As michthemunchkin said previously, this story is based on the real events of David Reimer. The story of identical twin boys who were raised as boy and girl became a famous one in medical circles. Originally known as the "John/Joan" case to protect their identity, the story later came out, and was told by John Colapinto in his book, "As Nature Made Him". The efforts and treatment by Dr. John Money to convince David's parents to raise David as a girl after a botched circumcision shortly after birth was related to his desire to prove his theories that the development of gender identity in humans was entirely due to environmental factors and not by genetic or other innate factors, and for Dr. Money, having identical twins where one of them was raised in the opposite gender was the "perfect experiment", and that's what they were to him, an experiment. David later married, but his marriage was on the rocks, and after his wife told him she wanted to leave him, he killed himself. He was 38. His twin brother Brian OD'd two years before.