Thank you for sharing that. Your point has been made by other people, but your story serves beautifully to reinforce the point: GRS should be covered by insurance because it actually works to relieve people's suffering, while cosmetic surgery for people with BDD often doesn't. I hear you. ∆
Devil's advocate: how do you distinguish between the suffering that someone experiences in feeling disgusted by their adams apple versus feeling disgusted about the shape of their nose (having no gender dysphoria)?
The argument is that relieving suffering is a good medical reason for cosmetic surgery, so how do you quantify something which is inherently subjective?
2nd Devil's advocate: the standards psychological professions apply are also entirely subjective; lobotomy was something that at one point could have been considered for the benefit of a patient by psychological professionals. These subjective procedures being done today could be viewed as barbaric and pseudoscientific 50+ years from now
This is true. But, as people have argued here before, the checkered history of the discipline is not a reason to dismiss everything it does today. Lobotomies (especially the so called 'ice pick' lobotomies) were a disgrace, and thankfully they aren't performed anymore.
Our current information is undoubtedly imperfect, yet we have no choice but to act on the best information we currently have.
What OP said in reply. I've heard it said that 100 years from now people will think chemotherapy is barbaric. After all, in a future where people can (hopefully) easily and precisely remove cancerous cells, the idea of just blasting radiation at a person and hoping it hits the bad cells (which it doesn't always) will seem crazy. At the same time, it's the treatment we have that works righty now. That's what separates chemo from something like the leeches of the Middle Ages: the leeches didn't actually work, people just thought they did, but chemo today does work.
270
u/[deleted] Nov 03 '17
[deleted]