Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Doctor Treating Pregnant Women with Drug to Prevent Lesbianism

I guess something like this should have been expected, yet it is very frightening - especially since the doctor pushing (pictured at right) this treatment regime candidly doesn't (1) know if it will work and (2) doesn't know what unexpected consequences and side effects/damage it might cause. My mother took DES when pregnant with me because it supposedly reduced miscarriages. It turns out that it did no such thing, but it DID cause unusual cancers and other problems in the children of many mothers who took DES. Given this story on ending lesbianism, one has to wonder when the Christo-fascists will begin also demanding research on drugs that will make all children white, blond and blue eyed. This "research" has all the hallmarks of something out of the plot of Frankenstein. As for the parents who would take such drugs, I would propose that they probably should not be parents in the first place. Here are some highlights via Dan Savage at The Stranger:
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Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New—of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Florida International University—isn't just trying to prevent lesbianism by treating pregnant women with an experimental hormone. She's also trying to prevent the births of girls who display an "abnormal" disinterest in babies, don't want to play with girls' toys or become mothers, and whose "career preferences" are deemed to "masculine." Unbelievable:
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Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Florida International University, and her long-time collaborator, psychologist Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, of Columbia University, have been tracing evidence for the influence of prenatal androgens in sexual orientation.... They specifically point to reasons to believe that it is prenatal androgens that have an impact on the development of sexual orientation. The authors write, "Most women were heterosexual, but the rates of bisexual and homosexual orientation were increased above controls . . . and correlated with the degree of prenatal androgenization.”
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In a paper published just this year in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, New and her colleague, pediatric endocrinologist Saroj Nimkarn of Weill Cornell Medical College, go further, constructing low interest in babies and men—and even interest in what they consider to be men’s occupations and games—as “abnormal,” and potentially preventable with prenatal dex:
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“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...”
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It seems more than a little ironic to have New, one of the first women pediatric endocrinologists and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, constructing women who go into “men’s” fields as “abnormal.” And yet it appears that New is suggesting that the “prevention” of “behavioral masculinization” is a benefit of treatment to parents with whom she speaks about prenatal dex.
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So no more Elena Kagans, no more Donna Shalalas, no more Martina Navratilovas, no more k.d. langs, no more Constance McMillens—because all women must grow up to suck dick, crank out babies, and do women's work. And the existence of adult women who are not interested in "becoming someone's wife" and "making babies" constitutes a medical emergency that requires women who are currently pregnant to be treated with an experimental hormone. Otherwise their daughters could grow up to, um, be nominated to sit on the Supreme Court, serve as cabinet secretaries, take 18 Grand Slam singles titles, win Grammies, or take their girlfriends to prom. And we can't have that.
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UPDATE: A little more about dex from Alice Dreger: The specific drug we're talking about, dexamethasone, is not a benign drug for pregnant women, nor for the children exposed in utero. The studies we do have on the early prenatal use of "dex" are worrisome. The number of women and children missing from the follow-up studies of this drug use is more worrisome still. This drug is unequivocally experimental and risky.
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Make no mistake: In spite of Dr. Maria New's outrageous FDA-regulation-flaunting claims that this off-label drug use "has been found safe for mother and child," it ain't been. New is a rogue pediatrician whom medical societies have been nudging (and sometimes yelling at) for years
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This is a worrisome development that ought to be stopped. One can only wonder how many women could have their lives - and health - profoundly damaged by such experimental research by someone who apparently believes that she can play God.

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