Human rights group calls for ban on intersex surgery
by Xavier Symons | 29 Jul 2017 |
Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international human rights advocacy group, this week called for a ban on intersex surgery, claiming it subjected intersex children to “irreversible physical and psychological harm”.
The group has produced a report (in conjunction with the intersex activist group InterACT) that assails the practice of intersex surgery and calls on Congress to ban it. The report states that “the results [of intersex surgery] are often catastrophic, the supposed benefits are largely unproven, and there are generally no urgent health considerations at stake”.
The authors of the report challenge traditional binary definitions of a person’s sex, arguing that “sex, in reality, is a spectrum—with the majority of humans appearing to exist at one end or the other. In fact, as many as 1.7 percent of babies are different from what is typically called a boy or a girl.”
Intersex surgery has been practiced in the US since the 1960s, but has been subjected to increasingly vocal criticism in recent years. High profile doctors have condemned the practice, and the American Medical Association is considering a proposal to discourage it.
In 2015 Malta became the first country in the world to outlaw the practice.
| Saturday, July 29, 2017 | BioEdge
We're back! And although the northern hemisphere summer is normally a slow-news season, bioethics has been on the front page of world newspapers.
The drama of the dying British baby Charlie Gard, his loving parents, the doctors at Great Ormond Street hospital in central London, and the English law has captured the imagination of people everywhere.
To be honest, I am not sure whose "side" I should be on. Parents should normally make healthcare decisions for their children.
But there are cases in which their choices are plainly wrong -- as a Swedish doctor suggests below in his version of the mysterious resdignation syndrome among refugee children -- and the advice of doctors should be heeded.
Which was the case here? We'd love to hear from you.
Michael Cook
Editor
BioEdge
| NEWS THIS WEEK | |
by Xavier Symons | Jul 29, 2017
Charlie Gard has died in a London hospice after having life-support withdrawn.by Xavier Symons | Jul 29, 2017
The American Psychoanalytic Association says members are free to comment on public figures, notably Donald Trumpby Michael Cook | Jul 29, 2017
Experts suspect that chemicals are to blame.by Michael Cook | Jul 29, 2017
Shoukhrat Mitalipov, of Oregon Health and Science University, has successfully edited a gene for a genetic disease in scores of human embryosby Michael Cook | Jul 29, 2017
But an outcry forces him to step back from his planby Xavier Symons | Jul 29, 2017
An international human rights advocacy group this week called for a ban on intersex surgery.by Xavier Symons | Jul 29, 2017
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology recommends contraceptive counselling for every visit.| IN DEPTH THIS WEEK | |
by Thomas Jackson | Jul 24, 2017
At least a thousand refugee children awaiting political asylum are unable to eat, speak and move.BioEdge
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