year-old woman, announced her intent on Thursday to sue the hospital and affiliated medical group that facilitated her medical transition as a minor.
According to the press release, Cole, represented by the Dhillon Law Group and LiMandri & Jonna LLP, in conjunction with the Center for American Liberty, sent a letter of intent to sue the Permanente Medical Group, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals who “performed, supervised, and/or advised transgender hormone therapy and surgical intervention for Chloe Cole when she was between 13-17 years old.” They will also be seeking “punitive damages based on the evidence of malice, oppression and fraud.”
“My teenage life has been the culmination of excruciating pain, regret, and most importantly injustice,” Cole said. “I have been emotionally and physically damaged and stunted by so-called medical professionals in my most important developmental period. I was butchered by an institution that we trust more than anything else in our lives.”
The letter of intent to sue outlines the “experimental nature” and “off-label use” of the puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and double mastectomy surgery offered to Cole, which lack long-term studies to support their use in gender medicine, and alleges that the treatments amount to “medical experimentation.”
The letter finds that Kaiser “coerced” Cole and her parents into medical transition by “falsely informing” them that her gender dysphoria would not resolve on its own, despite considerable evidence that contradicts this claim, which was withheld from Cole and her family.
“Chloe and her parents were never informed of the high rate of desistance for children diagnosed with gender dysphoria,” the letter stated. “Also, they were never informed of the high probability that Chloe’s gender dysphoria would resolve as an adult without hormone or surgical treatment.”
Indeed, current evidence indicates that roughly 60–90% of children who identify as transgender but do not socially or medically transition will no longer identify as transgender in adulthood.
The letter states that Cole’s doctors informed her parents that their daughter was at a high risk for suicide if they did not proceed with social and medical transition, despite the fact that Cole had “no significant indications of suicide or severe depression.”
Cole was never offered an alternative to medical transition, the letter delineated. In fact, the much more appropriate option of psychiatric treatment, including a “watchful waiting” approach, or an attempt to treat underlying psychological conditions, was never recommended to Cole or her family.
The letter continues by alleging that the “informed consent” doctors obtained from Cole for both hormones and surgery failed to exhaustively list the risks and side effects associated with the treatments, and questions whether “it is even possible to give such consent as a minor and at such a critical time in her life and development.”
“This radical, off-label, and inadequately studied course of chemical and surgical ‘treatment’ for Chloe’s mental condition amounted to medical experimentation on Chloe,” the letter charges. “These experimental procedures are very dangerous, especially to young patients, but also very lucrative to the Defendants.”
Cole made the public announcement alongside her lawyer, Harmeet Dhillon, on the Fox News program “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
— Chloe Cole ⭐️ (@ChoooCole) November 11, 2022
“The medical system shouldn’t dictate the future of young children’s lives,” said Dhillon. “Through this legal action, we will hold the ‘professionals’ involved accountable for their deliberate choices to mutilate children and financially benefit from it without regard to the human tragedies they created. We will break the cycle of them breaking America’s children before it’s too late.”
Kaiser Permanente expressly follows the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) guidelines for surgery, an organization denounced internationally by medical and mental health professionals for its “adherence to ideological views unsupported by evidence, its exclusion of ethical concerns, and its mischaracterization of basic science.”
Kaiser’s website includes pseudoscientific guidance on “sex assigned at birth,” the idea that doctors arbitrarily dictate a person’s biological sex rather than observe and record it, and “gender identity,” a concept for which no scientific evidence exists.
Thousands of minors like Cole have sought medical transition on the ill advice of mental health and medical professionals in recent years. According to an analysis of insurance claims by Reuters, 17,683 children began puberty-blockers or hormones between 2017 to 2021. A recent journal estimated 1,130 reconstructive chest surgeries were performed on adolescents aged 12 to 17 from 2016 to 2019. Both of these estimates were likely significant undercounts, as the former relied solely on insurance claims, and the latter on hospital-based databases excluding private surgery centers.
“What is worse is that I am not alone in my pain,” said Cole. “I will ensure that the blood and tears of detransitioners like me will not be in vain. It is impossible for me to recoup what I have lost, but I will fight to ensure that no other children will be harmed at the hands of these liars and mutilators.”
The Center for American Liberty is hosting a webpage where the public can donate to help support Cole’s case or contact lawyers to inquire about pursuing legal action of their own.