The Sport of Sex: Competing with the Gender Division in Athletics

Thursday, February 25, 2010

The story of Caster Semenya, the South African runner whose sex has been called into question, raises many interesting questions not only about the proper role of physicians in sports, but also more generally in the social sphere. It also poses the problem of how to reconcile rules in sport governing atypical sex, transgenderism, and “therapeutic use exemptions” for exogenous testosterone, an otherwise banned substance. In this lecture, I will explore these issues. I will be drawing on my related essays for the New York Times and the Hastings Center, and drawing on my persistent annoyance as an intersex activist.

Rats and Other Humans: Why We Need More Chocolate Chips in Medicine

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Institutions promoting medical ethics have tended to think globally, in the hopes that people will then act ethical locally. So, for example, various medical societies maintain Codes of Ethics, and ethicists spin off generalized theories and policies, in the hopes this will lead medical care providers to do the right thing in individual cases. In this lecture, I argue that we are failing to take medical care providers seriously as evolved mammals, beings prone to respond to the most immediate rewards and punishment. I will compare the behavior of my two pet rats, Treacle and Truffle, to specialist clinicians treating children with sex anomalies, to show why the inadequate provision of chocolate chips in medical ethics is resulting in a modern-day Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

The Missing Ethical Principle: Following the Evidence

Thursday, March 11, 2010

This rant is based on years of watching some medical care providers fail to look up, take seriously, and tell patients about the available clinical evidence for various conditions. Using one of the lowest forms of evidence—anecdotes—I will argue that the failure to take available clinical evidence more seriously represents a serious ethical failure in modern medicine. Without any actual data, I will speculate wildly on why this problem exists, and make the argument that the problem is so widespread and so harmful to patients that it is time we elevate consideration of clinical evidence to the status of a fifth formal ethical principle.