Woman who claimed Nebraska Medical Center denied her treatment has taken Hir post down

Mika Covington is a genderqueer who prefers the pronouns sie and hir. Sie lives with end stage (stage 5) Nephropathic Cystinosis which affects approximately 1 in 100,000 to 200,000 newborns. There are only around 2,000 known individuals with cystinosis in the world.

Mika had alledged in a blog post tha sie has since removed, that the University of Nebraska Medical Center had refused to perform a kidney transplant after learning of Mika's transgender status.

Mika Covington has since messsaged me via facebook that sie is concerned about possible legal actions and therefore has taken hir blog post down.

This leaves me without an unattributable article and in a very bad position. I will leave this post up with the statement I received from the Nebraska Medical center and will update it as necessary.

Update 11/13/2013. Mika Covington messaged me regarding my taking down the planetransgender post down:

" I still stand by what I said in my post. But, I would point out that no where in my post did I state the University explicitly denied on basis of gender identity or political party preference/identification. Nevertheless, I did include in my post that I had issues because of being gender identity and political party preference/identification. In addition, I must state that I never gave Queerty or the Daily Kos to do a story on my Cystinosis and gender identity."

"Thank you again for writing a post on what was said in my blog."

Update 10:46 PM CT

Taylor Wilson, Senior Media Relations Coordinator at the Nebraska Medical Center has emailed me with this statement:

"We have performed thousands of transplants over the last 40 years. Patients are never rejected based on gender, race or religion. EVER. Organ transplant is highly regulated by the government and politics is never part of the discussion. Without consent from the patient, we can't comment specifically about this case. However, we can say that each prospective transplant recipient has to attend appointments on a regular basis and complete a variety of tests before being eligible for transplant. We want to make sure each patient takes the utmost care of the gift of life they're being given, both immediately after the transplant and for years to come."

"Our institution is filled with talented, caring individuals who strive to provide the highest quality care to everyone. We provide care to the sickest of the sick and often become a place of refuge when other bigger-name centers have turned them down. One of our recent transplant patients may have said it best in this video:"

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Taylor Wilson
Senior Media Relations Coordinator
The Nebraska Medical Center





Mr. Wilson said they have not received the needed consent form from Mika they need to address this case specifically he wanted to respond in general to this blog post.

Mika has tweeted a number of time sie has emailed the Nebraska Medical center but has yet to receive the consent form.

@NebraskaMed @kellibusey @dailykos I am still waiting for the form.
— Mika Covington (@CovingtonMika) November 11, 2013

Breaking: Group claims to have enough signatures to force a vote on Ca student Transgender rights

The political strategist who is coordinating the fight against AB 1266 has told the AP they have collected enough signatures to force a referendum.

AP: Opponents of a new California law that gives transgender students certain rights say they have collected enough signatures for an initiative that could repeal the law.

Frank Schubert, the political strategist handling the signature gathering effort for conservative groups, said Sunday that the group submitted 620,000 signatures to get the initiative on the November 2014 ballot. To qualify, at least 505,000 valid signatures must be submitted.

If there have been enough signatures collected as Schubert claims a qualification process must validate those signatures. There is no mention of this on the central hate groups web page.