By now, I doubt there’s a single serious, respected medical practitioner who actually believes there’s a cure for homosexuality. At least, not without a pretty sizable amount of brain surgery, and I think that sits firmly beyond the point of diminishing returns.
Take Dr Mark Craddock, for example: the Australian doctor, and member of the Exclusive Brethren Christian Fellowship Sect, allegedly prescribed a teenaged member of his sect a “cure” for his homosexuality. The only problem, aside from the huge, glaring moral issue that comes with trying to “cure” someone’s sexuality, is the fact that he was actually prescribing the poor kid a pill that would chemically castrate him.
In a letter to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, the unnamed man, who is now 24, said that when he came out as gay, a church leader told him ‘’there’s medication you can go on.” He continued, ‘’He recommended that I speak to Dr Craddock on the matter with a view to my being placed on medication to help me with my ‘problem’,’’ the New Zealand resident said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
AdvertisementThe teen went to visit the 75-year-old doctor who then prescribed him with a “gay cure”: the anti-androgen therapy cyproterone acetate, sold under the brand name Cyprostat, along with five repeats, according to ninemsn. He said the doctor did not refer him to a psychologist or discuss the drug’s side effects.
Cyprostat is a form of hormone therapy used to treat prostate cancer. The drug will “work by stopping testosterone from reaching the cancer cells. Without testosterone the prostate cancer cells are not able to grow,” according to the UK’s Prostate Cancer Charity. Hormone suppressants have been used to “chemically castrate” sex offenders, the Guardian notes. [via HuffPo]
Wait, what the actual hell? What kind of self-respecting doctor would prescribe a pill that would effectively neuter his patient because of his own personal beliefs? There’s a reason the textbook used to train medical interns is something like Gray’s Anatomy, rather than the Bible: because when you’re jimmying around with the human body, it’s best not to base your practices on a book that thinks a woman’s periods are brought on by an impure heart.
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