In what should have been a routine circumcision, an eight-month-old boy had his entire penis burned off, thanks to a doctor’s error. After encouragement from a psychologist, the child’s parents agreed to have the child undergo an infant sex change and to raise the child as a girl. That boy was David Reimer, who for a period was called Brenda.

As John Colapinto — who wrote a book about David Reimer’s experiences in As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised a Girl — writes in Slate magazine, Reimer’s sexual reassignment was traumatic. Brenda was teased at school for her masculinity, crossly refused to wear dresses, and expressed to the adults in her life that she felt like a boy. Under the instructions of the curiously named Dr. Money, who had encouraged Reimer’s parents to have their son undergo sexual reassignment, the adults lied to Reimer and asserted that such feelings were a passing phase. At age 14, however, Reimer discovered the truth, and he eventually decided upon a surgical return to the male sex. Reimer underwent a double mastectomy to rid himself of his breasts — a result of estrogen therapy — his synthetic vagina was replaced with a synthetic penis and testicles, and he underwent yet more hormone therapy.

This spring, David Reimer committed suicide at the age of 38. Two years ago, his identical twin, Brian, had died from overdosing on antidepressants.  

It would be presumptuous and reductive to hazard guesses as to why Reimer committed suicide, but his story should at least give us pause and force us to consider not only the roles of nature and nurture in formulating an individual’s identity as it relates to gender — as distinguished from biological and physiological sex — but it should also remind us of the human cost of asking such questions. This is not to question the scientific validity of research into gender and identity. Rather, we should remember that David Reimer was the subject of a medical study and, like a lab rat, he had no say in the matter. His identical twin brother provided the perfect control, and until the age of 14, Reimer was an unwitting participant in an experiment known in the 1960s and 1970s as the John/Joan case. According to The New York Times, Janet Reimer, David’s mother, believes that it was the emotional strain of the experiment of David Reimer’s life that led to his death.

Lest we reduce David Reimer’s fascinating and harrowing experiences to a medical and social curiosity, we should remind ourselves that, as fascinating as the scientific research may be, if the methodology destroys the human being in the process, it may only be morally responsible to table such research for the time being.

Mimi Hanaoka