Yet while activists and advocacy groups might criticise early surgery, for parents it can offer the only course with a track record, said Chubak. And in China, intersex children are often assigned as male as men are more valued in society. Malta is one of the few nations to outlaw surgery for intersex children. Most countries still recommend “corrective surgery”. “It is not logical to impose mandatory restrictions in an area as complicated as this, because it could affect individuals who require timely, health-improving surgical intervention.” “We truly care about getting it right, which is why we are not ‘for’ or ‘against’ early surgery,” she said. “I would say these are elective surgeries - not urgent - but also not, by and large, purely cosmetic as they are altering function.”Ī spokeswoman for the American Urological Association said surgery was performed only after “a comprehensive evaluation” that took into account all available evidence for the patient’s best interests. “Activists will say (these surgeries) are medically unnecessary,” he said. The American Medical Association, which represents physicians and students, does not have a policy or offer guidance for practitioners but says the issue is under review.įor clinical psychologist David Sandberg, professor of paediatrics at the University of Michigan’s CS MOTT Children’s Hospital, the issue was far from clear cut. There is a growing consensus that the way we’ve been doing this is problematic and the current model of care is not appropriate,” Dalke said. Katharine Dalke, a psychiatrist at Pennsylvania State University medical school, questioned the accepted medical wisdom that surgery was routinely the best route. “We are not informing people as optimally as we might.” This is why trust in the medical profession advising on a procedure is so critical, said Barbara Chubak, assistant professor of urology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai hospital in New York. Intersex genitalia can be surgically changed for an array of reasons: to change appearance, to help urination or menstruation, improve fertility and sexual function, or ward off potential medical complications. While many babies are not necessarily identified as intersex at birth, for parents whose children are obviously so, with genitalia that looks neither female or male, surgery is almost always offered to make their sex organs conform. “The medical world tells us that we should not talk to anyone about it,” fashion model Hanne Gaby Odiele told the Observer newspaper last year. Intersex children are surprisingly common, with estimates suggesting 1.7 percent of births are of indeterminate gender.ĭoctors have identified more than 30 different types of DSD - or differences of sex development - yet there are few intersex figures in the public domain who are known and speak out. “This is the biggest ethical disaster in modern medicine in the 2000s,” Suegee Tamar-Mattis, a California-based physician and intersex activist, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Last year, the Council of Europe, which oversees human rights and the rule of law, called for “medically unnecessary, sex-normalising surgery” on intersex babies to be banned. This year, Olga Khazova, a member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, voiced concern about “the still existing practice of non-consensual genital mutilation” - in remarks confirmed by the Office of the High Commissioner. Research suggests intersex adults risk psychological damage following rounds of early operations, yet advocates say there is scant evidence that doing nothing would be any better.Īs campaigners marked Intersex Awareness Day on Friday, calls are growing in the United States and beyond to outlaw gender-alignment surgery on intersex children unless it is medically needed.Ĭurrently, intersex babies can face operations to change the appearance as well as function of their genitalia. With an estimated one in 2,000 babies born between genders, parents must decide whether to operate or not, with the medical establishment split and intersex campaigners calling surgery a violation of human rights. LONDON, Oct 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Parents of children whose gender is not clear at birth are caught in an increasingly divisive battle over the medical risks and ethical fallout of opting for surgery to transform an intersex baby into a boy or a girl.
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