For the past few years, pediatric endocrinologist Maria New has studied a drug called dexamethasone and its effects on Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, a condition that can cause female newborns to have deformed “masculine” genitals. New has also touted the drug’s ability to prevent “abnormal” female behaviors like interest in “men’s professions”, a low desire to have kids, and attraction to women. It just might be a wonder drug to prevent new generations of Ellens. But given how how badly society treats queer kids, maybe we should give parents a break if they want it?
Of course not.
New has been administering dexamethasone to pregnant women without clinical data about the drug’s potential risks and without the oversight and approval of a medical ethics committee. That’s not altogether uncommon, nor is New’s research on the drugs’ long-term psycho-sexual effects. Since dexamethasone affects genital development, she’d be derelict in her duty to ignore the drug’s long-term impact on her patients. Also, there’s no evidence that New has administered the drug as a cure for lesbian kids. But once FDA puts a drug on the market, doctors can prescribe it for anything they see fit.
That New, one of the first female pediatric endocrinologists, labels lesbianism and an interest in “men’s professions” as “abornmal female behavior” is, however, quite troubling. Queers have long worried that the discovery of a “gay gene” could pave the way for eugenicists to “cure” homosexuality as a birth defect (kinda like curing blackness). But any parent who uses their doctor like a fortune teller and takes drugs to squash their unborn child’s potential gayness shouldn’t have kids to begin with. Any doctor who agrees shouldn’t practice medicine.
How about we take this to the next level?
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None of the ethics, however, remove the warranted curiosity that surrounds New’s research, which ultimately suggests there is indeed a biological root for sexuality.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
If you use the Googles and input the term under the images section, the disease basicaly causes the person to have both male and female genitals. If the person is born biologicaly female, a normal solution be would simply remove the male unit.
Yet the lunatic rightwing needs to continue their madness in obsession with all things Gay and jam more pharmecuticals down the throats of innocent kids in their sick quest to “cure” the world of the Gays……….
Eric
What a fucking idiot. How has no one revoked her license to practice yet?!
Blah
And this is why we need Douchebag Police.
Ponyboy
Has she been sued yet?
drums
1. Is it not enough for people to discriminate against adults or even worse children, now they have to start doing it in utero against fetuses?
2. Watch “Gattaca”. You know this shit isn’t going to turn out well.
ForeverGay
Yet we have gay people graduating every year in the sciences from colleges all over the world and they won’t even dare think of a way for gay couples to have children. Haterosexuals have always been a threat to gay people. There has never been a time when haterosexuals let gay people be on an equal playing field with them so don’t think they wouldn’t adort a gay child. Gay people need to be in control of our lives from start to finish. You won’t hear this from a gay activist or in a “gay” publication because they are cowards. They will never acknowledge haterosexual opression. They want to keep the conversation the way haterosexuals want it and that is on christians and conservatives when in fact it’s haterosexuals.
Fitz
So, a cousin of this issue is impending selective-abortions for a fetus with the “gay gene”. Which has led me to reconsider my fierce abortion-rights stance.
julie
@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS: Or not mutilate a newborn child and let them grow up as they are. The child can elect for surgery when they’re older.
Ash
Why doesn’t she try to cure cancer or some other life-threating disease instead of being a friggen bigot and trying to change a person’s natural sexuality?
And “men’s profession’s”?!?! Umm, weren’t doctors and scientist considered “men’s professions” at one point? Lady, we don’t need people like you setting things back to the middle ages; we’re fine where we are right now.
So, please, go use your powers for good and not evil.
Dave
As much as my instinct is to freak out—it’s reprehensible that we are wasting research on crap like curing fetuses of the gay—I can’t really, consistent with my pro-choice views, condemn any parent who opts to do this. While I disagree with them, if it’s within their rights to terminate a potential personhood, it’s surely within their rights to do less by modifying that personhood.
Ultimately, a potentially gay fetus is not a gay person, and altering a potentially gay fetus isn’t “curing” a gay person.
I’d certainly tell these parents that I don’t regret being gay, and that I would never change if I could, but ultimately pro-choice includes choices I would never make myself.
Dollie
An interest in “male professions?” Funny, I could have sworn my calendar said “2010” this morning!
@Fitz: Funny you mention that. Though I am passionately pro-choice, I find myself contemplating this often. While I don’t consider abortion to fall anywhere near murder, the “murdering of diversity” would certainly prove detrimental.
“But any parent who uses their doctor like a fortune teller and takes drugs to squash their unborn child’s potential gayness shouldn’t have kids to begin with.” My sentiments exactly, Queerty!
blotto
There’s a great natural remedy…. Punani.
I’m no lesbian, but I find that a little bit of punani in the morning, a healthy breakfast, and moderate exercise usually keeps me from lusting after women throughout the day.
If I were a lesbian trying to “curb the urge”… I’d try punani before trying prescription remedies.
blotto
I have an idea, though. What if someone created an anti-gay prenatal herbal supplement that was just like oregano in gel caps. You could sell it to millions of Americans for a very high price tag.
Then you could turn around and invest that money in a queer NASCAR team. Could you imagine if a rainbow powered NASCAR team dominated the sport? And then if you told them the team was financed by money they spent on vitamin supplements!?
People wouldn’t know what to do.
AIC Intern
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…
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Evan
“Men’s professions” – like medicine?
Ash
@Evan: Exactly!
Does she even think before she talks? Well, I guess not or else she’d see the hypocrisy in her words.
gilber
she seems pretty convinced that humans are rats.injecting female rats with estrogen or testosterone is supposed to produce a change in what they call normal sexual behavior,like lordosis in female rats.if a gay gene exist then why not a heterosexual one.how can you prove that a male heterosexual gene is a masculine trait and not a feminine tendency to be receptive and sensible to the other sex nerves.what kind of masculine male would think that he can feel the other sex body parts without ever feeling feminized.the jargon fabricated by the heterosexual elite is ingeniously designed to produce all this sort of confusion.it has been the task of many philosophers,psychologists and theologists to sophisticate it.a female that lick a vagina is called a dyke,a male that lick a vagina is called a real man,but the experience is the same for both and is called lesbianism.
Disgusted Gay American
sounds like she’s trying to find the “June Cleaver” Gene – you know – where the female child comes out wearing a “twirl” dress / heels,and a set of Pearls….and babies 1st words are “Yes Dear”
fuzz
Oh, the irony. A woman in a man’s profession wanting other women to go back to the kitchen, and using steroids to do it. It’s almost like she’s a plant from fundamentalist right-wingers. And hey, steroids are evil, scary things, unless you’re pregnant and want a straight baby.
mcc
As much as what is going on through this woman’s head is reprehensible, the fact that there is treatment for adrenal congenital hyperplasia is big news. I don’t want intersex advocates coming here and getting mad that intersex doesn’t need to be “cured,” but there is the reality of this issue. If I were to have a daughter diagnosed with the disorder, I’d want to have treatment for it as well. I would have no problem with a lesbian daughter, but the disease doesn’t make you a lesbian necessarily. It’s an autosomal disorder that makes your body’s reactions to sex steroids abnormal due to enzyme deficiency, and can lead to girls being born with clitori that strongly resemble undersized penises. Other than a host of other problems with your body, you are born with “ambiguous genitalia,” which I’m sure none of you would wish on your child.
And on that topic, while I believe that this woman probably meant abnormal in a negative way, you have to understand that abnormal is not necessarily a bad thing. We are, as gay men (who I’m assuming the majority of this audience is), abnormal. Just like being a genius or even having an above average IQ makes you abnormal. Just like being rich makes you abnormal. The normal American is a fat Christian slob with a dead end job. Thank god for my being abnormal. In a strict scientific sense, abnormal simply means you deviate from normal trends.
People are so afraid of scientific advancement. I’m sure there is a peer reviewed and scientifically sound article this researcher wrote on the effects of the treatments during testing. Granted, long term effects haven’t been shown yet, but that’s how all new drugs on the market work. Instead of being afraid of people curing lesbianism, why not just consider that they may be trying to cure a congenital disorder that causes a great deal of pain to a large number of people afflicted with it.
P
if all this is true, then all we can hope is that the ‘gay gene’ adapt/mutate/resist this “medicine.” after all, gays are necessary for the survival of the human species!
Ivan
Snake oil salesmen have been around for generations – this, although not new, is a troubling new take on this type of charlatanism.
B
No. 12 · blotto wrote, “There’s a great natural remedy…. Punani.”
Heard copious quantities of garlic are pretty effective too at curbing this “problem”. Rumor has it that Puccini’s wife would give him a meal with lots of garlic in it before he conducted an opera – she knew he had a tendency to chase after the sopranos and the garlic made the first step – kissing – unpleasant enough to keep the sopranos away.
Queer Supremacist
@blotto: NASCAR already has Jeff Gordon.
@P: Gays are the only reason Western Civilization is anything remotely like civilization.
David
@Dave:
It makes me really uncomfortable reading your post.. mainly because I agree with some of it :/