Considering a core curriculum for DSDs and gender identities—It is complicated

Abstract

In reading the published letter to the editor by Drs Venkatesh and Morris, they raise a number of points concerning educating students about developmental embryology, along with clinical (and presumably legal) considerations concerning individuals with DSDs or gender. Its publication is timely, given the recent debates in the wider medical community, and in public, following the publication of the Cass report, and the “WPATH files” (by Michael Shellenberger). While typical developmental embryology, and examples of variations, should rightly be included within the undergraduate curriculum (and has traditionally been taught pre-clinically by anatomists), establishing the extent to which diagnosis and management of DSDs and gender dysphoria should be included within modern undergraduate curricula is surely more appropriate for our specialist Clinical Colleagues to determine.