Tragic End of the Boy Who Was Brought Up as a Girl ; David Reimer Was Hailed by Scientists as a Triumph of Nurture over Nature. but as His Suicide Shows, This Was a Terrible Mistake

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Two weekends ago, 38-year-old David Reimer told his parents in their shared hometown of Winnipeg, Canada, that although he was going through a rough patch - recovering from the death of his twin brother two years ago and from his separation from his wife - things would getter better very soon. He didn't explain how.

Now his family knows. On 4 May, Reimer took his own life. While his recent ills surely contributed to the despair, his mother knows there was more to it than that. His death was the final coda to a life that became a world-renowned case study in the perils of tampering with gender. During the span of his life he had been a boy, then a girl and then a boy …