Dr. Stanley H. Biber, a sex-reassignment surgeon who helped turn the small town of Trinidad, Colo., into the sex-change capital of the world, died on Jan. 16 from complications of pneumonia. He was 82.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Biber was the eldest child of a furniture store owner and a social rights advocate. He attended a rabbinical seminary in Chicago, and worked as a civilian in the Alaskan Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, in World War II. Biber graduated from the University of Iowa’s medical school in 1948, and served as the chief surgeon of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit in South Korea during the Korean War.
When his military service ended, Biber moved to Trinidad, Colo., where he worked as a general surgeon at Mt. San Rafael Hospital. His specialty changed in 1969 when a local social worker asked him to perform the gender-altering surgery known as a penectomy. After reading articles about the procedure, Biber transformed his first transsexual patient from a man to a woman. Although he kept the operation a secret from the Catholic nuns who ran the hospital, Biber later received the administration’s approval and support.
Over the next three decades, Biber surgically altered the genders of 5,000 men and 800 women, including actors, athletes, clergymen, judges, models, police officers, politicians and teachers. The world-renowned surgeon also maintained a regular surgical practice and trained hundreds of other surgeons in gender-reversal techniques.
Trinidad’s status as a sex-change hot spot grew as Biber was featured on numerous television shows, such as “Oprah,” “Geraldo” and “Guinness World Records: Primetime.” Some citizens objected to Biber’s work, but most acknowledged his commitment to health care. To honor his medical career, city officials declared Oct. 10 Stanley Biber Day.
Biber frequently wore blue jeans and cowboy boots, a casual outfit that suited his homelife on a large cattle ranch. In 2003, he turned his medical practice over to Dr. Marci Bowers, a gynecological surgeon and the product of a sex-change operation, because he could no longer afford to pay for malpractice insurance.
“I think he put the operation on the world map. He made it safe, reproducible and functional and he brought happiness to an awful lot of people. And when you wanted a voice of reason, he was always there,” Bowers said.
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Categotry Archives: Medicine
Louise Regan
Categories: Medicine
Louise Marie Regan, a nurse who volunteered in Africa and India, died on June 6 of a brain aneurysm. She was 66.
Born in Wyncote, Pa., Regan graduated from Gwynedd Mercy Academy. She married Thomas Regan in 1957 and raised three children; the couple separated in the 1970s and divorced in the 1980s. During their separation, however, Louise studied nursing at Montgomery County Community College and became a registered nurse.
Regan spent the next three decades working at Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia, where she provided nursing services to many departments. In her spare time, she offered her skills to those in need. In 1992, Regan volunteered with Mother Teresa at the Nirmal Hriday Home for the Dying in Calcutta. Three years later, she trained nurses, distributed medical supplies and provided medical services in Swaziland.
Even in death, Regan continues to help others. She donated her organs to the Gift of Life.
Bill Rashbaum
Categories: Medicine
Dr. William Kohlmann Rashbaum, a Manhattan gynecologist and obstetrician who founded one of the first fetal tissue banks in the United States, died on May 2 from complications of lung cancer. He was 78.
Rashbaum was a third-generation physician. The New York native earned his bachelor’s degree and medical degree from New York University, then joined his father’s OB/GYN practice in Manhattan. In the 1950s and 1960s, he treated dozens of women suffering complications from illegal abortions. These experiences affected Rashbaum so strongly that when New York state legalized abortion in 1970, he decided to offer the procedure as a safe way for women to end their unwanted pregnancies.
Despite the controversial nature of his work, Rashbaum never wavered from his duty to help women get pregnant, avoid pregnancy, have a baby or rid themselves of one. A staunch advocate of a woman’s right to choose, he was one of the few doctors in America who would perform a second-trimester abortion when one was required.
Rashbaum also established one of the first licensed fetal tissue banks in the country. There his staff collected pancreases for research and used the organs to find cures for diseases. In his spare time, Rashbaum taught obstetrics and gynecology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Rashbaum was an attending physician and the former chief of planning services at Beth Israel Medical Center, and a founder of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. In 1999, he was honored by the New York Civil Liberties Union for supporting women’s reproductive rights.
Jeanne Petrek
Categories: Medicine
Dr. Jeanne A. Petrek, a prominent surgeon and expert on pregnancy-associated breast cancer, was killed in an accident on April 11. She was 57.
Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Petrek received her bachelor’s and medical degrees from Case Western Reserve in Cleveland. After doing her internship and residency in surgery at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, she landed a surgical oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City.
In the early 1980s, Petrek taught surgery classes at Emory University School of Medicine and served on staff at Grady Memorial and Emory University hospitals. She returned to Memorial Sloan-Kettering in 1984 as an assistant attending surgeon and continued her academic career as a professor of surgery at Cornell University School of Medicine.
For the past two decades, Petrek specialized in treating pregnancy-associated breast cancer and studied the causes of lymphedema, a swelling in the arm and hand that can develop after the removal of certain lymph nodes. In an effort to improve her patients’ quality of life, she countered the aftereffects of cancer therapy with hormonal and other treatments.
The compassionate physician directed the surgical program of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and personally treated more than 4,000 patients. To determine whether it was safe for a young woman to get pregnant after breast cancer, Petrek also conducted a 10-year, federally-funded study on the changes in ovarian function resulting from breast cancer treatment. She followed the histories of 800 women under the age of 44 who had undergone chemotherapy. Preliminary findings of the study will be reported to the American Society of Clinical Oncology next month.
Petrek was on her way to work when she was struck by an ambulette while crossing the street at the intersection of 2nd Ave. and E. 64th St. in New York City. Eight construction workers lifted the vehicle off of Petrek, but she died in surgery a few hours later. The driver, who said she was blinded by the sun, was cited for failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk.
S. Paul Ehrlich
Categories: Government, Medicine
Dr. Saul Paul Ehrlich Jr., an epidemiologist and the acting Surgeon General under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, died on Jan. 6 of pneumonia. He was 72.
Ehrlich always wanted to become a doctor. The son of a physician, he earned two bachelor’s degrees and his medical degree at the University of Minnesota. Ehrlich served as a medical officer in the Coast Guard, interned at the Public Health Service Hospital in Staten Island, then did his residency in epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a master’s degree in 1961.
For the next two decades, Ehrlich devoted his life to public service. He researched the relationship of cholesterol to heart disease with the National Heart Institute and represented the United States at the World Health Organization as the director of the Office of International Health.
When Dr. Jesse L. Steinfeld quit the Surgeon General’s post in 1973, President Richard M. Nixon appointed Ehrlich to fill in. For the next four years, he worked hard to make the office relevant and useful to the public. Ehrlich saved the Public Health Service’s Commissioned Corps from budget cuts and developed a hotline for Iron Curtain countries to communicate with the United States.
In 1994, Ehrlich was one of six Surgeons General who urged Congress to ban smoking in public buildings and to enact stricter controls on secondhand smoke. He also protested a proposed federal policy that would have responded to the spread of AIDS by requiring minors to obtain written parental consent before gaining access to contraceptives and information on birth control.
After leaving public office, Ehrlich served as the vice president of the American Institutes for Research and as the deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization. He taught at Georgetown University’s School of Medicine, the University of Texas School of Public Health and the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. The recipient of the Public Health Service’s Outstanding Service Medal, Ehrlich retired in 1984 after learning that he had multiple sclerosis.