Gender is fundamental to many decisions in health care systems around the world – and this puts transgender people in a vulnerable position.

It was 2016 and Cameron Whitley was gravely ill. He was urgently in need of a kidney transplant, which should have been no problem. He was young and otherwise healthy. He had medical insurance. He even had several gallant friends willing to undergo major surgery for him.

There was a catch, however. His doctors were missing a crucial piece of information – one which, until then, no one had thought to look into. Without it, they weren’t able to put him on the list.

And so, more than a year after he first turned up at a hospital in the US Midwest with mysterious ear pain – eventually leading to a diagnosis of chronic kidney disease – he was forced to go on dialysis. By this point, his organs were functioning at less than 8% of their normal capacity.

But here again, Whitley hit a snag: his doctors were in need of another vital piece of information – and without it, they couldn’t work out how often he would need this treatment. They had to guess; they got it wrong; he became yet more unwell. All this time, his friends were practically throwing their kidneys at him.

Finally, just as Whitley, who is an assistant professor of sociology at Western Washington University, was approved for a transplant, his dialysis treatment led to massive blood loss and the operation had to be delayed. “It was really hard. I was horribly sick,” he says.

What was going on?

Whitley is a transgender man – he identifies as male but his biological sex is female. He has been living as a man for around 20 years. In his words, he fully “passes” as one, for want of a better term – and he is registered as a man on all his legal documents, from his passport to his medical records.

But most healthcare has evolved with a straightforward dichotomy of gender in mind. Though there are thought to be nearly a million transgender people living in the US (this is a rough estimate as this data isn’t collected) there’s concern that this group is being largely ignored by health services and the medical industry.

Rather than devising new ways to cope with changing social norms, transgender people are often shoehorned into inappropriate boxes instead.


https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200814-why-our-medical-systems-are-ignoring-transgender-people


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Sorry but why is the biological sex being changed on medical records?

Also why did he fail to even tell the doctors he is biologically female

Sorry, this is the problem with superseding gender over sex.

Yes change their ID if they have a GRC to female or define themselves this way, but medical records must maintain their biological sex

The health care system is only at fault for using gender over biological sex. When they can record both

I mean look at this paragraph?

They say a persons gender and in the next sentence correctly use the biological term

"There are several different lower limits for an eGFR, depending on things like a person’s weight, age, gender and race, which are intended to reflect the natural variation in the human body. Based on the female cut-off, he would have been allowed a transplant immediately."

I fear we are going to see more and more medical issues ahead, because there is a major difference biologically in many conditions between male and females

Its simple insane that personal feelings over self identity is placing people at unnecessary health risk

phil wrote:Yes change their ID if they have a GRC to female or define themselves this way, but medical records must maintain their biological sex

Definitely, wise advice. Even more broadly, don't hold anything back. Keep on your computer, and print out for every medical appointment, any kind, your History & Physical, including illnesses, surgical procedures, medications, medication history, history of hospital stays, and present issues (broken down by fields), as well as past. Update after every visit.

You give it to every physician; that way they all know what the other specialists are doing, what medications are for, etc. Avoid poisonous combinations, etc. Plus, so many clues in what the cardiologist is doing for the orthopedic surgeon, for example…and so on. The focus is on you, not their specialties. Don’t box in your body.

FGS, don't hold anything back for political/social reasons.

Original Quill wrote:

phil wrote:Yes change their ID if they have a GRC to female or define themselves this way, but medical records must maintain their biological sex

Definitely, wise advice.  Even more broadly, don't hold anything back.  Keep on your computer, and print out for every medical appointment, any kind, your History & Physical, including illnesses, surgical procedures, medications, medication history, history of hospital stays, and present issues (broken down by fields), as well as past.  Update after every visit.

You give it to every physician; that way they all know what the other specialists are doing, what medications are for, etc.  Avoid poisonous combinations, etc.  Plus, so many clues in what the cardiologist is doing for the orthopedic surgeon, for example…and so on.  The focus is on you, not their specialties.  Don’t box in your body.

FGS, don't hold anything back for political/social reasons.

+1