news FYI

[jade lee]

If any body gets WPVI action news, at 5 pm channel 5 in Philly there is a section to be on the news on 04/29/05 on medicne on changing your gender and a local doctor in the area that treats transgender.
Or you can go to www.wpvi.com after it is broad cast and read about it

[jade lee]

TRANSGENDER MEDICINE
4/29/05

On Oprah, viewers watched the story of a couple. Their relationship met an incredible challenge when the husband became a woman. Sex-change operations are increasing across the country, spawning a need for specialists in transgender medicine. Plastic surgeon Dr. Sherman leis is one of them. Last year, he created a center offering services from surgery to voice training, to legal help for name changes.

Urging him on was one of his surgical residents, Dr. Christine McGinn.

Dr. McGinn went to medical school as a man, spent 4 years in the navy as a pilot and flight surgeon as a man, but is now a woman, planning to pursue transgender medicine as a career. She says there's misunderstanding and discrimination about transsexuals, even in the medical community.

Dr. McGinn: Physicians who practice transgender medicine and surgery, when they apply for privileges at a hospital, get turned down, and the answer is simply- we don't want to get into that type of surgery."

But dr. Leis says the medical needs of transsexuals go beyond sexual matters.

For example, prostate and uterine cancers are serious considerations. If a female is taking male hormones, it may increase the chance of heart attack McGinn says even though she'll specialize in treating transsexuals, above all, she's dedicated to good medical care.

Dr. McGinn. "Once people get to know me, they realize i'm not different really from them. That I was just born with something that's interesting, and makes great gossip, but when I work, I do just as well as everybody else."