Pueblo
— Dr. Stanley Biber, the Trinidad physician who
pioneered sex-change surgery in the United States, was in
critical condition Wednesday at a Pueblo hospital.
Biber, 82, was taken to
St. Mary- Corwin Medical Center last week and remains in
intensive care, said Wendi Dammann, the hospital
spokeswoman.
"We appreciate the many
calls, but are focused and hopeful on Dr. B's complete
recovery," Mary Lee Biber, Biber's wife, said in a
statement.
Dammann said that federal
laws on patient privacy prevented her from commenting on
reports that Biber was hospitalized with complications
from pneumonia.
Biber performed his last
sex-change operation in 2003. By then, Trinidad was known
as the "Sex Change Capital of the World" and drew
patients from around the globe.
Biber, then 80, said his
insurance company had upped his malpractice coverage to
$250,000 because of his age.
Biber performed his first
sex- change operation in 1969 after studying diagrams
from John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and talking with
a New York surgeon.
He estimated he performed
5,800 sex-change operations during his career on people
from all walks of life.
Most of the surgeries,
about 5,000, transformed men into women, he said in
2003.
Biber also trained dozens
of other surgeons in gender reversal techniques and
maintained a regular surgical practice delivering babies,
removing tonsils and replacing knee and hip
joints.
