Press coverage in Urology Times, 1997–1998

Between February 1997 and February 1998, the trade newspaper Urology Times ran three articles by staff correspondent Anne Scheck that followed the intersex-surgery controversy as it broke into the profession’s own press — beginning with the 1996 AAP picket and the questions it forced open about early genital surgery. Cheryl Chase (Bo Laurent) and the Intersex Society of North America are quoted or discussed in each. Together the three pieces record how quickly the debate moved from a street demonstration to the pages surgeons read.

The originals are held in this archive as born-digital Adobe FrameMaker files. Because they are journalism still under the publisher’s copyright, and because none is available online, they are described here — by citation and summary — rather than reproduced.

Is early vaginal construction wrong for some intersex girls?

Anne Scheck, Urology Times, February 1997.

Written after intersex demonstrators picketed a pediatric urology meeting, this first piece put the dissent on the record for a surgical readership. Against the American Academy of Pediatrics’ position that early surgery is beneficial and best done between six weeks and fifteen months, Scheck profiles British pediatric urologist David Thomas, who tells colleagues the protesters “do have a point.” Thomas’s review of about a dozen girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia who had undergone early feminizing surgery found poor long-term results — persistent urogenital sinus, unsatisfactory clitoroplasty, and every girl needing further surgery — even though most operations had been done by specialists, and he argues for deferring definitive vaginoplasty until after puberty. Antoine Khoury of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children counters that the reviewed cases predate modern nerve-sparing technique. The article closes on a point both surgeons share: the near-total absence of long-term follow-up.

Attitudes changing toward intersex surgery, but for the better?

Anne Scheck, Urology Times, August 1997, pp. 44–45.

A follow-up written once the controversy had reached the New York Times and Newsweek. Scheck centers Khoury’s argument that the media debate leans on decades-old outcomes and ignores refined microsurgical technique, endocrine assays, and imaging now available, and sets it against ISNA’s position — voiced by Cheryl Chase — that surgical success should be judged by preserved organ function and sexual identity rather than cosmetic appearance, and that ISNA opposes only function-damaging surgery, not all intervention. Khoury endorses a cautious, multi-factor assessment before any sex assignment; Thomas again supplies the dissent. The piece ends by noting that outcome studies over the next fifteen years may finally supply science-based answers.

Intersexuality takes a conservative turn

Anne Scheck, Urology Times, February 1998, p. 1.

A front-page report on a perceptible shift toward caution, prompted by two October 1997 papers in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. Scheck summarizes William Reiner of Johns Hopkins, a pediatric-urologist-turned-psychiatrist, who weights chromosomes and fertility over genital appearance and argues “the brain is the most important sex organ,” alongside the guidelines of Milton Diamond and H. Keith Sigmundson, which ISNA favored and which press for changed terminology and patient involvement. Patrick McKenna welcomes the papers as commonsensical; Barry Belman calls ISNA’s push to postpone all surgery “extreme.” Cheryl Chase, ISNA’s executive director, warns that even the new language of “waiting” still presumes a surgical decision-maker with a vested interest. The article surveys the wider climate — the 1996 AAP picket, the December 1997 Rolling Stone account of the “John/Joan” case, and new psychosocial-outcome research — and notes that the AAP and AUA had not, at press time, changed their positions.

A note on availability

None of the three articles appears on the Urology Times website, whose archive does not reach the 1990s, nor in the Intersex Society of North America’s bibliography of online-accessible articles; the coverage is effectively offline. Anne Scheck’s reporting is cited, and the February 1997 piece quoted, in ISNA’s amicus brief on intersex genital surgery.

The citations here are drawn from the publication footers preserved inside the source files. Volume and issue numbers, and the page number of the February 1997 article, remain to be confirmed against the original clippings.