# data[].attributes.body
Characters: Bruce/ Brenda/ David Reimer (Expirement Victim)

Bryan Reimer (Brother )

Dr. John Money (Suspect)

Janet and Ronald Reimer ( Parents of Victim)

Two twin brothers were born, Bruce and Bryan Reimer. They both have trouble urinating due to Phimosis. At 7 months, they went under circumcision, which caused the skin on Bruce Reimers' penis to be burned off by cauterization. As a result, their parents delayed Bryan Reimers' circumcision, which caused his symptoms to resolve.

The parents were so concerned about Bruce's development that they sought the advice of Dr. John Money, a gender psychologist.The Doctor suggested changing the gender orientation of Bruce by manipulation, and since then Bruce has been named and called Brenda. Providing Brenda with girl toys and visiting Dr. Money yearly for progress The Doctor began performing sexual experiments on the two brothers when they were 7 years old, and on one occasion he asked them to pose naked for the camera.Disobedience would lead to yelling and abuse caused by Dr. John Money.

As Brenda progressed and showed more distinct qualities of masculinity instead of femininity, the doctor persuaded Brenda to totally change his organs to those of a female, with the support of a transgender person by his side. Brenda went home and told everything to her mother, asking her not to let her go back to Dr. Money. The parents decided to finally tell the two brothers about the real gender of Bruce, aka Brenda.

Brenda was happy with the news, while Bryan was stunned by it. Everything went well, so Brenda renamed himself David and started taking testosterone to compensate for the pills Dr. Money made him drink. for After years, they were motivated to fight back against the doctor to avoid having such instances happen to others in the future. David was able to start a family with three children and a wife. Sadly, his brother overdosed on anti-depressants, then he was conned out of a large sum of money and separated from his wife. David Reimer hit rock bottom, which caused him to kill himself with a shotgun inside a grocery store, died at age 38.

Read or Watch Full Story Here
Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLFGMWoQaCU
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NhCeu1B-tYG4GP3D_BOKsGBUVKv7VWe0/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=115742551195635236109&rtpof=true&sd=true

# data[].attributes.body
The purpose of the experiment, as stated by Money, was in the best interest of Reimer. The gender reassignment of David Reimer by Dr. Money was to serve as a remedy for the irreparable damage in Reiner's penis due to failed circumcision during birth causing phimosis.

# data[].attributes.body
What rights were violated?

--- Money wanted to see whether children are born gender neutral and explain that gender is a result of upbringing. He wanted to support his theory of gender neutrality.

With those reports, Reimer caused a multifaceted controversy over Money’s methods, honesty in data reporting, and the general ethics of sex reassignment surgeries on infants and children. Reimer’s description of his childhood conflicted with the scientific consensus about sex reassignment at the time.

APA ETHICAL CODES

1. Conflicts Between Ethics and Law, Regulations, or Other Governing Legal Authority

- Dr. Money had not only overseen his violations against the law, but also continued to do so until David reported to his parents.

2. Sexual Harassment

- Dr. Money forced the Reimer twins to perform role plays of different social roles, with David playing as a girl and Brian, a boy. He also instructed Brian to “press his crotch against” David’s buttocks.

3. Other Harassment

- Dr. Money threatened David whenever he denied compliance with Dr. Money’s experimentations.

4. Exploitative Relationships

- Dr Money didn’t have any intention to help David’s situation and was instead using him to prove his theory to be right.

5. Informed Consent

- With the Reimer twins being minors, their parents have the responsibility to give consent on behalf of their children. However, with how David was afraid of telling his parents about the real things happening to him, it was clear his parents were unaware as well.

6. Disclosures

- Several years after David’s appointments with Dr. Money, he revealed an untrue fact about his development, saying that the whole process was a success and that his theory was proven true.

# data[].attributes.body
The experiment was a failure. Despite the surgical, hormonal, and psychological treatments, Reimer's gender identity was negatively affected. David Reimer was born male but transitioned into a female through the sex reassignment done by Dr. Money. He was raised by his parents as a female; they gave him female hormones and estrogen during adolescence for the development of his breasts. But Reimer knew and felt he was not what he had been raised to be. Despite Reimer's upbringing, the hormones' effect aided his brain development, resulting in a different psychological spectrum in contradiction to the experiment's objective. Reimer had then developed gender dysmorphia and psychological trauma. The experiment's outcome revealed that the hormone affected David's brain development and had a bigger impact on David's gender identification than social variables did.

# data[].attributes.body
The involuntary transition from having a male genitalia to a female genitalia of David Reimer happened in the 1960’s which unfortunately was a great factor of the exploitation and the traumatic experiences caused by it, ignorance of the parents and the dreadful consequences, and the lack of laws supporting human rights, since the 1960’s was just when human rights movement was born and founded. The prevalence of David and his brother, Bryan Reiner’s uncomfortableness and forced compliance to the Psychologist and Sexologist that their parents hired to deal with the complications, Dr. Money, is a key fact that strongly proves that there were a lot of violations committed.

In the modern world, although not perfectly and justifiably applied, human rights, judicial systems, and ethical practices are well developed in comparison to the Reimer brothers' incident timeline-but this does not imply that their situation would be easy if it had occurred in the twenty-first century-but accountability and justice are more attainable in the present generation because there is a law that safeguards human rights and must be enforced to protect persons from harmful or immoral acts. Ethical norms, such as ethical guidelines, are adopted while doing research or experiments, making it more difficult to perform experiments on humans these days. These principles include beneficence (doing good) and non - maleficence (preventing or mitigating harm). If it had been for today's society, it would have been ruled unlawful; even the very conception and concept of it is responsible for legal proceedings, or at the very least, widespread dispute. This unethical experimentation would be impossible in today's scientific community due to various restrictions that account for it being immoral. If an experiment is carried out, it must adhere to human rights law's safety criteria and not undermine ethical guidelines. In summary, the scientific community must exercise caution while performing studies and testing that might endanger an individual. The scientific community must adhere to the positive aspects of their procedures, such as the right to informed consent, the avoidance of pseudoscientific frameworks such as race science, and the avoidance of torturing individuals in the name of study. Dr. Money exploited the situation of the poor boys and manipulated the parents into trusting him and his ingenuine deeds. Also, the parents portrayed negligence, ignorance, and selfishness that were major factors leading to the poor boys’ traumatizing experiences that, with no doubt, disrupted their mental health. Dr. Money believed that a person’s gender identity was a social construct and the result of their upbringing. As such, he proposed that someone could be “taught” to identify differently than their biological sex. In the modern world, Dr. Money’s theory that sexuality or gender is socially developed, would have been shutted down, especially by Gen Z’s, in a blink of an eye because it is apparently opposing the studied fact that gender is not formed by molding a child into some specific identification and then go on by expecting that that child will go by what they were taught to believe about their own identity until they grow old–Gender is not predetermined; in the modern world, we fight for the fact that Gender Identity can be realized more than one time and it can occur in different stages in our lives.

# data[].attributes.body
The gender experiment was tragic because two persons committed suicide as a result of the traumas caused by the gender experiment. It demonstrates how many individuals are damaged by being lied to and treated inhumanely. It seems to reason that we do not conduct such unethical experiments in modern times. We don't think we'll ever be able to forecast a person's gender identification with 100% certainty. What we can assume with a good degree of confidence that children who are treated with shame, secrecy, and deception will suffer at the hands of unethical interventions and experiments. Nature created him a boy, but was raised as  a girl. The story of David Reimer is a definitive experiment that represents nurture impacts who he is and what he desires. (by Edmarc Lorenz Alegre)

---

First and foremost, no one other than yourself can decide who you want to be, who you are going to be and what you want to do. David Reimer was deceived at a young age, by a doctor who took advantage of his lack of knowledge. It is truly injustice as well that the parents weren't that aware of the malpractice that is going on in front of them. I know some parents only want what's best for their children, but parents should also understand what is beyond their control. They agreed to change and manipulate the child to move, think and develop as a girl, which for a fact can be unethical. David Reimer and his brother pretty much didn't have the right guidance during their childhood, and thus led them to alot of mental illnesses that took a toll in their life, that later on took it. To conclude, being trans is a choice, being straight is also a choice, a choice where you should decide on and not what others should decide for you, and let us not take advantage of the naiveness of the child, instead lets guide them carefully and wisely. (by Allennah Marie Abejuela)

---
Science can be extremely brutal sometimes. David Reiner's gender experiment is just one of many told and untold stories of such experiments. His parents were so invested in treating his phimosis that they could not seem to have enough time to dig a little deeper into details like the methods and effects of the experiment. Although they could have been briefed by Dr. Money beforehand, the desire for treatment could have weighed better. The experiment was plain manipulation and abuse towards the child, who, as he was growing up, was already experiencing gender dysphoria. It was only in Reimer's best interest when he was 8 months old.  The experiments done after that, the interventions consented to by Reimer's parents, were basically what caused and affected David's mental state years after. He remembered how and what happened in those years, and he lived and fought through the trauma. I guess I can say that his parents played the biggest part in the outcome of the gender reassignment experiment done to their child. As parents, it is their duty to prioritize their children's welfare, especially in situations like this; consider all circumstances, in whatever aspect, before anything else. Nothing should be above that. (by Kim Merielle Anne C. Bacus)

---

The case provided results that were used to justify thousands of sex reassignment surgeries for cases of children with reproductive abnormalities. Despite his upbringing, Reimer rejected the female identity as a young teenager and began living as a male.

Despite the hardships he experienced, he said he did not blame his parents for their decision to raise him as a girl. As he told Colapinto, “Mom and Dad wanted this to work so I’d be happy. That’s every parent’s dream for their child. But I couldn’t be happy for my parents. I had to be happy for me. You can’t be something that you’re not. You have to be you.”

(by Lyca Marie Lovitos)

---

What happened to the Reimer twins, especially David, was basically blatant abuse. From the botched circumcision, to their parents agreeing to let their kids be "monitored" by a doctor they didn't do enough research of, to that said doctor doing extremely immoral things to MINOR children just to prove his theory to be correct, and to everything else that followed. there were so many ways the situation could have been stopped and avoided, but because of the ignorance and lack of parental supervision, and dare I say, care, the twins were surrounded with, they ended up having to suffer under the hands of Dr. money— which is something no child should have gone through. (by Shannon Grazzy Gimena)

---

Only the person who will have the operation should decide whether to undergo gender reassignment. When a child is old enough to make the decision to have the operation, they should go through all of the psychological evaluations and therapy to see if a surgery to change their gender is right for them. Everything should be done to support a youngster if they have expressed their dissatisfaction with their gender identity. By common sense, a child's mentality is not stable enough for them to make their own decisions, so parents must look for other solutions to this physiological deviation. Parents’ logical thinking and empathy is very crucial especially in such situations–they are obliged to find the best solution for their child’s state and further assess the child’s progress and the processes of method applied. (by Keen Niezel Zoilo)