This page provides links to some of what I’ve written and edited that might be especially useful for clinicians. Clinicians interested in having me speak at their institutions should consult my page on speaking. (About half of my invited presentations are to medical professionals.)

On dealing with specific conditions:

If you’re wondering what I think about how particular conditions should be treated, please see my page on specific conditions. There you’ll find links to material on disorders of sex development, conjoined twinning, etc. Lower down on this page you’ll find help for dealing with parents of children born with norm-challenging bodies.

On clinical practice more generally:

If I had to recommend to folks in the trenches of medicine just one thing I’ve written, it would be my book One of Us. It’s a quick read (and I know, from being married to a med professional, you’re busy!) and it may just make you think twice about what really constitutes “necessary, safe, and effective.” It also challenges the idea that medicine is the logical arbiter of what counts as normal. Technically the book is about conjoined twins, but if you read it, you’ll see that the stories and messages go way beyond conjoinment, to conditions you deal with every day. (That’s why it was named book of the month by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.) For a one-page summary of the contents of One of Us, see my New York Times essay called When Medicine Goes Too Far in the Pursuit of Normality.

Frustrated as I am that medicine is not yet more evidence-based? You might want to read my blog Is a Small Penis in the Hand Worth Three in the Bush? or my post at Bioethics Forum, called Explaining More, Doing Less, about why aggressively using evidence-based medicine and informed consent could lead to less healthcare waste.

If you’re sick and tired of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription meds and need a laugh, take a look at The Secret Life of the Lunesta Butterfly, my spoof on DTC ads.

Help for medical professionals working with parents (and would-be parents):

If you’re working with parents of pediatric patients with atypical body types, you might want to take a look at what I’ve written for these parents. Several clinicians have told me my article called What to Expect When You Have the Child You Weren’t Expecting should be printed up as a pamphlet and handed out at children’s hospitals. That article relates what I’ve learned from parents who have been through decision-making about whether to choose “normalizing” medical procedures for their children. (If you can’t get the book for whatever reason, contact me for a copy.)

Parents of children with disorders of sex development (what used to be called “intersex”) may benefit from the wonderful handbook I was privileged to edit. I think it is a fantastic example of a handbook that can provide immediate peer support to real parents--I wish I could do one of these for every condition like disorders of sex development. I also recommend sharing the interview Cheryl Chase and I did with a grown woman and her mother; the daughter was born with a large clitoris, and her mother decided to let it be.

Parents coping with miscarriages of and stillborn children with birth anomalies might find some solace in hearing one woman’s story in Products of Conception.

On changing medical practice:

I’ve now spent about ten years working on changing the medical treatment for disorders of sex development (and then the treatment of conjoinment, of short stature, and on and on...) and I’ve learned some things along the way. For some specific ideas about how to change medical practices, see Get Thee to a Hospital and Sleeping with the Enmity (see page 12 of the link). If you’re trying to get people to change practice, you might also find my “top ten tips” for doing activism useful; see either the version at this site or the one at Bioethics Forum. At Bioethics Forum you can also read my criticism of the practice of many of my fellow bioethicists who come across a medical-ethicall dilemma to only stare, think, speak, and move on. (I think a better approach is helping clinicians to make things better for everyone, but especially for patients.)  If you’re curious about why I do activism, see My Identity/Politics or My Mystique.