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Friday, March 9, 2012

DAVID REIMER:
UNETHICAL SEX CHANGE &
A BOY IN GIRL'S CLOTHING
 
                      BY
                MD. ASAD


     CENTER FOR LINGUISTICS
         SCHOO OF LANGUAGES, LITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY
NEW DELHI, 110067


INTRODUCTION

There have been numerous terrible, horrible,   unethical experiment cases throughout history.
David Reimer: is one of the most horrible significant and remembered cases that involved in giving a sex change to unfortunate baby boy whose penis was burned and damaged beyond repair with a electrocautery needle while circumcision(foreskin) after WWII in 1965. 

BACKGROUND

David Reimer was a baby boy, born in 1965 in Canada. At the age of 8 months old, his penis was by chance burned off during the process of circumcision.
He was taken to the psychologist John Money. He suggested a very simple solution to his parents: a sex change. His parents eventually agreed to procedure without knowing Dr.’s bad intention.

His parents was not aware of the realintention of the Dr. and his unethical,awful, tragic, horrible experiments.
Now the Dr. got a golden chance to prove the nurture, not nature and gender identity on him. For his own selfish gain, Doctor decided to use David as his own private case study.

 A CASE STUDY

Dr. Money took advantage of this opportunity as a case study for research. Without informing the parents..
Dr. Money secretly wanted this case to prove his idea that nurturing a child as a male or a female can determine their sexuality, not nature itself.

RESEARCH PROCESS

David(boy), now became Brenda(girl), having a constructed vagina and was given hormonal supplements after sex reassignment surgery.
Dr. Money called the experiment a success, neglecting to report the negative effects of Brenda’s surgery.

She acted very much like a stereotypical boy and had conflicting and confusing feelings whether she is boy or girl.
Her parents did not inform her of the horrific accident as an infant.
This caused a devastating tremor through the family.
Brenda’s mother was suicidal, her father was alcoholic, and her brother was severely depressed.
Brenda remained confused growing up with her desires to act and play like a boy.

EXPOSE OF REALITY

Finally, Brenda’s parents gave her the news of her true gender when she was 14th years old.
Brenda decided to become David again, stopped taking estrogen, and had a penis reconstructed.
He also married Jane Fontaine and became a stepfather to her three children.
He led his life by bearing the burden of social depression with his family by the age of 38 Yrs.

EFFECTS OF THE CASE STUDY ON THE SUBJECT

David led a horrible life and faced a lot of social and cultural criticisms.
She was ostracized at school by her peers and neither frilly dresses nor female hormones made her feel like a girl. 
At the age of 3, she angrily tore off her dresses.
Instead of playing with dolls she beat up her brother and took his toy cars instead. 
By the age of 15, Brenda was suicidal and told her parents she would kill herself if made to see Dr. Money again.

EFFECTS ON THE SUBJECT

As he grew up as Brenda in Winnipeg, he faced cruelty from the other children.
''They wouldn't let him use the boys' washroom or the girls',''
Ms. Reimer recalled. ''He had to go in the back alley.'‘
His sexual reassignment was then widely reported as a success and proof that children are not by nature feminine or masculine but through nurture are socialized to become girls or boys.
David's identical twin brother, Brian, offered researchers a matched control subject.
At last David committed suicide due to the separation from wife, losing job and cultural and social disgrace & tension.

ETHICAL VIEWS

Who was responsible for the depression & death of David and his tragic and horrible life?
Who is Dr Money to decide the sex of the  child should be male or female?
Dr. Money selfishly took advantage of poor boy and put his name for a case study in records.
He is notoriously remembered as the man who destroyed an entire family because of the mere fact that he wanted to create something that would give him intellectual and admirable credit.

 THE CASE & INTERNATIONAL ATTENTION

His case came to international attention in 1997.
When he told his story to Milton Diamond an academic Sexologist who persuaded David to allow him to report the outcome in order to dissuade physicians from treating other infants similarly.
Soon after, David went public with his story and
John Colapinto published a widely disseminated and influential account in Rolling Stone magazine in December 1997.
They went on to elaborate the story in a book, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl.











 
 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It was worth reading this article.