TO MATCH FEATURE STORY BC-HEALTH-SEX CHANGE, 2000-02-23 (photo)

TO MATCH FEATURE STORY BC-HEALTH-SEX CHANGE - Brenda Reimer was an awkward child, who did not engage in girlish activities and was mercilessly teased by schoolmates for her gunslinger stride and lack of interest in boys. Doctors told her that her discomfort was due to a passing phase of "tomboyishness." What they didn't tell her was that she had in fact been born "Bruce" and had been subjected to gender reassignment surgery at 18 months, 10 months after doctors botched a circumcision and destroyed most of his penis. Instead of raising their child as a boy, Bruce's young parents took the advice of a famous American medical psychologist, John Money of Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, who said that Bruce could be a happy "Brenda" with the proper treatment and hormones. He was later known as David Reimer. FG