Thread by @MohamedGhilan

While I appreciate and empathize with the perspective of the author, this piece ignores one important fact - that doctors are not mindless automatons with medical training there to act on the whims of patients.

My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy nyti.ms/2DFkkCm

“But I also believe that surgery’s only prerequisite should be a simple demonstration of want.”

The paternalistic doctor-patient relationship is mostly a thing of the past as medicine moves forward. But it’s problematic to expect that doctors should simply do as you wish.

This piece is calling for coercing doctors to perform procedures even if they believe the harm outweighs the benefit.

Patient autonomy is not absolute. It’s limited by others’ rights for autonomy, including the doctors involved.

It’s becoming increasingly unpopular to say this, but it doesn’t make it less true that physiology and psychology are connected. To coerce doctors into performing procedures that will create psychological harm simply because you refuse to recognize their assessment is unethical.

What value is medical education if it’s not recognized as authoritative and you turn doctors into mindless technicians who just do as your subjective desires command?

This is another example of the harm that democratization of opinion has had in our modern culture. Someone who spends 15 years in education and training is reduced to a glorified lackey rebuked and called a bigot for refusing to engage in creating more harm as they see it.

That’s not to say that doctors are not also acting in accordance with their values, which the author may differ with. But the difference is that while a doctor may refuse a treatment the author is trying to force the doctor to carry it out.

Where are the doctor’s rights here?

We can acknowledge the subjective psychological toll a condition may have but we shouldn’t dismiss the objective facts at the same time. Something may appear to be harmful in the short run but end up being the best course of action in the long term.

I’m just baffled by the author stating all these negative side effects of the treatments and now the surgery coming up, then asserting the right to *force* a doctor to provide them.

What about the doctor when they find out they took someone who didn’t have suicidal ideation and not only provided the treatments that developed it, but also led to an actual suicide of that patient.

What kind of psychological burden are we expecting these doctors to shoulder?

Any constructive and fruitful discussion of these issues *must* take into account and *respect* the doctors and their subjective psychologies and value systems as much as it’s being called to respect the patients’ subjectivities.