Word: denmark
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When ex-G.I. George Jorgensen went to Denmark and returned, after a series of operations, as "Christine," the U.S. public and medical profession alike were appalled at what seemed to be "mutilative surgery." Attitudes have changed so much since 1952 that last year a Baltimore court ordered Johns Hopkins surgeons to perform an identical operation on a 17-year-old boy. And last week the university announced that it has opened a center for the diagnosis and treatment of transsexuals. Hopkins surgeons have already operated on five men and five women...
...Sweden invented just such a "people's watchdog" and gave him a name, ombudsman, which means representative. Sweden's current ombudsman, Alfred Bexelius, 63, is a unique national mediator who serves the public by prodding laggard civil servants. He and his ten assistants already have counterparts in Denmark, Finland, Norway and New Zealand. Britain recently joined the movement by appointing a "parliamentary commission," and agitation for the appointment of ombudsmen has suddenly become popular all over the U.S. So far, however, the word does not even appear in U.S. dictionaries...
...diligent reporter, Donald Connery set out in subsequent years (first as a TIME correspondent and later as freelance writer) to learn more. His chief conclusion, and the thesis of this lively book, is that Scandinavia really does I not exist as an entity at all. Denmark. Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, while having much in common, are distinctly different in temperament and outlook, and are fiercely determined to stay that...
...high suicide rate is misinterpreted. According to Connery, "the heart of the matter is that the more progress, the more suicides." That is not the whole heart, however (TIME ESSAY, Nov. 25). The U.S., more urbanized and advanced technologically, has a suicide rate only half that of Finland, Denmark and Sweden...
Gradual Change. Next to Scandinavia's social problems, Connery believes, foreigners least understand its approach to welfare. Actually, Scandinavia is no longer so extraordinary in this respect, since all the more prosperous West European countries are as much welfare states as Sweden or Denmark. "The U.S., while clinging to its old notions of every-man-for-himself, spends more money on welfare than any nation in history," he says. What makes Scandinavia unique, he declares, is that its social benefits have accumulated slowly over almost a century, with no particular impetus in the past three decades. He argues that...