Taxpayers must foot the bill for sex-swop surgeryBY JAMES CLARK THREE transsexuals won a landmark legal battle yesterday to make taxpayers bear the cost of turning them into women. The High Court ruling could mean transsexuals across the country jumping NHS queues and obtaining treatment ahead of patients with painful or debilitating illnesses. North West Lancashire Health Authority had refused to pay for the £9,000 operations, saying the three needed psychotherapy rather than surgery. But Mr Justice Hidden said the decision was ’irrational and illegal’ and had not considered ’the proper treatment of a recognised illness’. His verdict outraged multiple sclerosis sufferers. The cost of each operation would pay for a year’s treatment with the new drug beta interferon, which slows the progress of the disease. Some vitims have already been refused it, however, on cost grounds. Nic Owen, 58, from Buckingham, who is confined to a wheelchair, said transsexuals should pay for the operations themselves. No health authority should be forced to pay out when the money could be used to help MS sufferers or carry out research into diseases like cancer. I have always believed this country is going completely nutty and this ruling has confirmed that. Tory health spokesman Ann Widdecombe said: ’We know there is rationing in the NHS, despite what the Government says, and if that is the case then there clearly have to be priorities. How can a sex-change operation be more of a priority than drugs for MS sufferers.?’ The health authority said it was considering an appeal. Chief executive David Edmundson said: ’We are very disappointed. It is about our ability to make our own clinical priorities, which we have to do unless somebody gives us an endless pot of money.’ The three transsexuals, two aged 50 and the other 21, were not identified in court becuase the judge ruled that the case was about a general principle rahter then them as individuals. They were refused ’gender reassignment surgery’ after the authority, which covers Blackpool and Preston, said it was entitled to take into account its own scarce resources. Their counsel, Stephanie Harrison, told the court that health chiefs had misunderstood their illness. The surgery was not on a par with tattoo removal or cosmetic operations to reduce the size of breasts or noses. All three were living as women but retained the physical characteristics of the sex ’they feel strongly and profoundly they don’t belong to’. They were enduring ’distress and humiliation’ and had difficulty making and maintaining social and personal relationships. Similar cases had ended in self-harm or suicide. After the case the apllicant known as Miss A, a freelance graphic designer, said: ’I don’t want to go through surgery but I have to, becuase if I don’t I will probably go mad.’ She described her male physique as a ’deformity’ and added: ’I just want to be normal - to achieve a degree of normality.’ A number of other health authorities have insisted that transsexuals - defined as someone having the physical characteristics of one sex but a strong desire to belong to the other - have a psychological problem rahter than a clinical need. Most sufferers are physically men, and the condition has been wrongly linked to homosexuality. Recent research has suggested that, in one foetus in every 10,000, an area of the brain responsible for gender develops in contradiction with the external sex organs. Some 7,000 patients, including several married men with children, have undergone sex-swap operations in britain. Two-thirds were male-to-female. Copyright © 1998, Daily Mail | ||||
