David (Bruce) Reimer

    In the summer of 1965, a woman names Janet Reimer gave birth to healthy twin sons named Bruce and Brian.  When the boys were six months old, Janet dropped her sons off at the hospital to be circumcised.  The doctors used an unconventional method of circumcision that involved burning the skin.  The procedure went terribly wrong and Bruce's penis was too badly burned to repair surgically.  The Reimer's, worried for the life of their son, sought the help of Dr. John Money, a psychologist at John Hopkins University.  Dr. Money suggested that the Reimer's raise their son as a girl.  He believed that boys, if they were caught early enough, could be raised to be girls. He thought that nurture, as opposed to nature determines a child's gender.  When Bruce was 21 months old, his testicles were removed and Bruce became Brenda.  He was raised as a female according to Dr. Money's strict instructions.

      As Brenda grew, she became increasingly masculine and she felt like a "freak" in her own body.  The Reimer's had serious doubts that the sex change was effective.  Dr. Money, however, was convinced otherwise.  He published an article stating that his experiment was a success.  As time went on, Dr. Money tried to convince Brenda to have a complete sex change.  Brenda refused, and her family finally told her the truth.  After discovering her true identity, Brenda became David, and for the first time, he felt like he belonged in his body.  Sadly, however, David committed suicide on May 4, 2004.  He was 38 years old. 

    The experimentation and ethics of Dr. John Money were quite questionable.  When he came across Bruce Reimer, he found the perfect subject to experiment on. Bruce was a child in an unfortunate situation. He had been scarred in a place that ususally is a key factor in determining gender. His parents had no idea what his life would be like if they did nothing at all. Money took advantage of the situation.  Dr. Money theorized that nurture, not nature decided the gender of a child.  As Money experimented on "Brenda" he told her parents to reinforce the idea that she was a girl; have her help in the kitchen and around the house, and give her dolls to play with.  He was testing the Social Learning Theory.  The social learning theory states that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating.  Dr. Money thought that Brenda would completely embody the gender of female if she was simply told she was a girl, and obserbed the appropriate female behavior from her household as well as society.  If the experiment was a success, he could prove that nurture was the only factor in deciding the gender of a child.  Obviously, Money was wrong.  Brenda never felt right in her own body, and as she grew, she became more masculine.  This proved that gender is not determined by nurture alone.

      The ethics of this experiment were unquestionably questionable.  According to the American Psychological Association, an ethical experiment has four criteria it should meet; consent of the subject should be obtained, the subject should be protected from harm and discomfort, the information about the individual should be completely confidential, and the research should fully be explained afterward. Dr. Money followed none of these guidelines! First of all, the subject was an infant child.  Bruce had no say whatsoever in the fate of his future. You can't obtain consent from someone who can't even talk, or much less comprehend what's going on.  Second of all, Bruce was put through years of pain and discomfort. He didn't feel comfortable in his own body, and he endured being teased at school.  In addition, Money published an article talking of his experiment on Bruce. There's nothing confidential about that.  To top it off, when the experiment was over, neither Bruce nor his family completely understood what had happened to their family.  Money's experiment on Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer was completely unethical.

   If we can learn one thing from Dr. Money, it's that he was wrong in both his theory and his ethics.  No family deserves to be treated as David and his family were.  People are not lab rats you can experiment on at will.  They must be treated as human beings, not simply as test subjects.  Money's experiment also reinforced that nature and nurture, not nurture alone, work together to determine out gender and behavior patterns.  Nurture works on what Nature endows.  We can see from the tragic story of David Reimer that a boy cannot simply be taught to be a girl.