Biological determinations matter for the sake of individuals’ health and medical care

If the current leadership of organizations and agencies such as the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention want to provide the best medicine and future for Americans, they should heed the warning and follow the guidance of Alan Sokal and Richard Dawkins in their oped, “Sex and gender: The medical establishment’s reluctance to speak honestly about biological reality.”

Sokal and Dawkins are spot-on with their caution of the harm that would be done if public health and health care leaders continue to adopt and promote phrasings such as “sex assigned at birth.” Though perhaps politically well-intended toward promoting greater social justice, this language misleads people into thinking that a person’s biological sex is arbitrary, when it never is. As the authors warn, obscuring biological facts has real medical import and can misinform people in ways that validate ignorance, which itself only enables social injustice.

I am the proud parent of two self-described queer children, one a gender nonconforming woman and one transgender nonbinary. However, their biologically determined sex is female, and that determination matters for their health and medical care no matter how they experience and live their lives socially.

Though some may disagree, our world improves as we better understand and embrace male boys, male men, male girls, male women, male nonbinary people, female boys, female men, female girls, female women, and female nonbinary people. We can do this without falsifying or muddying long-established scientific knowledge about the determination of the sex of human beings.

DR. JAMES L. SHERLEY

Boston

The writer is a physician scientist.