Health and medical ethics (page 17 of 19)

For an introduction to these issues, see our page on bodily integrity

Hospital - stock photo courtesy of Freepik

World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) pathologizes intersex people in its Standards of Care, version 7

Re: The World Professional Association for Transgender Health: Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People, 7th version, wpath.org In an act of breathtaking hypocrisy the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) has released pathologizing guidelines for the treatment of intersex children and adults who reject their birth assignments. WPATH…
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Hospital - stock photo courtesy of Freepik

Intersex and the DSM

UPDATE: OII Australia and OII Aotearoa have released a submission on the DSM-5, which can be read here [PDF] in June 2012. This submission supersedes the following position statement. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is currently rewriting the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual (DSM). This will be its fifth full revision, the DSM-V. See: http://www.dsm5.org/Pages/Default.aspx The…
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The Yogyakarta Principles and intersex people

The 2006 Yogyakarta Principles on the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity are an important development, primarily furthering the rights of LGBT people, but with a crucial principle of particular interest to intersex people. Principle 1: The Right to the Universal Enjoyment of Human Rights All human…
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Response to Lee and Houk on the role of support and advocacy groups in relation to CAH

The rapid progression of intersex medicalization since the mid-1950s has directly influenced the development of intersex support and advocacy groups. These have a significant presence on the internet and many, such as OII also have a physical presence in countries that have set up affiliate organizations. Organisation Intersex International (OII) and other advocacy and support…
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Sydney Morning Herald: “‘Anti-lesbian’ treatment”

The original article that the two Australian-published versions of this story is from the LA Times newspaper and was written by LA Times journalist Shari Roan. The article was titled Medical treatment carries possible side effect of limiting homosexuality and it was published on Sunday 15th August 2010. The original article quotes Alice Dreger, Ken…
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CARES Foundation: “Surgery consideration for girls with classical CAH”

We encourage parents and society to appreciate intersex people, rather than treat us as problems to be fixed. We note that CARES denies the existence of male-identified CAH people, and plentiful statistics that show a low birth-rate, low marriage rate and high rates of “same sex attraction” among CAH “females.” So you have just been…
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Bodies in Doubt

In 2009 Dr Reis’s book, Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex, examined the cultural contexts that both inform and drive western medicine’s attitudes and responses to intersex bodies. Beginning with the profound homophobia of the 19th through to the 21st centuries, to the taboo topic of neo-vaginal dilation, Reis challenged standard medical practices…
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Star Observer: “Opposition to genital drugs”

The Star Observer reports on CAH and dexamethasone: Bioethicists have criticised the use of an experimental drug to reduce the risk of girls with a congenital disease being born with an intersex condition and make them conform to sex and gender stereotypes. Girls born with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) often have enlarged genitalia, and in…
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Alice Dreger in Psychology Today: “Can You Hear Us Now?: Is it ethical for doctors to stimulate little girls’ clitorises?”

Professor Alice Dreger writes in Psychology Today’s blog, “Fetishes I Don’t Get”: In a brief article entitled “Bad Vibrations” just posted at the Hastings Center’s Bioethics Forum, my colleague Ellen Feder and I express our shock over the follow-up techniques being used by pediatric urologist Dix Poppas at Weill Medical College of Cornell University on…
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Hospital - stock photo courtesy of Freepik

WPATH disorders intersex while depathologizing transgender

From the ‘Response of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health to the Proposed DSM 5 Criteria for Gender Incongruence’: (4) Adding a specifier of “with or without a Disorder of Sex Development” is an improvement over the need to use the “Not Otherwise Specified” diagnosis because individuals with intersex conditions may have a similar…
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Position statement on genital cutting

Intersex refers to atypical internal and/or external anatomical sexual characteristics, where features usually regarded as male or female may be mixed to some degree. This is a naturally occurring variation in humans.

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Emi Koyama at Bioethics Forum: “Why I am Suspicious of Bioethics”

Although OII Australia does not favour the use of “condition” in connection with intersex; this article encapsulates the problems of intersex ‘normalization’ and especially the chemical ‘normalization’ of unborn children. I fear that the campaign to hold the main propagator of the dexamethasone treatment accountable would, if not accompanied by sustained challenges to more fundamental…
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