Texas gender clinic dubbed 'Frankenstein's lab' performs hundreds of ... trends now
A gender clinic in Texas dubbed 'Frankenstein's lab' has performed hundreds of unconventional genital surgeries that many experts describe as 'dangerous.'
The Crane Center for Transgender Surgery in Austin bills itself as a world leader in operations for non-binary people - those who don't identify exclusively with one gender.
The surgeries include giving patients a penis and vagina, or completely removing their sex organs, essentially 'Barbie-dolling your genitals,' as one critic put it.
The center director, Dr Curtis Crane, has previously bragged he couldn't 'think of a surgical request that I haven't been able to fulfill.'
Prices for the procedures range from $10,000 to $70,000 depending on the complexity.
LGBTQ groups say the operations benefit patients' mental health, while opponents say it shows how far off the rails gender-affirming treatment has gone.
Dr Curtis Crane with a patient - it is not known what procedures the above patient received from the clinic
The Crane Center for Transgender Surgery's director Dr Curtis Crane previously bragged he couldn't 'think of a surgical request that I haven't been able to fulfill'
Critics have been quick to call out the horror of 'Dr Frankenstein,' saying: 'Frankenstein would be happy;' 'Frankenstein was meant to be a cautionary tale, not a how-to guide;' 'What a crazy butcher;' and 'this is hysteria.'
Jay Richards, a fellow at the Conservative Heritage Foundation think-tank, told DailyMail.com: 'It’s tempting to compare clinics engaged in these ghoulish procedures to Frankenstein’s lab. But that would be uncharitable to Dr. Frankenstein.'
He added: 'Non-binary and nullification surgeries reveal the sheer madness of gender ideology.
'It started with surgeries to make males look like females, and vice versa. But it doesn’t end there, because the ideology’s definition of “gender identity” is completely untethered from our sexed bodies.
'It reduces the human person to a mere internal sense of gender,' which has no limiting principle and so can mean anything.'
Experts describe the newer nonbinary procedures as 'experimental' because there is extremely limited research on the topic and long-term outcomes and side effects are not well known.
While this is not the only clinic that performs these surgeries, Dr Crane said his practice, which also has locations in San Francisco and Boulder, Colorado, is a leader in the field.
Dr Crane claims he is one of the only practitioners in the world who is both a plastic surgeon and urologist, who has also done fellowships in transgender surgery and reconstructive urology.
Dr Crane said his practice is a leader in gender surgeries because of his extensive training
Despite his self-promotion, the surgeon and his clinic have been on the receiving end of at least eight lawsuits from 2017 to 2019 in California.
While all of the suits have been dismissed, former patients allege the doctor and his team performed incorrect and unnecessary surgeries, ignored suspected infections and surgical complications that caused debilitating pain and hospitalization and lied about his success and complication rates.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the Crane Center for comment but has not received a response.
According to the website, the Crane Center, which has nearly a dozen practitioners across its sites and has performed more than 1,000 phalloplasties (which involve crafting a penis) since 2012.
Its doctors perform more than 200 top surgeries and 150 vaginoplasties (the crafting of a vagina) per year.
Dr Crane said in a 2020 Facebook Live: 'We offer everything you can think of.
'I opened this practice eight years ago. I've seen thousands of patients from the [LGBTQ] community.
'I can't think of a time that a patient has come up with a surgical request that I haven't been able to fulfill. I really can come up with any reasonable surgery that a patient asks for.'
One of the nonbinary procedures performed by the Crane Clinic is known as a phallus-preserving vaginoplasty, which is performed on biological males who want to keep their penis while also getting a vagina.
A vaginal-preserving phalloplasty is the opposite - it constructs a penis for the person without surgically removing their vagina.
In people who have either of these surgeries, the vaginal opening is located just underneath the base of the penis' shaft.
Exact numbers of preserving procedures performed are not known, though Dr Crane did say he has performed 'hundreds' and has had more than 2,000 patients overall since he took over the clinic, which had only done top surgeries under the founder who has since retired.
A less common genital procedure that Dr Crane did not detail is called penile splitting, a type of body modification that splits the penis into two separate sections at various points
Penis splitting is done either because someone simply likes the way it looks or because they want to increase sexual pleasure
An illustration from Healthline demonstrates whole-shaft splitting, which sees the entire penis cut into two separate parts
