Should sex-change surgery be tax-deductible?

[Butterfly]

Should sex-change surgery be tax-deductible?
Slate
By William Saletan
Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010, at 8:15 AM ET


http://www.slate.com/id/2244817/


To most of us, sex-reassignment surgery sounds crazy. Why cut up your body to fit your mind? Can't we persuade your mind to fit your body? The answer, apparently, is no. We may think problems are easier to solve when they're "all in your head," but in this case, the mind is harder to change than the body. The court, citing expert testimony and the judgments of three other high-level courts, found no instance in which psychotherapy alone had effectively treated severe GID.

Furthermore, while GID might begin in your head, it doesn't end there. On this point, the evidence is chilling. "All three expert witnesses agreed that, absent treatment, GID in genetic males is sometimes associated with autocastration, autopenectomy, and suicide," the court noted. Mental illness is physically dangerous for the simplest of reasons: The mind can decide to mutilate the body. So the question isn't whether to cut up the bodies of patients with severe GID. The question is who will do the cutting.

[Muffin]

Under the law, you can deduct appearance-altering expenses only if they're for treating a "disease." The IRS wanted to define this term narrowly. To be a disease, the agency argued, a condition must be traced to "a pathological process ... within the individual" based on "abnormal structure or function of the body at the gross, microscopic, molecular, biochemical, or neuro-chemical levels." That definition would rule out sex-reassignment surgery, since research has yet to establish a biological cause of GID.

Is the new (draft of) DSM trying to remove the claim of Disease?
Would this decision have both a good side and a bad side?