Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00076)

Dear Steve,

Thanks for your response.

There is in fact a huge global medical ethics debate going on 
regarding the prevalent and increasing existence and the 
proper 'treatment' of intersexed persons. In my Sex Differentiation 
report (see my Topical Index), I list some of the most common forms 
of animal and same mechanism-related forms of human intersex. One of 
the most troubling medical ethics issues involved is the standard 
performance of sex-change surgery on intersexed infants and very 
young children. The doctors guessing what a child's sex and gender 
identity is force THEIR choice surgically on the child. Because they 
are often WRONG, this condemns the child to a life of physical and 
social misery. The intersexed persons' rights movement is demanding 
that this be stopped, and intersexed people be allowed to exist, and 
to chose their own sex assignment when they are old enough to do so. 

Parents who have refused to allow doctors to perform these surgeries 
on their intersexed babies, have had their babies legally taken away 
from them by courts, acting as the agents of the doctors who want to 
do the surgeries! 

So it is a fact that at present globally the medical profession is 
philosophically, legally and financially committed to and invested in 
surgically forcing everyone into either a male or female appearance 
shortly after birth. This surgical choice OF THE DOCTORS is then 
reinforced by a lifetime of hormonal therapy. Intersex activists are 
saying that if they are otherwise healthy babies, this surgical 
assignment of male or female sex should not be forced on them by the 
medical establishment. 

One of the problems is that it is impossible to draw a simple line 
between normal male intersex and normal female. All chromosomal or 
hormonal or hormonally induced structural defects or deviations from 
the reproductive norm are in fact forms (mild to severe) of intersex. 

Intersex states exist when there is a chromosomal, hormonal, 
neuroendocrinological or other variation or imperfect differentiation 
or formation / completion of the male or female reproductive system. 
some of these anatomical imperfections are so common, that they are 
not noramally thought of as forms of hermaphroditism, (like 
hypospydias in males) but they in fact are. Imperfect 
differentiations / reproductive problems are most often caused by 
hormonal influences in utero. Thus when a baby is born with 
reproductive abnormalities ( these are not the result of an injury) 
then the cause is most often a condition that falls within the range 
of disorders of intersex. The difference is only in severity, 
because there is no sharp demarcation between normal and slightly 
intersexed. 

The medical, legal and religious establishments are afraid to allow 
very intersexed persons to chose their own sex assignments, because 
of the implications for the rest of the people in the grayer areas of 
sex differentiation. Thus, the binary system must be defended at all 
costs. Even if it means the cruel multilation of helpless little 
babies who happen to be different from the perfect male or female 
model. 

There is certainly a medical tyranny involved in this. Read Dr. 
Alice Dreger's book on the history of this. "The Medical Invention 
of Sex" is the title, I think. She is a top medical ethicist involved 
with the ISNA (Intersex Society of North America).


best wishes, 

BA G

.--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Steve Stubbs <stevestubbs@y...>" 
<stevestubbs@y...> wrote:
> Dear BAG:
> 
> I read your paper. Intensely interesting, and it certainly did 
fill 
> in a gap in my education which was left by the classes I took at 
the 
> university. Something very similar to what you have written about 
is 
> the controversy over the orthomolecular approach to the treatment 
of 
> mental disorders. The orthomolecular school of psychiatry disputes 
> the mainstream assumption that there is no medically identifiable 
> underlying condition. I have a textbook here on the orthomolecular 
> treatment of schizophrenia which names some of the medical 
conditions 
> which are believed to underlie schizophrenia symptoms and which 
lists 
> the blood tests orthomolecular psychiatrists use to determine an 
> appropriate treatment protocol. An orthomolecular treatment has to 
> be tailored to the specific patient based on blood chemistry. 
> Mainstream psychiatrists diagnose this condition using the criteria 
> in the DSM IV, which are entirely behavioral and use essentially 
the 
> same protocol for every patient. Another difference between the 
two 
> is that the orthomolecular psychiatrist, having diagnosed the 
medical 
> problem, treats it using a protocol which may not include the use 
of 
> legally controlled substances (i.e., antipsychotic drugs.) 
> Financially, the ability to control access to these substances is 
the 
> physician's ace in the hole, which makes some cynics think that 
> business, and not medical, considerations may be the reason this 
> division within the psychiatric community exists. The contention 
of 
> some psychiatrists that orthomolecular psychiatry is some sort of 
> quackery seems to be mooted by the fact that patients treated this 
> way have in some cases have recovered from disorders which are 
known 
> to be incurable.
> 
> It was known from the fifties that ulcers were caused by a 
bacterium, 
> but the condition was treated until a few years ago using 
> prescription drugs which controlled the symptoms, but did not deal 
> with the underlying causes. Now that ulcers are treated with a 
> simple antibiotic, the drugs which were formerly used and which 
could 
> be obtained only by prescription, were immediately reclassified as 
> over the counter drugs and are no longer controlled. In his book 
on 
> investing, Peter Lynch made the interesting observation that 
> maintaining people in a state of profitable illness and not curing 
> anything could be (he thought) the medical wave of the future. He 
> referred specifically to ulcer treatment, and it appears he was 
> wrong. Lynch's analysis of the politics seems to be simplistic, 
but 
> that politics and business considerations sometimes figure in the 
> dislocation between the current state of scientific knowledge and 
the 
> current state of practice seems to be self evident. That such a 
> dislocation exists in the area of interest to you seems to be the 
> thesis of your paper, so you might find it interesting that it 
> appears to exist in other areas as well.
> 
> The science may be there, in other words, but if it merely supports 
> the patient's health, and not the profession's financial health, 
> there may be a temptation to dismiss such inconvenient science for 
> several decades. There was a study of cancer patients a few years 
> ago which reportedly concluded that a dead patient was worth 
multiple 
> times more money to the profession than one whose illness went into 
> remission.