The Fallibility of Medical Opinion.

This operation was originally devised by the Portuguese professor of neurology António Egas Moniz, who never performed the surgery but described a small group of severely disturbed psychiatric patients who reportedly became more tractable after the procedure, a not altogether surprising outcome given the significant brain injuries they had suffered. He performed this surgery on his wife before divorcing her, but his most scientifically notable patient was a young man operated on for epilepsy who, though quite lucid after surgery, was entirely incapable of forming new memories for the ensuing 60 years or so of his life. Madeleine Kearns's thoughtful report on the growing divergence between the United States and Europe on the matter of "gender-affirming care" ("Trans America", June 12) reminded me, a practicing neurosurgeon, of a fashion of a couple of generations ago that led to what we now all agree were tragic consequences. [Extracted from the article]