News
2006-01-21
NGLTF mourns loss
of Stanley Biber
A pioneer in
sex-reassignment surgery is remembered.
The National Gay
and Lesbian Task Force issued a statement T
The National Gay
and Lesbian Task Force issued a statement Thursday
remembering Stanley Biber, a small-town family doctor from
mining and cattle country who became a pioneer in the
area of sex-reassignment surgery, performing an
estimated 5,000 operations over three decades.
Biber died earlier this week at the age of 82.
He lived on his ranch in Trinidad, a small
southern Colorado town along the Santa Fe Trail. In
1969 a female acquaintance of Biber's asked him
whether he would perform her sex-reassignment surgery. It
was an era when very few surgeons in North America
were performing such operations. Biber agreed, marking
the beginning of a legacy.
"The news of Dr. Biber's death is
heartbreaking—I spent many months visiting and
learning from Dr. Biber in the early 1980s and have worked
with and respected him ever since," said Marsha Botzer,
board cochair of NGLTF. "He was a man who brought
courage, intelligence, and outstanding surgical skill
together in a combination that allowed him to perform
the most delicate surgery in the morning, face any and all
questions in the afternoon, and smile joyfully over a
convivial dinner party in the evening—a
Renaissance man in the south of Colorado."
(Advocate.com)
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