Intersex in the Age of Ethics

By: Alice Domurat Dreger

Book Overview

Intersex in the Age of Ethics marks the first time an entire volume has been dedicated to the exploration of the ethics of intersex treatment. It could not be more timely, as professional conferences, gender clinics, and the popular media now consider how medicine and society should handle intersex and intersexuals. This volume provides a much-needed perspective.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555721001
• ISBN13: 9781555721008
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: University Publishing Group.
• Length: 227 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Review Submitted to the Publisher

"The range of ethical issues that arise in regard to the treatment of intersex infants, children, and adults is richly representative of clinical healthcare ethics generally. By incorporating the perspective of patients and their stories into its account, however, INTERSEX IN THE AGE OF ETHICS does more than introduce the questions of healthcare ethics in microcosm. It also leads the readers to examine the effect of ethical reflection on the lives of patients. INTERSEX IN THE AGE OF ETHICS is a model, in both senses of this word, of what thoughtful healthcare ethics reflection can accomplish. It embodies a conceptual model of ethical reflection that leads the reader to pose the right questions and to respond to them with patients' lives in mind. And it is a model in the evaluative sense--excellent, admirable, and deserving of imitation."

A book with lessons for everyone

This is not only a book for practitioners of medicine or individuals dealing with their own intersexuality. This is a book that has lessons to offer to everyone, lessons on ethics and how other human beings should be treated, lessons on sexuality that would improve the human race if only we would learn, lessons on parenting and the heavy burden of making decisions about another human's life. The lessons on what sex and sexuality really involve should offer insights to all of the five (or more) sexes that inhabit this planet. I found the wealth of new information useful and interesting, but I also found that the tales of individuals and their histories greatly enhanced my understanding of the real impact of the facts presented. The consistent history of parents and doctors making decisions on behalf of young children should make us all pause the next time we set out to make a decision for or about another human being- a patient, a child, an aging parent, whoever- and ask oursevles whether we really understand the consequences of what we are doing, whether we are really the one who should be making the decision, and whether there is any way to allow the decision to be made by the individual who will in the end bear the consequences of what we decide. This book made me laugh, it made me cry more than once, and I was suprised at how much I learned about myself. By the end I felt like I wanted to meet and talk to most of the contributors to the book.

The Benchmark And Landmark Book

Alice Domurat Dreger has written what may well come to be regarded as the definitive work on intersexuality. By employing a collective and inclusive approach, Ms. Dreger is able to provide both personal and medical perspectives on intersexuality provided by individuals, their families and compassionate medical providers. She provides a brief forward to each chapter on the author and topic content which is illuminating and helps to assist the reader to focus on the material. This is a well-written book which, for the first time in a single printed volume, provides material solely dealing with intersexed individuals. This landmark book provides compelling reasons, based on the telling of personal odyssies, why only those people affected should be the decision makers in their care. I hope that every intersexed person, every family member or parent of an intersexed individual reads this book. And I pray that every medical professional who treats intersexed individuals, beginning with obstetricians, pediatricians and pediatric urologists, takes to heart the suggestions for adapting care to a patient-directed philosophy of medical care.