From School Library Journal
YA-A sorrowful account of a healthy male baby who, after suffering from a botched circumcision, was surgically altered and raised as a girl. Beyond that, it is the story of a psychologist from Johns Hopkins who would not see that the transsexual "remedy" was a grievous error since that admission meant the loss of the fame, power, and acceptance gained from his theories on gender identity. The book is in actuality a reporting of the facts of the case: the medical diagnosis; the surgery; the results; and the terrible effects the gender switch had on Bruce Reimer (soon to be Brenda), her twin, and their parents. By adolescence, despite hormone treatments, Brenda's misery was so complete that a switch back to the gender of birth was inescapable. Thus was David born. The tragedy of this family was compounded by the details of the famous Dr. Money's refusal to accept the failure of this treatment. One is forced to wonder how many other children who are afflicted with genital anomalies, whether from physician error or from a congenital defect, have suffered due to the ongoing nature versus nurture debate of scientists. This is a compelling story that will educate teens about some serious physical, psychological, and scientific issues. Because of interviews on television recently, David Reimer's story may already be familiar to many of them.
Carol DeAngelo, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
We've all heard the famous case of the boy raised as a girl after his circumcision was botched, supposedly a triumph for nurturists. Now he's an adult, living as a man with a family. Based on an award-winning Rolling Stone article, this book recounts the ordeal of "John/Joan," whose full identify will be revealed here.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From The New England Journal of Medicine
A variety of conditions may cause an infant to have ambiguous genitalia. The treatment of choice is a topic of hot debate among professionals and, more recently, among support groups of adults born with such intersexual conditions. One issue concerns the factors that determine a "good outcome" and thereby the policy of sex assignment. Sexual identity, the experience of oneself as male or female, is a core component of this outcome. Unfortunately, the empirical knowledge needed to make decisions about sex assignment is scanty. Such knowledge was virtually nonexistent in 1967, after a male twin had lost his penis in a circumcision accident at the age of eight months. At Johns Hopkins Hospital, John Money, an authority in the field of sexology, advised the parents to reassign the sex of the child. At the time, Money was one of the very few scientists who questioned the existing policy of assignment according to the sex of the gonads. His view was based on his studies of intersexual patients. In the great majority of such cases, sexual identity appeared to be shaped by rearing instead of by chromosomes, gonads, or sex hormones. In Money's view, even a healthy boy could, after genital traumatization, develop a female identity, provided that the reassignment was timely and the child was raised unambiguously as a girl.
For many years, this case was considered to be the ultimate evidence of psychosexual neutrality at birth. It had a considerable effect on decisions concerning sex assignment of intersexual children throughout the world. Early reports showed that, in contrast to the twin brother, the reassigned child seemed to develop as a "real girl," although she had many tomboyish traits. However, it later became apparent that the child had serious problems with sexual identity. When, at the age of 14, she was informed of her sex at birth, she immediately decided to live as a boy again. Asked for his reaction to this outcome by the press and professionals, Money was reluctant to respond. Diamond and Sigmundson published a follow-up of the case three years ago, when the patient was in his early 30s. Unlike Money, they considered the development of male identity to be determined to a considerable extent prenatally, through the brain's exposure to androgens. In their opinion, the case invalidated the theory of psychosexual neutrality at birth.
Colapinto's book contains two stories. One is the sad account of a family with a child who had to live with an unwanted sex role. The other provides the medical and psychological contexts of this tragedy. The personal story vividly describes how horrible life can be for a child with an incongruence between sexual identity and sex of rearing. For such children, stigmatization, bullying, and alienation from peers and family are daily problems. When confronted with so much suffering, it is hard not to look for someone to blame. Whereas in many cases of childhood problems of sexual identity there is no clear culprit, in this particular case the obvious candidate is John Money.
It is proper that medical mistakes or wrongful approaches to patients be exposed, but it is regrettable that this book devotes so much attention to the psychological makeup of just one clinician. Colapinto uses much of his well-researched material to reveal each and every one of Money's flaws. Unfortunately, in doing so, Colapinto himself makes mistakes (e.g., he incorrectly describes the work of a scientist who defended Money's theoretical position by presenting another case of ablatio penis in which there were no identity problems) and depicts the medical and psychological treatment of transsexuals as one of Money's idiosyncratic hobbies. Transsexualism is a young field of study, full of prejudice and taboos. Colapinto doubtless wrote his book intending to protect the interests of intersexual patients, but ironically, he will probably make life harder for a group of equally vulnerable patients -- transsexuals. Colapinto overshoots the mark. Instead of launching a personal crusade, he could have focused on the challenges faced by clinicians in the field of sexual identity or tried to understand what the life of the reassigned twin would have been like if he had been raised as a boy without a penis. Such discussions would have given the book a broader and more balanced view of the complex issues at hand.
Despite these criticisms, the book is interesting and will be accessible to a large audience. It shows how much more we need to know to prevent personal tragedies such as that suffered by the boy who was raised as a girl.
Peggy T. Cohen-Kettenis, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2000 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.
A young Canadian couple brought their eight-month-old, identical-twin boys to the hospital for routine circumcisions in 1965, but things went awry, and Bruce was left without a penis. The Thiessens had little hope that their son would live a normal life until they watched a television interview with Dr. John Money, a specialist in gender transformation at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Could Bruce, they wondered, be changed into a girl? The controversial Money, who believed that gender was a product of nurture rather than nature, persuaded the Thiessens to permit castration and to follow his instructions for transforming Bruce into Brenda. They did everything they were told, but nature asserted itself with a vengeance. There was nothing even remotely girlish about Brenda, and as she grew older, she vehemently objected to sessions with Money. Suffering severe trauma from masquerading as the opposite sex, Brenda refused to undergo any further operations. Money, meanwhile, suppressed the truth, writing triumphantly about his treatment in widely read books, which convinced doctors to treat hundreds of patients with the same destructive regime. Colapinto, a writer of striking lucidity and compassion, inspired the very private man who now proudly calls himself David to reveal the entire story of his horrendous ordeal in hopes of preventing others from suffering his fate. The result is an arresting and invaluable narrative of personal tragedy, scientific arrogance, and societal confusion over the source and significance of gender differences. David Thiessen emerges as a genuine hero who reminds us that we are far more than the sum of our reproductive parts. Donna Seaman
From Kirkus Reviews
Born a boy, brought up a girl, David Thiessen always knew in his genes that he was a male, despite his eminent doctor's self-serving pronouncements. Colapinto, the reporter who won a National Magazine Award for a piece on David's story, engrossingly recounts this tale of grotesque medical hubris and a life dragged slowly from the ashes. 30 years ago, Davida pseudonym used in review galleys, his actual name to be revealed upon publication``lost his entire penis to a botched circumcision.'' When he was just a year old, John Money, M.D., a pioneer in transsexual surgery at Johns Hopkins, convinced Davids parents to have the boys sex changed, arguing that subsequent social, mental, and hormonal conditioning would turn him into a happy woman. Publicly and falsely touted as an unqualified success, Davids caseexploited as a gaudy feather in the cap of nurturists over naturists, proof that the gender gap was not biological but environmentalushered in a period when sex-reassignment surgery became standard treatment in situations where newborns had injured or irregular genitals. David, on the other hand, was deeply confused about his gender identity long before his operation was disclosed to him. He suffered the cruelty of peers who didn't appreciate his tomboyism, had few friends but his identical-twin brother (who makes a fascinating comparative profile), and came to dread any contact with Money, a bully who deployed ``pressure tactics, cajoling, pornography, and unorthodox inspections and posings'' when Brenda, as David was known, resisted further surgery. As soon as David learned his birth sex, he applied for phalloplasty and began to pick up the pieces of his malignantly manipulated life. Colapinto's storytelling, taut and emotive, never plays the grim tale for its sideshow qualities, nor claims the last word on nature versus nurture. (First printing of 125,000; Literary Guild super release; author tour) -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"A page-turning story of heroes and villains that stirs both compassion and anger." — Philadelphia Inquirer
"A riveting account of medical arrogance and misguided science." — Playboy
"Colapinto's account . . . raises fascinating scientific, philosophical, and ethical questions—and also packs an irresistible narrative force from start to finish. — Providence Phoenix
"Colapinto's book is a stinging and overdue indictment of the 'sexual reassignment' of infants like baby Bruce and those born with both male and female sex organs....The book also serves as an intimate, heartbreaking diary of Bruce Brenda Reimer, the casualty of a ghoulish science project gone terribly wrong." — Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Colapinto, a writer of striking lucidity and compassion, inspired the very private man who now proudly calls himself David to reveal the entire story of his horrendous ordeal in hopes of preventing others from suffering his fate. The result is an arresting and invaluable narrative of personal tragedy, scientific arrogance, and societal confusion over the source and significance of gender differences." — Booklist
"Colapinto, the reporter who won a National Magazine Award for a piece on David's story, engrossingly recounts this tale of grotesque medical hubris and a life dragged slowly from the ashes....Colapinto's storytelling, taut and emotive, never plays the grim tale for its sideshow qualities, nor claims the last word on nature versus nurture." — Kirkus, starred review
"For the most part, As Nature Made Him is a story of innocence stolen, and of ill fate bravely born....But the book is also a testament to the immutability of self. Because David in the end is a triumph." — Dallas Morning News
"In the end, what makes As Nature Made Him impossible to put down is not the machinations of a misguided scientist but the suffering, courage and ultimate triumph of a truly unfortunate child." — Psychology Today
"John Colapinto debunks Money's version of Brenda's childhood in his fascinating, exhaustively researched As Nature Made Him. The result is a detailed and riveting account." — Seattle Post Intelligencer
"Raises fascinating scientific, philosophical questions--and also packs an irresistible narrative force from start to finish" — Boston Phoenix
"The hottest hypothesis in the academic world today is that nature always trumps nurture. John Colapinto's absorbing As Nature Made Him stands as exhibit A." — Tom Wolfe
"This is a mesmerizing tale that manages to balance an engrossing look at what happened to Brenda with a persuasive argument that biology, not environment, determines sexuality." — San Antonio Express
"This thoroughly researched and skillfully told profile of David Reimer deserves to be an early candidate for the best nonfiction book of the year." — Albany Times Union
"What happened to Bruce and his parents is a true-life medical horror to rival any of Robin Cook's science thrillers...a fascinating book." — Houston Chronicle
“Ultimately, the book stands as a passionate warning against social pressure and prejudice'whether medical, ideological or biological. As a society, we should aspire to Colapinto's stellar journalist example: listening carefully to the circumstances of those who are different rather than demanding that they conform to our own.” — Washington Post
“With remarkable concision, Mr. Colapinto has telescoped this medical scandal, brilliantly weaving the perspectives of David [Reimer], his family, friends, doctors, and wife...The book's structure is that of a mystery.” — New York Observer
"An engaging book. Given access to Reimer's psychiatric files, family and friends, the author reconstructs a horrific tale: a scrappy kid made to wear pink and pearls; a bully of a doctor unwilling to admit failure; a family torn apart by guilt. David's courageous and unlikely victory--today he's a happily married stepfather of three--shows us how psychololgy's theories du jour can be painfully, dreadfully wrong. A gut-wrenching, absorbing account — People magazine
From the Back Cover
In 1967, after a baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment. On the advice of a renowned expert in gender identity and sexual reassignment at Johns Hopkins Hospital, the boy was surgically altered to live as a girl. This landmark case, initially reported to be a complete success, seemed all the more remarkable since the child had been born an identical twin: his uninjured brother, raised as a boy, provided to the experiment the perfect matched control.
The so-called twins case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine and the social sciences; cited repeatedly over the past thirty years as living proof that our sense of being male or female is not inborn but primarily the result of how we are raised. A touchstone for the feminist movement, the case also set the precedent for sex reassignment as standard treatment for thousands of newborns with similarly injured, or irregular, genitals.
But the case was a failure from the outset. From the start the famous twin had, in fact, struggled against his imposed girlhood. Since age fourteen, when finally informed of his medical history, he made the decision to live as a male. John Colapinto tells this extraordinary story for the first time in As Nature Made Him. Writing with uncommon intelligence, insight, and compassion, he also sets the historical and medical context for the case, exposing the thirty-year-long scientific feud between Dr. John Money and his fellow sex researcher, Dr. Milton Diamond--a rivalry over the nature/nurture debate whose very bitterness finally brought the truth to light. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, As Nature Made Him is first and foremost a human drama of one man's-and one family's--amazing survival in the face of terrible odds. The human intimacy of the story is all the greater for the subject's courageous decision to step out from behind the pseudonym that has shrouded his identity for the past thirty years.
About the Author
John Colapinto has written for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Esquire, Mademoiselle, Us Weekly, and Rolling Stone, where the landmark National Magazine Award-winning article that was the basis for As Nature Made Him first appeared. He is also the author of the novel About the Author. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.
From The Washington Post
"Fascinating. . .the book, by New York writer John Colapinto, skillfully and unsentimentally chronicles the odyssey of David and his anguished parents, who were little more than teenagers when they faced the dilemma of how best to help their son. The book succeeds on many levels--as the gripping story of a child and his family as well as a carefully documented examination of how an unproven theory became accepted as standard treatment."
