Thailand, setting the standard for sex changes

December 13, 2004

 

Bangkok - American Robert Higgins was just a toddler when he first longed to be a woman. Fifty years later that dream has become a reality with the help of surgeons half a world away, in Thailand.

"I knew since I was four years old that I wanted to be a girl," 56-year-old Higgins -- now named Sherri-Ann -- told AFP fresh from a sex change operation at a Bangkok hospital.

"The result is absolutely perfect, unbelievable," beamed the married ex-soldier from Pennsylvania and grandparent of two.

Higgins' sex organs may have been altered but her metamorphosis is not yet complete. It will take another year for the female hormones she is taking to soften her skin, feminise her features and help grow her breasts.

Yet she is miles beyond where she dared imagine herself early this year, when she was still legally a man and in despair over the long waiting lists and high cost for sex change surgery in the United States.

"I had waited my whole life for this and didn't want to wait any more," she said.

Then her daughter found a Thai doctor on the Internet and the wheels were set in motion for her change.

The Land of Smiles has emerged in recent years as the capital in Asia, perhaps the world, of affordable sex reassignment surgery, with thousands of sex changes performed here since the 1980s. Most of the patients are Westerners, doctors say.

Determined to dominate the billion-dollar cosmetic surgery industry that has swept Asia in the past decade, the Buddhist kingdom offers everything from facelifts and eyelid surgery to breast augmentation, tummy tucks and elaborate body shaping.

Thailand's niche in this market was forged by Higgins' doctor, Preecha Tiewtranon, considered the country's godfather of the surgery he helped pioneer 25 years ago.

He claims 2,600 sex changes to his credit and says his clinic is now averaging one a day, and nine of every 10 patients in the last five years have been foreigners.

Westerners have travelled here for the operations mainly because rising insurance rates and the threat of malpractice suits have driven up medical costs in their own countries, where the waiting lists can be years long, he said.

In recognition of the need for more international experts in the field, Preecha last week held what he described as the world's first-ever international workshop on sex reassignment surgery.

The event, featuring a live broadcast of a sex change operation performed by Preecha on a Thai tour guide, drew some 35 specialists from around the globe.

The aim was to show the world that Thailand had set the standard for top-quality medicine, he told reporters before heading into the operating room to turn 27-year-old "Be" into a woman.

At least a dozen hospitals and smaller clinics in Thailand now have sex reassignment departments, many of which openly market themselves to Westerners.

And the country's abundant sun and sand -- in some cases just a motorbike's ride away from a hospital bed -- make combining cosmetic surgery with a tropical vacation an attractive option for visitors.

Eager to cash in, a plastic surgery centre on the resort island of Phuket boasts on its website that it is "a beautiful place for privacy, comfort and recovery".

And the assistant director of the island's Bangkok-Phuket Hospital, Sompoch Nipakasont, says: "By next year our hospital will launch a public relations campaign targeting sex change patients."

But Thailand's image as a haven for surgery has also been tarnished by the presence of illegal, unlicensed clinics staffed by unqualified personnel who carry out everything from skin peeling to sex changes.

Preecha is confident though that the legal sex change industry will continue to grow dramatically, here and in the rest of the world.

He wants to repeat his workshop in a year or two, stressing he is unfazed by the prospect of doctors in other countries learning his secrets of success.

"You can not patent medicine," he said.

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