I have just read a very interesting book called
Confessions of a Medical Heretic by Robert Mendelsohn MD. Although this book only mentions SRS indirectly it is a fascinating insight into the medical profession. Throughout the book Mendelsohn argues that modern medicine is not a science as such but is in fact a religion, with all the trappings of religion, such as dogmatism, a canon of unchallengable beliefs, and a rigid hierarchy.
You may have come across Mendelsohn's famous quote that you should trust a doctor as much as you would a used car salesman(I am paraphrasing it). To give you a flavour of the book here is a list of chapter titles:
1. Dangerous Diagnosis
2. Miraculous Mayhem
3. Ritual Mutilations*
4. The Temples of Doom
5. Holy War on the Family
6. Doctor Death
7. The Devil's Priests
8. If This is Preventative Medicine Ill Take my Chances with Disease
9. The New Medicine.
Approximately 2.4 million operations performed every year are unnecessary and cost about 12,000 lives.
In six New York hospitals, 43 percent of performed hysterectomies reviewed were found to be unjustified.
Historically, when doctors have gone on strike, the morality rate has
dropped.
* Shockingly the author gives examples of operations performed simply because the State medical Boards require a junior doctor to have performed so many of a range of operations in a year before they can become fully certified. Women and child are particularly subject to unnecessary operations because they are perceived as being 'easy targets'.
What has all this got to do with transsexuality etc? Well I have long believed that our community is much too in awe of doctors, medicine and is fixated upon pharmaceuticals, surgery and the latest medical procedures. Mendelsohn shows chillingly that doctors routinely experiment on their patients. Doctors are the priests of the medical religion and this religion's sacraments are pills and surgery. Don't go to a doctor if you don't want to be offered either pills or surgery, if you suggest to a doctor anything other than these 'sacraments' you will enrage him/her, and if you persist, the doctor will very likely fire you as a patient.
To sum up what I believe. We as transsexuals are fascinating to the medical community who think nothing of experimenting upon us for their own ends. I don't believe being under a doctor's care means that you are less likely to suffer from any negative effects of HRT treatment. There is a lot of truth in the saying 'doctors bury their mistakes'.
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