On Mon, Apr 02, 2007 at 02:43:22PM -0700, Judy Ryder wrote:
> We can tie this thread into the cloning thread: Dr.
> Money and his "experiment" of raising one of identical
> twin boys, as a girl.
erk.
i worked for dr money during the time these kids were "lost to
followup"; i.e. no longer making their annual trek down from canada to
baltimore. nor, i might add, were they seeing any routine sexologist or
endocrinologist at home. to put it mildly, kids being raised on the
edge of medical science should be seen more than once a year, and by
people they can learn to trust and speak freely to. a kid's life may be
led at the edge of experimental science due to accident (as in this
case) or illness, but no properly-managed experiment or child-rearing is
performed one day a year.
so: when they *did* come to the lab, long story short: they lied, to
john money and everybody else in the research group. mostly the parents
lied ("oh, she's fine, very feminine") and the kids acted uncomfortable
(as kids in dr's offices in distant countries do, esp. when being asked
rather personal questions). i know this for sure; i've read the
transcriptions of the tapes of their conversations with the research
group, and i read the pop book when it came out, too.
david's eventual suicide broke my heart. i'd worked in that lab for
five years, with hundreds of patients and research subjects, and i can
tell you one thing for sure: that lab's deepest goal was the highest
quality of life for everyone who came through the door. if they'd told
the truth, dr money and everyone else would have bent over backwards to
try to make things better, come up with different approaches, and not
incidentally to tell the poor kid the truth.
--vicka
ps. that said, i make no excuses for ricuarte (2002), and note only that
it was eventualy retracted.
