Doctor Stanley Biber

1/17/2006 6:10 PM MST

TRINIDAD, Colo. (AP) - A family friend and funeral home owner says

Colorado's famous sex change doctor has died.
 

Doctor Stanley Biber of Trinidad was suffering from pneumonia but the

cause of death hasn't been released. He was 82.

 

Mary Winter of Comi Funeral home says Biber died Monday.

 

In the mid-1990s Biber performed up to half the world's sex-change

operations a year.

 

Winter says public services have not been arranged. She says Biber's

family has asked for privacy.
 

Winter says Biber was her family's doctor for generations. She

describes him as, quote, "a great man."
 

 

More information on the passing of Dr. Biber:
 

http://www.moss-fritch.com/biber.htm

 

http://img.viacomlocalnetworks.com/images_sizedimage_017222408/lg

 

'Sex Change' Doctor From Trinidad Dies

 

(AP) TRINIDAD, Colo. Dr. Stanley Biber, a small-town physician who
 

said he performed more than 4,500 sex change operations in his
 

career, died Monday, a friend and funeral home owner said.

 

He was 82. The cause of death was not announced Tuesday, but Biber
 

had been hospitalized for complications from pneumonia.

 

"We've lost a tremendous friend in our community," said Mary Winter,
 

owner of the Cormi Funeral Home in Trinidad, a town of 9,300 near the
 

Colorado-New Mexico border.

 

Winter said Biber was her family's doctor for generations. "He was
 

just a great man," she said.

 

She said no public services had been scheduled.

 

The family requested that the public respect their privacy, Winter
 

said.

 

Biber, an Iowa native, moved to Trinidad in 1954 after serving as an
 

Army surgeon in Korea. As the town's only general surgeon, he
 

delivered babies, removed appendixes and performed other more routine
 

operations.

 

He told The Associated Press in a 2000 interview that he performed
 

his first sex-change operation in 1969. A social worker he had met
 

through a welfare case asked for the surgery, and he agreed after
 

talking to a New York physician who had done some sex reassignment
 

operations and getting sketches from Johns Hopkins University.

 

Word spread, and at one point he was performing 150 transsexual
 

operations a year, he said.

 

Published reports have said that Biber at one time peformed up to
 

half the world's annual sex change operations, but that could not be
 

confirmed.

 

He stopped doing surgery in 2003 and closed his practice in 2004, at
 

age 81, saying insurers refused to renew his malpractice coverage. He
 

said the companies gave no reason but he suspected it was because of
 

his age.

 

Biber was a former Las Animas County commissioner and also had a
 

small ranch east of Trinidad.

 

Residents of Trinidad have said the town was largely accepting of
 

Biber's sex change practice. Former Trinidad Mayor Harry Sayre said
 

in 2004 that Biber was a pillar of the community.

 

"I consider him probably one of the outstanding leaders in Trinidad
 

of the last century," Sayre said. "He and I had our battles many
 

years ago, but I consider him a real true friend."