The Child with an Intersex Condition: Total Patient Care

The Child with an Intersex Condition: Total Patient Care (sometimes screened under the name “First Do No Harm”). This video tape is addressed to medical and mental health professionals, but is quite accessible to a lay audience as well.

“Intersex” is the general term used to denote a variety of conditions in which a person is born with mixed sex anatomy. It is important to note that intersex conditions sometimes involve “ambiguous genitalia” but that intersexuality is not always evident from an external examination.

Intersexuality may be caused by congenital adrenal hyperplasia, mixed gonadal dysgenesis, androgen insensitivity syndrome (complete or partial), 5-alpha reductase deficiency, and many others. The traditonal standard of care held that normal gender identity could be assigned through genital plastic surgery and by limiting information given to parents and patient. Many patients were subjected to multiple surgeries.

Over the last ten years, new evidence and advances in medical ethics have led to the need for revision in the standard of care for the treatment of intersex. This film outlines the problems with many current practices and provides guidelines for a new standard of care that is more advanced scientifically and ethically.

We gathered a group of experts, including medical professionals, an adult with intersex, and a parent to talk about these issues.

You can request a copy as a thank you gift when you make a donation to ISNA. It is also available for purchase.

Chase, Cheryl. 2003. The Child with an Intersex Condition: Total Patient Care. Seattle: Intersex Society of North America. video, 20 minutes.