Chemical castration  

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"In some countries chemical castration is optional, while in others (like Poland, Indonesia, the Czech Republic, Australia, Korea and parts of the US) it can be mandated for convicted sex offenders. Particularly the mandatory use of these drugs has been widely criticised on humanitarian grounds. Additionally, as psychiatrists Don Grubin and Anthony Beech state, there is an argument that 'doctors should avoid becoming agents of social control'."--Evil: The Science Behind Humanity's Dark Side (2019) by Julia Shaw

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Chemical castration is a form of castration caused by hormonal medication which reduces libido. It is used mainly by countries as a preventive measure or punishment on people who violate their laws on sexual behavior, for example those who have committed rape or child sexual abuse or who are homosexual (as in the case of mathematician Alan Turing). It has also been used by eugenicists as a means of preventing people the government deems inferior from breeding, and was practiced in many states during the twentieth century.

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Historical use

During the Third Reich, experimental procedures involving injection of chemicals, hormones and mutative radiation techniques, such as intentionally exposing individuals’ genitals to X-Ray, were employed by the Nazis as a form of racial sterilisation. Individuals deemed ‘undesirable’ or ‘subhuman’/'untermensch' were subjected to such processes. Concentration camps including Auschwitz were places of abundant human specimen that the Nazis used to experiment different techniques in order to successfully and calculatedly sterilise suathes of the 'undesirables' in the wider German population. Examples of the drugs the nazis used on individuals are formalin, novacain, progynon, and prolusion. Depo-Provera, a progestin, is a drug that is sometimes used on sex offenders.

Treatment for sex offenders

The first use of chemical castration occurred in 1944, when diethylstilbestrol was used with the purpose of lowering men's testosterone.

The antipsychotic agent benperidol was sometimes used to decrease sexual urges in people who displayed what was thought of as inappropriate sexual behavior, and as likewise given by depot injection, though benperidol does not affect testosterone and is therefore not a castration agent. Chemical castration was often seen as an easier alternative to life imprisonment or the death penalty because it allowed the release of the convicted.

In 1981, in an experiment by Pierre Gagné, 48 males with long-standing histories of sexually deviant behaviour were given medroxyprogesterone acetate for as long as 12 months. Forty of those subjects were recorded as having diminished desires for deviant sexual behaviour, as well as less frequent sexual fantasies and greater control over sexual urges. The research recorded a continuation of this improved behaviour after the administration of the drug had ended, with no evidence of adverse side effects, and so recommended medroxyprogesterone acetate along with counselling as a successful method of treatment for serial sex offenders.

Leuprolide acetate is an LHRH agonist that is most commonly used in chemical castration today. This drug has been observed as having higher rates of success in reducing abnormal sexual urges and fantasies, but is often reserved for those offenders who are at a high risk of reoffending due to the drug's intense effects.

Psychotherapy has also recently been used in conjunction with chemical castration in order to maximize and prolong the beneficial results. Schober et al. reported in 2005 that when cognitive behavioral therapy combined with leuprolide acetetate was compared to cognitive behavioral therapy alone, the combination therapy produced a much more significant reduction of pedophilic fantasies and urges as well as masturbation. Chemical castration therapy reduces an individual's libido which then makes some offenders more responsive to the introduction of psychotherapy. This combination therapy is most often utilized in those who are at a high risk of offending.

Offering criminals the option of chemical castration for a reduction in sentence is an example of compulsory sterilization as it can leave a subject sterile if they are required to continue treatment for more than 3 years.

Scientific critique

Spaying is observed to cause female animals to stop mating in the same way as castration causes male animals to stop mating. However, in animal species where females continue their mating behaviour after being spayed, the males also continue to mate after being castrated. So there are scientists who argue that it makes no biological sense to assume that any treatment that emulates castration would remove sex drive in men but not in women. These scientists argue that these observations, along with the fact that humans are animals and subject to evolution, show that it is flawed to think that male sexuality would be treatable by medication if female sexuality is not.

Some criminologists argue that the appearance of a lower recidivism rate in male sex offenders who take chemical castration treatment than in those who do not can be explained by factors other than biological effects of the medication. One hypothesis is that men who accept the negative effects of hormonal treatment in exchange for shorter prison sentence are distinct in that they value freedom from incarceration higher than men who rather stay in prison for a longer time than face the side effects of chemical castration. These criminologists explain apparently lower recidivism as an artifact of men who accept chemical castration being more engaged in hiding the evidence for reoffending, and that paroling such offenders constitute a risk of releasing criminals who commit as many new crimes as others but are better at hiding it. These criminologists also argue that police investigators treating castrated men as less likely to reoffend than non-castrated men may cause an investigation bias and self-fulfilling prophecy, and that men who sell some of their prescribed medicines on the black market for drugs get a hidden income that improves their ability to afford measures to hide recidivism that is not available to men without such prescriptions.

Some neurologists acknowledge that testosterone plays a role in sexual arousal but consider that reducing sex drive will likely not reduce inappropriate sex behaviour. These researchers argue that since a weaker internal signal in the brain means a higher requirement for external stimulation to create a feedback loop that tires the brain circuits out as in orgasm and lead to satisfaction, a reduction of the internal stimulation from hormones would make the required external stimulation stronger and also more specific, as weaker signals involve narrower ranges of other brain functions in their loops. These scientists therefore argue that the biological (as opposed to sociological) effect of reduced testosterone is to make it more difficult and not easier to use masturbation without pornography or other socially acceptable substitutes to manage remaining sex drive in a former offender, and that many community persons (both male and female) find that a lower initial arousal makes it more difficult to orgasm by masturbation without pornography or with non-preferred stimulation.

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