Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating!
Review: This was one of the most interesting books I have read. I felt so sorry for the little girl (boy). No one would listen to her. I could not imagine her frustration! Teaches us all a lesson about listening to our children. This book was a page-turner. As a nurse, I have met a few Docs with egos like Dr Money, but he takes the cake! You will not believe some of the "theraputic" things he has this child doing.Kudos to David for coming forward with his story. Hopefully this will save some children from the hell he went through.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book!
Review: Wow. This book may change the way you see the world. It is captivating on several levels at once. First and most important, it is an engrossing real-life exploration of a basic question about our human natures, a question that has to be of fundamental interest to almost anyone: In our essential personalities and drives, are we the product of nature or nurture or some combination of them? The book goes a long way toward a definitive answer to that question in one central aspect of our beings (our sexual identity). Second, it is the utterly absorbing, painful, ultimately triumphant true story of a remarkable individual forced to grow up in a harrowing situation we can all barely imagine but have to wonder about. Third, it is a riveting suspense story, with genuine good guys and bad guys some of whom have had frightening power over people's lives. The book is fast-paced and beautifully written, with the kind of all-to-rare clarity and straightforwardness that can make the most complex matters seem simple by getting right to the heart of them with no nonsense. I read it in one sitting--something I never ever do. I'm going to read it again, there's so much in it.
Rating: 
Summary: Enough to turn anyone into a medical vigilante!
Review: An appalling, cautionary & suspenseful tale of medical malpractice. One can but wonder at the egotism, rigid inflexibility & self-delusion of the book's central character, Dr. Money, who, seemingly in love with his own ideas about gender, staunchly defended them to the bitter end, to the detriment of his patient, a boy raised as a girl. A convincing argument AGAINST the idea that nurture, not nature, determines gender identity.
Rating: 
Summary: Tragic story, indeed...
Review: Incredible book, and one wonders how something like this could happen, but truth is stranger than fiction, they say. What makes this story incredibly sadder is that David committed suicide in May of this year, two years after his twin brother, Brian, died of a drug overdose. I can't imagine the sorrow that is felt by their parents... :(
Rating:
Summary: UPDATE
Review: Just an update on the subject of this book; Brenda/David: he sadly committed suicide last year without warning. Yet another big warning to doctors that seem to think this type of "experiment" is okay.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, but that this were only fiction :(
Review: Honestly, I don't think Steven King could write a more frightening tale than this true life experience. I look at my children with such love and relief that we had no such unfortunate circumstances as this family had to endure. It was difficult to get into the flow/mindset of this book as I kept getting interrupted and I had to re-read passages. I am completely saddened by the trials this (and all the other) families had to endure becasue of the misguided pride (ego?) of "Dr". Money and the others who were so easily misguided by his distorted reality. It is sad and frustrating to see how he manipulated this family to fill an opportunistic research need. The hippocratic oath says "First, do no harm!" HAH! I am as outraged at him as I am releived that the practice of gender-reassingment is not blundered into as lightly. I was frustrated for the Cheryl Cases and "Charley Gordon" (alias)other "victims" of medical experimentation who repeatedly tried to confront the status quo and were denied their chance as a disgruntled few.
>:-(
I can't IMAGINE what David (as Brenda) went through in childhood/adolescence when that time in life is insufferable if you are physically and emotionally "NORMAL". What a nightmare! I'm profoundly saddened to hear that he took his life. I want to SHAKE that moron Money and tell him what I think of his deviant ideas (perversions) and what kind of [...] I think HE was to expose(impose on) the twins such ridiculous acts. I feel about him the same way I do about Catholic Priests who betray the trust placed in them as they molest the children in their care. SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! It is my opinion that HE should be [...]. It may sound harsh... but I also wish the Reimers and all the other gender-reassigned "victims" peace and happiness, if it is at all possible with such a conflicted and troubled early development. I got a BA degree in Psych and had never heard of this case. It makes me ashamed to be in the same "category" as the people who deviated so far away from common sense as to permanantly scar these children and families (physically AND emotionally). I'm glad this book has set the record about the botched gender re-assignment straight.
Rating:
Summary: Read This Review, Ignore the Others...
Review: Some earlier reviews seem to be written by laypeople with an approach to science that is nearly as misguided as John Money's. One woman derides medicine as something that is fickle, and suggests it holds no answers for us. That same woman will probably take an aspirin this month, and think nothing of the medical research that provided it for her.
Another person seems to believe that Colapinto should forgive John Money for his transgressions because he contributed other things to Psychology, a suggestion that's as ridiculous as heaping praise on Mussolini for his hard work at the train stations.
What Money did to the good name of Psychology and Medicine is only slightly less horrific than the hell he put these children through (the Reimer's other son was also tortured by him). Colapinto captures that aspect, and tells the story as it should have been told by Money himself. This is a story of the purest kind of greed...the greed of a man hell-bent on making himself into the next Sigmund Freud. The carnage he left behind was of little consequence to him, and THAT'S the story that needed to be told.
By the way, the same "God" that an earlier reviewer seems to think helped David Reimer through all this is also the one who sat by and watched it happen...and it's the same one who watched as he killed himself earlier this year. Or maybe there isn't one up there overseeing all these goings-on at all, and that's what Colapinto work shows us?
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Summary: We can learn for David's Life
Review: There are few people in David's life who do not have blood on their hands. Before we criticise them, we could recognise that what happened to David happened a generation ago. Today we should know so much better.
The first blood lies on the circumciser's hands. He felt he had the right to amputate a significant part of David's body without David's knowledge or consent. That fact and that fact that the circumciser botched the job, does not come across as it should in Colapinto's book. We now know there is no reason, medical or religious, for cutting the genitals of any child. In fact there is every reason not to do so.
The second blood lies on the hands of David's parents, who consented to the circumcision and lived forever in the guilt of their consent. That, Colapinto does report. Parents do not hold a right over children but a duty to protect them. We now know that children are not `incomplete adults' unable to feel parts of their bodies or participate in the decisions that affect their lives. In that duty parents are faced with difficult decisions. They may and should turn to others to help to help making the best decision. David's parents were not at fault. They lived at a time when circumcision was `normal' and they took the best advice available when it went wrong.
Dr. Mooney was not a monster but someone asked to advise and help. David's case does not resolve the issue of nature-v-nurture. One case never does. Society at the time saw only black or white, male or female, when without a penis there was only one `sex' for David. Today society tolerates a myriad of sexual variation from straight, gay and lesbian to transvestite and transsexual. That teaches us the nature-v-nurture debate is false and out of date.
Like the circumciser, Dr. Mooney does have blood on his hands. Mooney committed a cardinal scientific sin. He denied the evidence that for David, gender re-assignment did not work and he gained prestige and income from falsely reporting the outcome. If we are to condemn Mooney, then we must also condemn an academic world that does not want to publish or promote those that cannot report `successful' research.
The author, Colapinto is indeed an excellent writer. His account of David's life is gripping and compels the reader. Exactly the skills required to make a biography profitable for both publisher and author. Little of his book attends to David's feelings. It attends instead to that which compels the reader to read and tell everyone else. Not only a commercial success but also a critical success, winner of awards. David participated but was his consent knowing? Did he know of the consequences - a bestseller read by millions, TV appearances seen by millions, a film, - such that he became the horror in the circus of horrors? A very public life to be gawped at? A life that was intolerable? Colapinto also has blood on his hands. A guilt he may have assuaged by sharing his profit with David. Did that income inadvertently deny David what he needed most - to reaffirm his manhood? A manual job with sexual anonymity amongst the guys?
Should we condemn Colapinto for his skill and thereby deter others from bringing such issues so compellingly to society? There are many more David's - mutilated and disabled by authorities who do not question their own beliefs. If we are to avoid such tragedies then the debate must take place and we must be involved. Today we have greater opportunity thought the marvels of the Web and sites like AMAZON.Com. If you think this review has merit, then look back at the reviews before it. You will see that most of what I am saying has been said separately by others.
David's problems started with a circumcision, to which he did not consent . Many millions, endure that even today. Colapinto's account does not attend to the fundamental issue illustrated by David's life. That we should seek a society which understands and tolerates sexual difference; that does not condemn people to a life of inferiority simply because they did or did not consent to circumcision; where people have a right to determine what happens to their own bodies - be they women who prefer to die than remain pregnant or men who prefer suicide to remaining alive as men and where somebody, somewhere, is there to advise and help them. We should not condemn those who step forward to help because we have since found out that their best help or advice might not be right.
Can we learn to accept that `what ever gets you through the night, its alright, alright', providing we do not abuse anyone else in that night and we ensure that they are not just consenting but it is in their best interests, as far as we can judge.
Colapinto's book shows that there was only one person in David's life who has no blood on their hands. One person gave David the love and acceptance he needed. His wife. She lost him to enable us to build a better society..
If we compelled to action by Colapinto's account of David's life, then it should be to do more than tell others about it. We should feel what it was like to be David and act to ensure that everyone in this world lives in a society that tolerates their differences, that enshrines their right to participate in the decisions that affect their lives and gains the loving acceptance that David's wife gave to him.
Rating:
Summary: Tragic story, indeed...
Review: Incredible book, and one wonders how something like this could happen, but truth is stranger than fiction, they say. What makes this story incredibly sadder is that David committed suicide in May of this year, two years after his twin brother, Brian, died of a drug overdose. I can't imagine the sorrow that is felt by their parents... :(
Rating:
Summary: great book tragic ending
Review: I loved this book when I read it a couple years ago and was happy to see David on talk shows doing well. This month, May 2004 he committed suicide and I think the blood is on Dr. Money's hands. I feel so bad for his parents and the other twin is dead also. How devasting.
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