The Anti-Lesbian Drug

[Rebel]

The Anti-Lesbian Drug.

Well. Medical science is getting close. Apparently they are very close to a 'cure' or a 'prevention' for lesbianism and uppity women.

Maria New, a pediatric endocrinologist, has in the past used a drug called dexamethasone on pregnant women to prevent congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). CAH is essentially a genetic disorder that is believed to be caused from the exposure to masculinizing hormones that can cause a deepening of the voice, facial hair, and ambiguous genitalia (e.g. an enlarged clitoris).
Now New is also experimenting in the possibility of using prenatal dexamethasone to prevent lesbianism in CAH girls, as well as from rejecting motherhood, and to make them uninterested in pursuing traditionally 'masculine' careers.

So to all the girls on this board, if New is ever given permission to actually do this for all girls in the womb, people like us with opinions and goals in life will be a thing of the past. How dare we want to be anything other than Stepford Wives with 2.75 children?

And is it just me, or are you just a little amused by the fact that the person sproating this crap is a woman in a traditionally masculine career (medicine and research)?

Thoughts? Opinions?

Though this does put forward the fact/idea that homosexual people are born that way.

[Hobbs]

Actually, in Russia and some other countries, medicine is a traditionally feminine role.

[BlaqueKatt]

CAH is essentially a genetic disorder that is believed to be caused from the exposure to masculinizing hormones that can cause a deepening of the voice, facial hair, and ambiguous genitalia (e.g. an enlarged clitoris).

that is a severely simplistic view-it can be life-threatening-and they know what causes it not just "believed"-it's genetic-caused by the malfunctioning of the adrenal glands. More info here-the mayo clinic

So to all the girls on this board, if New is ever given permission to actually do this for all girls in the womb, people like us with opinions and goals in life will be a thing of the past. How dare we want to be anything other than Stepford Wives with 2.75 children?

did you even read the article you pulled this from or hoping we don't?

"Even a casual reading of New’s papers, however, shows that she is not advocating the use of prenatal dex to turn all female fetuses, or even CAH fetuses, into Stepford Wives. Her aim seems to be to treat CAH girls so that not only their genitalia, but also their brains, are clearly female, something she believes will make life easier for them. In her eyes, she is simply righting a genetic wrong, giving CAH girls the biology that a genetic mutation sent awry."

And of course women with goals and opinions are all lesbians with CAH-opinions and goals are NOT in any manner related to how much testosterone or estrogen you have.

ask yourself this: If this were a treatment for any other genetic disorder-say cystic fibrosis, or Marfan's syndrome-would I be all up in arms about it? Or is it merely because it affects hormones.


Prenatal androgens, they argue, affect sexual orientation, with the result that although “most [CAH] women were heterosexual,” the “rates of bisexual and homosexual orientation were increased above controls ... and correlated with the degree of prenatal androgenization.” From that, Dreger and her collaborators infer that New is proposing that women pregnant with a CAH daughter use prenatal dexamethasone to keep the girl from being gay.


so their inferring it-by the way infer means to guess* or speculate*-which is not *OMG she hates teh gheys*. It's "we think because she did two studies on girls with CAH, and one showed a higher than control amount of homosexual or bisexual tendencies corralating with with differing hormone levels(corralation does not equal causation), and another about normalizing the hormone production of the adrenal glands in females with CAH, we're going to guess the worst case scenerio, because we're biased.

*guess-an opinion that one reaches or to which one commits oneself on the basis of probability alone or in the absence of any evidence whatever.
*speculate-To assume to be true without conclusive evidence

[Rebel]

Sorry, I’ve just been having this argument with people over facebook for a bit.
Let me make my position clearer. It is more an argument of ethics and questionable behaviour.

I have no problem with dexamethasone being used to treat those with CAH. In it's proper use it can be highly effective in diminishing the abnormalities caused by higher than normal androgens.

But that is in fully formed children and adults.

Dexamethasone is a Class C steroid, and it is not currently known if it is harmful to unborn children. It is recommended that if you are pregnant or breast-feeding that you do not take this drug. Using dexamethasone prenatally is an 'off-label' use, meaning, it is not being used in a way approved to be safe by the FDA.

Currently, all trials Maria New is running in regards to dexamethasone and fetuses diagnosed with CAH are not approved by the FDA. Pregnant mothers being given the drug are not enrolled in controlled clinical trails and the dosage and effects are not being closely monitored. It is also unclear as to whether or not the expectant mothers are fully aware of what drug they are being given nor what sort of side effects they (or their unborn child) might experience. In effect, they are being experimented on without proper consent.

Last week, a task force came together to discuss the use of dexamethasone, and whether or not what New is doing is right or even necessary.
From the Endocrine Society’s meeting in San Diego last week

"The goal is to prevent ambiguity in CAH females", said task force chair Phyllis Speiser, MD, Schneider Children's Hospital and New York University School of Medicine, New York. "The risks include long term and short term safety concerns for infants and mothers and the recognition that seven out of eight infants receive no benefit."

and

Prenatal use of the drug is associated with low birth weight, central nervous system effects, cleft palate, liver enlargement, a decrease in fetal beta cells, and other negative outcomes in animals.

Only one controlled study has been previously done regarding the prenatal use of dexamethasone. It was conducted in Sweden, but they only included 26 participants. No conclusive evidence was found that the dexamethasone worked in 'normalizing' the CAH female infants, but they did find some mild behavioral and cognitive deficits in children whose mothers had been treated.

"We just don't know what we are doing to these kids," says Dr. Walter Miller, the chief of endocrinology at University of California, San Francisco. "It's not sufficient to say, The baby was born and had all fingers and toes, so it's fine."

Beyond the 'off-label' and unsupervised application of dexamethasone as previously prescribed by Maria New (she doesn't prescribe it personally anymore, but instead councils them and sends patients to like-minded doctors), she has said in a recently published paper;

“Gender-related behaviors, namely childhood play, peer association, career and leisure time preferences in adolescence and adulthood, maternalism, aggression, and sexual orientation become masculinized in 46,XX girls and women with 21OHD deficiency [CAH]. These abnormalities have been attributed to the effects of excessive prenatal androgen levels on the sexual differentiation of the brain and later on behavior.” Nimkarn and New continue: “We anticipate that prenatal dexamethasone therapy will reduce the well-documented behavioral masculinization...”

What exactly are perceived as masculine type play and behaviours these days? And why is such activity considered abnormal?

In a 2001 presentation to the CARES foundation regarding her treatments for CAH females, she said;

‘The challenge here is ... to see what could be done to restore this baby to the normal female appearance which would be compatible with her parents presenting her as a girl, with her eventually becoming somebody’s wife, and having normal sexual development, and becoming a mother....’

It was probably poor judgement on her part, but it was unnecessary to imply the child's future as a girl in this way. It may have been to implore to the parents of a CAH child (who doesn’t want their child to be considered normal?), but it has absolutely no standing for debate in the medical surroundings to speculate about the final ‘normal’ actions of the patient, merely the medical help and control of a hormonal imbalance they can provide.

I think what gay and lesbian organizations are reacting to is News poorly worded statements and her comments about the raised levels of androgens in CAH girls, being compared to her finding of slightly raised androgen levels in 1/3 of the lesbian women she has tested. But she has not stated as to whether the lesbians with the slightly raised levels act masculine in nature of if her hypothesis is based primarily on the lack of interest in male companions. None of the females she has treated previously have reached adulthood yet, thus not proving her hypothesis, and many of her subjects were never followed up on. Her findings are incomplete and questionable.

The lasting question is, is News determination to use dexamethasone prenatally for the benefit of the child, or for the parent? If what she is doing is right, then why does she seen unwilling to follow proper research guidelines? And why does she feel the need to include the studies of lesbianism into her findings at all?

I hope that cleared it up. I didn't want to come across as an uneducated reactionary. I just have a problem with (semi) renegade doctors. It's unclear where their line is.

[BlaqueKatt]

I just have a problem with (semi) renegade doctors. It's unclear where their line is.

that's fair-however by the standards of the medical community-she isn't one

Using dexamethasone prenatally is an 'off-label' use, meaning, it is not being used in a way approved to be safe by the FDA.

Currently, all trials Maria New is running in regards to dexamethasone and fetuses diagnosed with CAH are not approved by the FDA. Pregnant mothers being given the drug are not enrolled in controlled clinical trails and the dosage and effects are not being closely monitored. It is also unclear as to whether or not the expectant mothers are fully aware of what drug they are being given nor what sort of side effects they (or their unborn child) might experience. In effect, they are being experimented on without proper consent.

fen/Phen for weight loss was an off label use-I was given an antidepressant for migraines(yup that was off label too)-it's not considered illegal, malpractice, or unethical to do so, nor is it considered "experimentation", nor do the patients need to be informed according to the FDA and the courts-so legally, what she's doing is fine, ethically as well according to the greater medical community as well.


more info on off label usage of drugs here-including legality, ethics, and why it is not considered "illegal experimentation"

another example of off label usage of a drug that is proven to be dangerous-Cytotec-also known as misoprostol-only approved use is to prevent ulcers-it's used "off label" to induce labor and to "ripen/soften the cervix" prior to medical abortion-also used off label in conjunction with RU-486-this drug(cytotec) has caused uterine ruptures, severe vaginal bleeding, retained placenta, shock and even fetal and maternal death(the list of complications is from a letter sent to the FDA by the manufacturer-they do not want it used this way). These patients are not given this information, or told it's not approved to induce labor-because "that would be alarmist"