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01/21/06-01/23/06

NGLTF mourns loss of Stanley Biber

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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