Comments

1
If you didn't put in the links, I'd swear you were making this stuff up.
2
This research does nothing to increase the incidence of so-called lipstick lesbianisms! That's the outrageous part you fail to mention.
3
Holy shitting fuck.
4
Wow they have a cure for women thinking for themselves? How are we going to continue the patriarchy if we DON'T put this in tap water.
5
The motivation seems appalling, but the science is interesting. Makes me wonder if they can do the opposite if, say, you wanted a softball champ.
6
Holy shit. Fuck her right in the ear.
7
There's an upside to this: if what they say is true, and is proven true, then at least the "homosexuality is a choice" argument will be scientifically destroyed.
8
This won't end well for anyone.
9
Wait a minute, so if someone's genetically predisposed to be gay then that must mean it's God's Will™
10
Dr. Maria New's credentials need to be pulled and they need to be pulled right now! She is the abomination and what happened to not messing with God's will? MF hypocrites.
11
Yeah, Vince, I wonder how long it will be before we start hearing about babies being born with three heads.
12
@7: This is the catch-22 of that debate. If homosexuality is a choice, then it's a sin and we can just make laws to oppress them. If people are born that way, then there must be a 'cure' we can find. Either way, the LGBT community loses.

This is why I hope they never find a "gay gene".
13
Who the hell has ever had "daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood?" I can understand a be-corseted spinster in the 1890s fantasizing about motherhood, but what kind of little girl obsesses over being pregnant?
14
becky: I never did, but there do seem to be lots of little girls who like playing with baby dolls and pushing them around in strollers and pretending to change them and shit like that. I (in spite of my fully XX anatomy) am just abnormal, I guess. GIMME THE DEX!
15
Isn't Dr. Maria New's occupation just a bit too masculine? Why isn't she home popping out babies instead of all this doctor scientist stuff? Give that doctor some of that there CAH.
16
But shouldn't what she does with her body be a woman's choice? A very private choice made in confidence with her physician?
17
you know, there was one thing keeping me from being all depressed while reading 'The handmaid's tale.' The belief that people who think they know what women should do and want to do, and know that better than the individuals who make up the cohort 'women,' didn't exist outside a few non-influential fundamentalist sects. Now I'm not sure I can finish the book...
18
the extended application of this science to all women in general sounds totally terrible, but in case peeps aren't familiar with CAH it's a pretty serious condition with some pretty serious health complications. So while it sounds like this researcher has gone off the deep end, combating severe CAH in women with some form of treatment is a good idea.

Check it out here at NIH:
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/C…
19
To what degree do we embrace science as truth, and to what degree reject it? Do these decisions change when we don't agree with the results?

Also, if a trait like homosexuality were found to originate in the genes somewhere, whether this is viewed as an 'aberration' or a neutral mutation of the sort that happens all the time is a value judgement, and we're back where we started anyway. Those of you screaming to yank this doctor's PhD because she's taking her research somewhere you dislike, be careful lest you become the same self-righteous demagogues you're fighting.
20
i know lots of lesbians who dream about being wives and mothers, they just dream about marrying other women.
21
“You know, when the babies who have been treated with dex prenatally get to an age in which they are sexually active, I’ll be able to answer that question.”

This sounds like the ethics of Dr. Moreau.
22
Still... if it results in fewer folk singers, is any price too high?
23
@22 FTW
24
Women's sexuality has always been something that doctors need to fix medically when it goes awry, hasn't it? I mean, if the technology exists to make women into baby-making sex robots, why wouldn't you want to? That's what they're for! Amirite?
25
UN.FUCKING.BELIEVABLE.
26
I guess it's not the motherhood thing that bothers me, but the whole fantasizing about actually being pregnant part. Kids play with dolls, that's cool; however, everyone I've ever met has been freaked out by those "pretend pregnancy" forms for little girls - you know, the reverse backpack style fake tummy that turns into a doll. Whatevs, the story is creepy and horrible enough, that was just a creep-plus detail.
27
What. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck.
28
This shit is wrong on so many levels and must be stopped. I have a question for the slog mind, however. What if it were shown conclusively that prenatal exposure to an environmental contaminant caused increases in the rates of CAH and ambiguous gender development among fetuses, but it caused no other adverse effects? Would it be unethical to demand the banning of the contaminant? Would people with CAH or ambiguous gender view this as an act of discrimination against them?
29
@24 You forgot cooking and cleaning, Fnarf. We need *something* to do after we've exhausted our husbands and put the baby down for a nap.... :)
30
@29, if there was a hormonal or chemical or even surgical treatment that made women not want to post comments on the internet, would it be ethical to use it? What if it was clinically proven to made women want to fuck or clean? These are the questions that science must answer, for we mere day-to-day humans, even though we may have come into contact with these unfathomable women ourselves, can't possibly answer them.

I do hope I've got this sarcasm thingie turned on here.
31
I might be mollified if the sub-rosa Faggoty Randys among the GOP knock back a few cases of testosterone to see if their balls will grow big enough to out themselves (their gay selves, not their newly enlarged testicles).
32
No one's brought up eugenics yet?

If we can "cure" gays of their "disease" then maybe we can also cure blacks and other "inferior" races of their "disease?"

Hell, we could use science to create an entire race of fair-skinned, blonde haired, blue eyed, obedient Nazis... er, perfect people.
33
This is why I could never support abortion or euthanasia. These issues have NOTHING to do with being gay, and "cross-pollination" with other groups supporting other liberal policies has not worked well in getting us what we need.

Maybe I'm not expressing myself well, but this is why I would never be a part of Planned Parenthood similar groups.
34
@30 Unless, of course, they were describing your awesomeness, Fnarf, dear, then female commenting should definitely be turned on...! Hmmmm, cleaning AND fucking? Isn't that what Vodka Red Bulls are for? Remember Norma Rae? "Just bend me over the ironing board, honey, while I finish this crease..." This also reminds me of the guy who wrote to Dear Abby years ago, asking if he could get some very low-voltage shockers installed on his wife's side of the mattress, as she was having difficulty waking up early enough to fix him a proper breakfast before he headed off to work... If you find, however, a pill that would make my husband notice the skid-mark underwear that accumulates on his side of the bed, please send it to me post-haste. Gracias.
35
Well, maybe if they have found a drug to prevent lesbianism, that someone should be working on the reverse. I am sure many straight and gay couples would be ecstatic to have the ability to ensure their child is gay. A straight girlfriend of mine has dreams of having babies - gay babies. True story.
36
@33

I have no fucking clue why you even brought those up. This has nothing to do with abortion OR euthanasia.
37
I think it's only fair Maria New gulp down some Dex so she can be cured of her career in medicine. Only men should be doctors. Women shouldn't be worrying their pretty little heads with science. Every day that woman is in the lab is a day she's not cooking, cleaning, or breeding babies.

p.s. The only people who'd be crazy enough to take this shit to "un-gay" their kid are Phelps Family nut-bag, bigots and maybe it would be best if loony toons like that didn't have gay children.
38
I don't know how any pregnant woman could foolishly offer her womb up to the hands of science and risk permanently damaging her child. I pity the innocent.
39
I thought, according to the "moral majority" that being gay was a "choice" made by deviants? Isn't she disproving that? And by “masculinizing” of a female fetus’s genitals... is she freaked out by women with large clitoris'? sad... cause that's kinda hot!
40
anyone else sensing an action movie here? at a lesbian wedding, "speak now or forever hold your peace"--a man runs down the aisle and injects a woman, who recoils in horror from her unnatural partner and begins kissing the injecter. a mother runs, in slow motion, towards the hospital with her young daughter, but trips and falls. The toddler plays with a hot wheels toy and must be abandoned. It is too late for her! America demands that the woman have a new, more heterosexual baby! America, where men are men and women do not play with G.I. Joes!
41
Ironic that Dan fell for Dreger's defense of J. Michael Bailey in a previous post, when Bailey has written and given talks favoring this exact practice.

Or did you really think they'd be sated just bashing the trannies, Dan?
42
@33 Uh, what?
43
@39: At a guess, people may feel threatened by large clitorises because then men would be even more expected to be able to find it.
44
Par for the course for Intersexed kids. But it's not just those who could suffer.

"There is evidence from animal studies that prenatal dex treatment leads to neurotoxicity – brain cell death. Studies of children exposed to prenatal dexamethasone in utero also indicate plenty of reason for concern. Evidence from human studies indicates an increased risk to the children of problems with working memory, speech processing, and anxiety.

Because the steroid is given before the sex of the fetus can be known, and because only some of the fetuses will have CAH, 87.5 percent of the pregnant women started on dexamethasone for this use are not even carrying an affected child. (In fact, half of the fetuses started on the treatment will be males.) They will not receive the treatment past the point at which their fetuses’ sex and CAH-status are accurately diagnosed; nonetheless, for a period of fetal development (including, obviously, brain development), almost 90 percent of those fetuses are being given a steroid that might harm them and can do them no good whatsoever.

Read more: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethi…

45
I read this already. Instead of being frightened and depressed about what people think they can do to children in the name of "normalcy," I choose to think about it this way: My momma managed to crank out a straight girl without CAH who has no interest in getting married or having children. So, EPIC WIN in the battle of me vs. the medical establishment! I'm going to donate my eggs to gay and lesbian couples in the hopes that they'll turn out more little girls that buck the "maternal" trend.
That is, of course, until they decide that all female babies should be treated with dex.
46
What about us masculine gay guys? I mean I keep hearing all this talking about preventing men from becoming effeminate and acting girlish as boys (well I read it from crazy right wing Christian fundamentalists and see it in television broadcasts from 4 and 5 decades ago). But some of us boys grow up masculine. We don't talk with lisps, we don't swivel our hips, we don't wear dresses, we play high school sports, some of us even enjoy becoming couch potato sports fans........we just happen to be gay and proud. What about us? Well okay, I'm probably not as masculine as I claim....I admit that sometimes when no one is around and the shutters are closed, I'll dance (badly) to 70's disco and/or Cher.

But even if you could come up with a drug to remove those attributes, how would that change the fact that I am physically attracted to men and not to women and always have been? I'd ask the same of removing the masculine features of women.
47
Deplorable. But at least it shoots to hell the argument that orientation is a choice. If they need to "correct" a fetus, then they've admitted it's something your born with. That's half the battle. Until we can isolate and correct the "willfully ignorant" gene homophobes are born with, the other half might last a while.
48
@43 They could call it the "No Excuses" clit. I'd like one, myself.

@46 Good point...ex: Gareth Thomas, out rugby player:
http://www.millwall.vitalfootball.co.uk/…
49
I was super "girly" as a child (I played with dolls, wore skirts, adored pink, etc.), and I've turned out to be a baby-hating, women-loving (although I'm bisexual, so I still love men), scientist-in-training lady here.
50
My mother's doctor gave me catnip at birth and now I love to play with yarn and cannot wait to start knitting... One friend said, "My mother made me a homosexual".. I told him I'd make him one, too... It's not working Dr. Mengele... I suppose they could show us all $3 bills before they spank us the first time...
51
Well, it's finally here. My first reaction was horror, but then I started to try to calm myself down. There is NO WAY, if you look around you, that prenatal androgens are the only things that turn women gay/bisexual/career-oriented (or SMART, as some people seem to be suggesting!). For example, of 3 full-blooded female children in my family, 2 are career-oriented tomboy scientists with no aspirations for kids yet and 1 (the MIDDLE one) is a more traditionally feminine liberal arts major who wants children (and ALL are very smart and ambitious). Anecdotal, but that's all we have to go on at this point and I'm sure most people know such examples. In 30 years, once there are enough of these poor little human guinea pigs of child-rearing age, we'll have a good idea of how 'straight/conventional' you can make a woman in the womb. And it will probably be a number like 30% which wouldn't inspire any thinking person to get the treatment.

Three more points for the people freaking out here: 1. Wanting children in itself doesn't equal stupidity or spinelessness. So they aren't impacting intelligence here; only levels of ambition to do certain things, at worst. And ambition to do 'feminine' things is a social concept. Medicine, for example, used to be a 'masculine' field because only men went into it, which attracted mostly men. Now more women are going into MD programs than men, so it's being seen as more of a feminine, caretaking profession (and one in which you can set your own hours and allow yourself time to raise children). So childrearing also doesn't = staying in the house. 2. There's the fairly likely possibility that women who get dex treatment over the next 10 years won't exactly be very intelligent (who else could you talk into such a thing?). So the girls treated with dex in the womb will likely have an IQ/education rate that's a few points below average. This alone will be a deterrent to many people getting the treatment in the future (although if it happens, one premature conclusion will be that feminine = stupid, which I have mixed feelings about). 3. There are ALWAYS side effects. Let's hang in there for 10 years because you know that on a certain portion of embryos, this will turn them homicidal or mentally ill or something. There's the distinct possibility that the number of people getting side effects from this treatment will be higher than the number of people 'normalized' by it.

In short, the science will tell the tale in 30-50 years -- and I imagine it will be a tale that gender, ambition, sex drive, attitudes toward children, and intelligence have many contributing causes from many different genes as well as many different developmental inputs. I personally don't think this will have an impact on intelligence at all because I really don't think intelligence is different between men/women and gay/straight/bisexual. But we will now see some data to support/refute this. We can't do anything but hang in there, wait for the results, and say a prayer for the unwilling embryonic human guinea pigs :( And do our best to minimize the suffering by keeping watch over how this is deployed.

One thought: could this be one woman's plan to 'breed-out' homophobes by appealing to their worst fears and then mutating their children in the womb? Whether or not she means to, this might be the outcome.
52
I can't believe a pregnant woman would agree to this experimental treatment - when I was pregnant five years ago, I was advised to avoid tuna fish, sushi, coffee, soft cheeses, not to mention hair dye, nail polish, etc., and the only medicines that are truly green-lighted are a couple things like Tylenol and Tums. So, with no evidence of an urgent problem (how can genital abnormality be detected that early in utero anyhow?), what expectant mother would feel comfortable tampering with her fetus like this? Plus, it so obviously reeks of eugenics. It's unethical. And @33: what the hell are you talking about? Your comment was totally off subject, and yet I couldn't help noticing that you seem to be anti-abortion AND anti-Planned Parenthood, the two of which stances are pretty much mutually exclusive. Planned Parenthood provides access to birth control and sex education, particularly for low-income and young citizens. And any fuckwit should be able to figure out that more birth control and informed use thereof will strongly correlate with fewer unintended pregnancies, and therefore, fewer....abortions. I'm getting tired of having to explain this. Folks who claim to be anti-abortion but then are also anti-Planned Parenthood need to realize that what they really are are sex-negative puritanical spoilsports who want to have their cake and eat it too, and who, by the way, don't happen to give a shit about unwanted babies.
53
My God. Oh, my God.
54
Seriously, fuck this lady.
55
This is horrid. Absolutely horrid.
I am a woman with no interest in babies, or female role models, or dresses, or lipstick. And I am NOT a lesbian... well, a bit bi maybe, but I'm living with a man. And those bitches would have wanted to fix me even before I was born???
56
I have endometriosis. It made two years of my life hell. Being queer has lead to some uncomfortable conversations with my mother (she's detail-oriented, awkward), as well as some great sex and relationships.

If scientists are looking into female hormones, why not put more effort into decreasing the suffering of women with illnesses that affect their lives negatively? The baby thing is no excuse; I'd be at an extremely high risk of infertility if I wanted to get pregnant, and miscarriage if I ever did. Not that it would be an issue, with that pesky bisexuality interfering with my low maternal interest.
57
13. So true!
58
I love the assumption that since I love another woman I am uninterested in marriage with her or bearing children. What about the women who do both? Are they abnormal also? How completely nonsensical.
59
Um, wow. A bit chilling on a Wednesday morning to read that there are people who think you should have been medically edited out of existence. I actually feel kind of numb after reading this stuff.
60
This is why straight women's rights are intimately tied to gay rights. Sometimes I feel that straight women sit around with their head stuck in the sand, adhering to that old "when they came for X, I didn't speak up because I wasn't an X".

To the straight ladies reading this article, when they ask you if you want your fetus "pre-emptively fixed", what are you going to say?

I'm one of these godawful childfree women with low maternal instinct and high career drive that supposedly these people are working to eradicate. I know some people think I'm an abomination but I never foresaw the day that a bad movie could be reality (Gattica), because I just figured we'd worry about life-threatening disabilities first. Not the fact I don't want babies.
61
I'm with you Janusdog, I never liked kids, even when I was one, and didn't do too much with dolls when I was a kid. I never thought it was a negative thing that I had no desire to clutter the planet with additional small beings. That said, I am still heterosexual, although no on in my circle of life would give two hoots if I wasn't, and I'm 46.

I spent many, many years trying to talk various doctors into removing my ability to procreate, finally getting my tubes tied in my late 30s. Why should it be such a struggle when men can go in and get snipped at any time?

Plus, you'd think they'd worry more about serious female illness rather than worry about whether someone does or does not want to procreate from an early age on.

Imbeciles.
62
The mounting horror I felt reading this entry was like a physical vice around my chest.
63
What we need is a drug that makes lesbians, you know, like sending girls  off to Brown or to be Seattle Storm players.
64
Ahh, watching the Loony Left fight science this time.

So sucking out a 6 month old fetus, killing it and  dumping it in the garbage: ok!

Preventing baby girls from having dicks: Bad!

Some of us are at least consistent and oppose both.
65
Ugh. And I hate the implication that being a tomboy when you're little means you're a big ol' lesbian. There was never a day before prom where I wore a skirt, and I was all about the trucks and the dirt and the sports; but now I am all about the cock. Fuck them and their patriarchal assumptions.
66
CHRIST.
I studied behavioral endocrinology in college. CAH is mostly a problem because it can affect fertility. Women who have it tend to have symptoms that are similar to polycystic ovarian syndrome.
Yes, one outcome is "masculinized behavior" but by that they mean little girls will play with toys by moving them through space instead of nurturing them (it's called masculinized not just because little boys do it, but because male primates play that way. It's a scientific "masculinized" and not social use of the word per se).
A large amount of women who seek sex change operations turn out to have CAH as well, which is only interesting to endocrinologists because it tells us that prenatal hormones affect sexuality. This information was helpful in showing us that we can give post-op hormones and they can help the transition from FTM or MTF.
It's something you don't want your kids to get (fertility, health problems, PCOS symptoms) and so it's theoretically worth curing, but not for the sexuality reasons. And it's not worth fucking with pregnant women's hormones.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/congeni…

ALSO WORTH NOTING:
This week Dan has been talking a lot about female genital mutilation. Women with CAH are more likely to receive this type of mutilation by doctors at birth. Until around 2001, it was incredibly common (not just by quack weirdos--it was fairly par in medical training to "trim" the clitoris if it was enlarged). Because these girls are exposed to more androgens (testosterone, DHT, etc) in utero, their genitals are enlarged, sometimes so severe that it's hard to determine if they are male or female.
What's troubling is that, yes, most girls who have this would probably want to avoid the extra body hair, fertility problems and weird looking genitals. But medical solutions so far have been (i) CUTTING OFF PARTS OF THE CLITORIS and (ii) GIVING PREGNANT MOMS A BUNCH OF WHACK HORMONES and then saying it's because CAH girls are gay, which isn't not the real medical condition here.

Remember when we gave moms DES?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethylstil…
67
One last thing--I just read some of the comments about how DEX is given before fetal sex is known. Boys can have CAH. All it does is give them more androgens and make their penis humongous.
68
Terrified as I am by this, I'm even more scared by the people I know who might conceivably agree to this treatment in the UK. If my mom ever heard about this, she'd might even wish she'd had this kind of opportunity. Ignoring all likely side-effects, a lot of expectant mothers could be easily taken in by people offering their child a normal, challenge-free life. Stupid mothers, but still.
My parents wanted a daughter who would make them grandperents. What they got was a daughter who didn't play with dolls or prams, hated other children, and now (as he's being packed off the university to do a highly competetive degree in Literature), is coming out as trans and gay as well - hot damn! So much trouble could have been saved if she'd had access to this advanced science! I bet I would have kept on going to church too.
69
Oh man, Just like assholes to obsess with behavioral traits in hypothetical people. Just grow a pair and raise your fucking kid. Yes raising an intersexed lesbian trucker will be a lot harder than raising some perfect version of yourself, but you know what I class that as? Pedophilia. Manipulating the sex of children is always wrong, Just let them be and raise them nicely.

And to the people that can see the writing on the wall for the death of gays, yes we can be cured because we are born this way. We need to stop controlling kids BRAINS too. Not too many people squawk when someone mentions a cure for Autism, But Autism like being gay is just a different way of living and thinking.

Man, Gattaca should be forced viewing or banned.
70
@69 Thank god for abortion eh?
71
Can you imagine the discussion in the waiting room?

"Hey honey... how about we try a new experimental drug on our kid while you are pregnant with her to try to ensure she doesn't one day have sex without a magnificent penis in the room... cause i think it's totally normal to discuss/try to manipulate our future child's adult sex life ... See Morebefore she is born. I say we risk her health and yours to ensure that she is a slave to erections and wont want to have a job outside of the home. Perhaps we should also ask the doctor for some thalidomide for that nausea you have been having... then when you are feeling better we can discuss her sex life some more... maybe we can give her something to make sure she likes to have sex with guys with small dicks... just like you do, honey... now go fix daddy a gin and tonic... and take those damn pants off... dyke."

How is it that i have any faith left in humanity at all?
72
I am so afraid for the women and children in the hands of somebody playing god.
73
Why do we humans feel we have to control (and inevitably fuck up) nearly everything?
I read a book once about a pair of male twins, one of which underwent a botched circumcision, destroying the boy's penis. So you know that the fucked up doctors told the boy's grieving parents to do? Chop off what remains and turn him into a girl. Literally, lie to him and tell him he's a girl, he always will be a girl, he always was a girl. Make him wear dresses, force him to play with dolls and TAKE ESTROGEN, asking, "Why don't you bring a BOY to the prom, honey?" It's fucking bullshit. The poor boy's life was ruined, and ultimately, as a teenager his parents confessed and you know what he did? Yep, he got himself a penis and spent the rest of his life as a man.

My point is: what the hell is wrong with having a child with abnormal genitals? Aren't we taught to love our bodies? How can a parent willingly choose to destroy their child's life by attempting to control who the child is NATURALLY and without their consent?

In a morbid way, I kind of hope that these dex-treated babies turn out to be way worse than a gay or bi chick that works hard and doesn't reproduce. Fuck with Mother Nature and she'll kick your ass!
74
@71 how about this conversation:

"hey honey, why don't we ensure this kid has no sex life and get it sucked out and thrown in the trash so we can get on with our lives?"
75
Rogue PIs (Principal Investigators) unfortunately exist. A potential research subject needs to read a consent form as carefully as possible and weight the benefits and risks.

Also, the word abnormal in a scientific paper has a different meaning than in other types of writing.
76
I love how everyone is appalled that mothers might choose this treatment but if the same mother choses to have an abortion you'd all stand around and applaud.
77
Dan,

Are there numbers we can call to oppose this?

Is there a specific progay group people can join to boycott this particular doctor and hospital?

Or does one need to be formed?

78
Hmm at least it'll increase my chances of getting a girlfriend, which is good :-)
79
@77

Boycott? I thought fetuses were just parasitic appendages to a female host and therefore subject to her every whim or convenience.
80
This CFH condition is an inherited genetic abnormality. The clear answer is for people to get tested and then make their personal private choice.
81
If a woman chooses to abort, the fetus does not have to live with life long consequences.
We need a Facebook page against Dr. New!
82
Advocates for Informed Choice is a non-profit organization advocating for the legal and human rights of children with intersex conditions or differences of sex development, like the ones in this story. We work in collaboration with bioethicists, doctors, parents, affected adults, and many others. If you are interested in taking action to help protect these children, and to be sure that possible human rights violations are investigated, please join our Facebook page at http://ow.ly/20wTY or sign up for our Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/aiclegal. You can also donate to support our work at http://aiclegal.org/we-need-your-support…
83

Birds do it.
Bees do it...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mam…
84
This use of an "anti-virilising" drug to "pre-treat" incipient lesbianism is pure quackery, since the level of "virilisation" in women has no correlation to sexual orientation other than in the depraved minds of homophobes with a fixation on crude stereotypes. Women arrive on this earth in all varieties, from delicate flowers to brawny bull wrestlers, and one can't tell by looking at them whether they're raging heterosexuals or gold-star lesbians. Period.

The drug does have legitimate obstetric uses:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethaso…

The two legitimate reasons are, as pointed to above, to help mature the lungs of a foetus when premature delivery is imminent, and to treat CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) which can cause anomalous virilisation of the *external* genitalia and can *also* be a life-threatening disease that can cause the death of the foetus or baby.

As the article mentions, the long-term effects on both mother and child are unknown, but the short-term effects on the mother can be severe,. Few mothers I know would hesitate to risk harm to their health for the sake of the life of their unborn child, but to take a similar risk in order to conform to religious hysteria seems profoundly silly. Of course, the one may well imply the other.
85
This use of an "anti-virilising" drug to "pre-treat" incipient lesbianism is pure quackery, since the level of "virilisation" in women has no correlation to sexual orientation other than in the depraved minds of homophobes with a fixation on crude stereotypes. Women arrive on this earth in all varieties, from delicate flowers to brawny bull wrestlers, and one can't tell by looking at them whether they're raging heterosexuals or gold-star lesbians. Period.

The drug does have legitimate obstetric uses:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethaso…

The two legitimate reasons are, as pointed to above, to help mature the lungs of a foetus when premature delivery is imminent, and to treat CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) which can cause anomalous virilisation of the *external* genitalia and can *also* be a life-threatening disease that can cause the death of the foetus or baby.

As the article mentions, the long-term effects on both mother and child are unknown, but the short-term effects on the mother can be severe,. Few mothers I know would hesitate to risk harm to their health for the sake of the life of their unborn child, but to take a similar risk in order to conform to religious hysteria seems profoundly silly. Of course, the one may well imply the other.
86
This use of an "anti-virilising" drug to "pre-treat" incipient lesbianism is pure quackery, since the level of "virilisation" in women has no correlation to sexual orientation other than in the depraved minds of homophobes with a fixation on crude stereotypes. Women arrive on this earth in all varieties, from delicate flowers to brawny bull wrestlers, and one can't tell by looking at them whether they're raging heterosexuals or gold-star lesbians. Period.

The drug does have legitimate obstetric uses:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethaso…

The two legitimate reasons are, as pointed to above, to help mature the lungs of a foetus when premature delivery is imminent, and to treat CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) which can cause anomalous virilisation of the *external* genitalia and can *also* be a life-threatening disease that can cause the death of the foetus or baby.

As the article mentions, the long-term effects on both mother and child are unknown, but the short-term effects on the mother can be severe,. Few mothers I know would hesitate to risk harm to their health for the sake of the life of their unborn child, but to take a similar risk in order to conform to religious hysteria seems profoundly silly. Of course, the one may well imply the other.
87
Sorry about reposting the above. My browser got into a strange frozen state in which it seemingly wouldn't respond.

Dang!
88
Pardon my ungentlemanly-language, but...

RAGE! Fuck this fucking shit! This pissed me off so much that I had difficulty skimming through the article.

This is... No. Just no. This needs to be made illegal NOW.
89
This is SOO wrong. So, you're saying, that just because i'm one of the girls that doesn't want kids, and who likes football and "masculine" things, I'm sick? WTF
90
Who would consent to this?! How is that woman not being thrown out of respectable medicine?
91
This is part of a phenomenon I've noticed, whereby "well-meaning" parents who don't think there's anything wrong with being gay (or short, or big-clitted, or unusual in some way, etc) per se are nevertheless afraid of the "stigma" that comes with such things. After all, even though they themselves are OK with it, the outside world isn't. And they are afraid of "exposing" their child to the cruelty of other kids, and so on. Perhaps they remember their own childhoods, the pain of being taunted by some little asshole on the playground, and they just can't bear the thought of their kids going through the same thing.

So instead of sucking it up as parents and actually imparting a sense of self-worth to their child despite his or her differences, they succumb to fear and end up perpetuating the exact "stigma" they supposedly had no problem with themselves. In other words, they let the little asshole on the playground win.

Parenthood is not for the weak. If you wanna go through life with your tail tucked between your legs, that's fine. But for God's sake, don't have any fucking kids.

92
Becky -
I was one little girl who did have daydreams of being pregnant and having babies.

Shockingly enough, I am also a big ol' dyke.
93
I cannot express my horror at this. My Mom was given DES (di-ethylstilbestrol back in the late '40s early '50s to prevent miscarriages. I have had two episodes of cervical cancer which may have resulted from this, my Mom died of breast cancer and two of my sisters are survivors of breast cancer. Yet they think giving steroidal hormones to pregnant women is a viable experiment? What the hell is wrong with these people! To use this drug for these reasons, these '"medical" people should be subjected to the worst torture imaginable!

First do no harm indeed.
94
As a DES Daughter whose mother was prescribed this first synthetic estrogen to prevent a miscarriage of Yours Truly, I have done some research on the range in intention of doctors who pushed this eventually-recalled wonder drug that was meant to create uber-female babies. Originally introduced in 1938, recalled in 1972 (with recall finally being completed in about 1980 - when drug stores were gone and maximum profits collected??), these drug lords created a domino effect of infertility, extraordinary rates of miscarriage, physical reproductive anomalies, sky rocketing rates of all reproductive cancers, and, in my case, zero interest in reproduction - easier for my emotions given the odds I'd be working against in successfully doing so not to mention the fact that all DES effects are passed on indefinitely down the genetic line. Nice going. No matter the intention of the drug makers or those blindly prescribing them, the slope is slippery and only points downward.
95
Can we say GENOCIDE?
96
Aren't most endocrinologists male? Maybe Dr. Maria New is a lesbian with low maternal instincts, since she has gravitated to a"non-traditional female role."?
97
Feminists will be up in ARMS! Because this is then not just messing with bi or lesbian women , but with women who are straight but have no intention of living there lives as mothers and homemakers.
98
I'd ask if this woman was insane, but the true horror is that she's sane. I wonder if she's the reincarnation of Dr. Josef Mengele?
99
@84

To be clear- we are talking only about CAH which is caused by excess androgens? Because according to wikipedia (that fountain of reliable knowledge) CAH caused by androgens can result in ambiguous genitals, infertility, puberty issues etc. whereas CAH developed from other causes can be life threatening: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_…

If that is the case, then this really is all about sexuality- in terms of physical development and mental and emotional preferences, which is very hard to justify. However if androgen-caused CAH could be life threatening, it would be a very tough choice for the mother- to potentially alter the development of your child emotionally, physically, and mentally in ways that would cause her to grow up as a very different person to who she would originally have been, or to risk life threatening complications as a result of CAH.

But from my rudimentary understanding, the particular form of CAH which is being discussed in the article is specifically focused on sexual development, and is not life threatening?
100
This is just so disgustingly unethical. She should have her medical license revoked.

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