domingo, 14 de marzo de 2010

Natural Science Blog
David Reimer

In 1965 David Reimer was born in Canada. When he was 8 months old, he was taken to the hospital to have a circumcision done. Unfortunately, his penis was burned off during this standard procedure due to the fact that the physician used an electrocautery needle instead of a standard scalpel. David's parents went to a psychologist named John Money and he suggested that a sex change was the simplest solution. David's parents agreed without knowing that Dr. Money had other intentions than to help them. He wanted to use David as his private case study to prove that nurture, not nature, determined gender identity. David had a vagina constructed and was given a hormonal treatment, he was now known as Brenda.


This experiment was completely unethical because John Money used David as his own private case study, and told David's parents to change David's sex so he could have a case to research on, he was not profesional at all. He did not tell them that he wanted to do this experiment so he did not have their consent or David's as we was not aware of this at all. He did not take into account all the different problems that this would bring into David's family's life and David's as well. David's mother was suicidal, his father was an alcoholic and his brother was severely depressed. David's parents decided to tell him what had happened when he was 14, and he decided that he wanted his penis to be reconstructed. After many year of struggling with gender identity he committed suicide at age 38.

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