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[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Toughy

I expected they would go after Justice Marshall......so no big surprise to me. Those old white guys are racist to their core and only like black folks like what's his name....crap I really can't remember his name....google is my friend..........Justice Thomas who has the brains of a tadpole and has never asked one question in his time on the Court.

The only activist Judges they like are the right wing ultra-conservative ones........4 of the 5 most conservative Justices ever are sitting on the Supreme Court right now.

Yes, to be expected. And I am now thinking that after Kagan is in, Bader Ginsburg will soon retire, or pass away. There is hope! Although, Obama will again go for the middle.

Argh... Justice Thomas is an idiot as well as a sexual predator. So many other African Americans would have been better, even if ultra-conservative. mental giant, he is not.

Of course Kagan and the DADT history has been at the GOP epicenter of questioning. I liked that she just said she still stood firmly with her decision on that.... period.

Someone please help me not try to reach in the TV and grab Sessions by the neck....

[Andrew, Jr.]

Should retirement age be raised and benefits cut for the wealthy? A question being asked on CNN today.

[Corkey]

Originally Posted by Andrew, Jr.

Should retirement age be raised and benefits cut for the wealthy? A question being asked on CNN today.

The question was raised by Boenner (sp) a Republican asshat who wants to keep his money, benefits, and deny others theirs.

[Andrew, Jr.]

Thanks Corkey. I couldn't quite get it out. I can't find my Actos and my sugar is outta wack. It wasn't CNN but HLN. They are asking the public to call in, or email them with their opinions.

[Toughy]

What Boner (fake spray tan man) said was that he thought the retirement age should be raised to 70 because we live longer now......

seriously that is what he said......

I want corporate welfare to end. I want folks who are millionaires and billionaires paying 35% in income tax with NO deductions period. I pay more in taxes than the richest 5 men in this country.....most of them end up not paying ANY...ZERO.....taxes.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Corkey

The question was raised by Boenner (sp) a Republican asshat who wants to keep his money, benefits, and deny others theirs.

You know, here's the thing. I wouldn't mind being asked to work until 70 or 75 (which I plan on doing anyway) to buy the Baby Boom generation some time with Social Security and Medicare I would be happy to do so. I'm 43, it is not unreasonable for me to expect to be capable of working into my seventies. In fact, my 'third act' career plan--for which I am getting my degree(s) now--actually is predicated on me having another 20 to 25 years of work *after* I get out of school in 2014 or 2015.

In fact, I wish that the President would ask that of my generation because that would buy Social Security and Medicare the time they need to recover from the big hit the preceding generation is going to give it. But NOT for the war. Also, I think that this should only apply to people born AFTER 1965. If you are within 15 years of retirement, it would be inhumane to ask that of you but for those of us who have two decades before retirement now, what is another decade?

Cheers
Aj

[Corkey]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

You know, here's the thing. I wouldn't mind being asked to work until 70 or 75 (which I plan on doing anyway) to buy the Baby Boom generation some time with Social Security and Medicare I would be happy to do so. I'm 43, it is not unreasonable for me to expect to be capable of working into my seventies. In fact, my 'third act' career plan--for which I am getting my degree(s) now--actually is predicated on me having another 20 to 25 years of work *after* I get out of school in 2014 or 2015.

In fact, I wish that the President would ask that of my generation because that would buy Social Security and Medicare the time they need to recover from the big hit the preceding generation is going to give it. But NOT for the war. Also, I think that this should only apply to people born AFTER 1965. If you are within 15 years of retirement, it would be inhumane to ask that of you but for those of us who have two decades before retirement now, what is another decade?

Cheers
Aj

I can agree to a point with this AJ, but I also was promised 65 was the year I could retire. Now that I'm disabled it isn't an issue, but when one works all their adult life, with the agreement that in their senior years they can retire and enjoy what is left, then a senator who has absolutely no idea what it is to work long hard hours as in construction, or as a shrimper and other jobs that traditionally don't have any benefits attached to them in pensions, asks hard working folks to go another 5 years, it irks me to no end. I can't see asking these folks to work till they are 70. If one is able, and doesn't have a job that can potentially cripple them just in doing the job then I can see it. But to require it of all, um no. I do think it should be voluntary, with no penalty if one has to retire sooner due to their health.

[Delish]

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_N...ntent=FaceBook

[Delish]

http://extratv.warnerbros.com/2010/0..._to_replace_me

[Greyson]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100701/...y_leader/print


Icelandic leader in milestone gay marriage

Louise Nordstrom, Associated Press Writer


STOCKHOLM – Iceland's prime minister made history last week when she wed her girlfriend, becoming the world's first head of government to enter a gay marriage.

But fellow Nordic nations hardly noticed when 67-year-old Johanna Sigurdardottir tied the knot with her longtime partner — a milestone that would still, despite advances in gay rights, be all but inconceivable elsewhere.

Scandinavia has had a long tradition of tolerance — and cross-dressing lawmakers and gay bishops have become part of the landscape.

"There is some kind of passion for social justice here," respected cross-dressing Swedish lawmaker Fredrick Federley said. "That everybody should be treated the same."

Gay rights activists said Europe in general has a better record on accepting gays at the highest levels of government than the United States.

"In the current climate of U.S. public opinion it is impossible to imagine a U.S. president who is openly gay and who marries their longtime partner," said Peter Tatchell, spokesman for the London-based gay human rights group Outrage.

"In Europe the reaction is completely different — people just don't care."

Although no openly gay American has made a potentially winning run for president, gay men and lesbians have made significant advances in recent years in winning other elected offices in the United States, often while being open about their same-sex partners.

In Europe, the situation varies.

Several top-level politicians are openly gay, including Sweden's Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren and Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, considered a possible contender for the 2012 presidential elections.

But a gay head of government would be impossible in strong Catholic nations.

"We will never see a gay prime minister in Italy. The power of the Catholic Church is too strong," said Giuseppina Massallo, 60, from Sicily who lives in Rome. "We have institutions that make us believe that ... being homosexual is simply not the right thing to do."

The 32-year-old Federley occasionally swaps his parliamentary suit and tie for heavy makeup and revealing dresses as drag queen Ursula. Federley has been openly gay for nine years and his sexual identity has never been an issue in politics.

His cross-dressing only hit the headlines when critics in February questioned which Federley accepted an alleged media junket to the Canary Islands: Fredrik the lawmaker or Ursula the drag queen?

Gays in politics would be inconceivable in Africa, where 37 countries have anti-gay laws and where Zimbabwe's leader Robert Mugabe has described same-sex partners as "lower than dogs and pigs."

Ugandans were shocked to hear of Sigurdardottir's marriage to her partner with whom she had been in a registered relationship since 2002. The partnership was converted into a marriage on Sunday, when a new law legalizing same-sex marriage went into force. The Icelandic leader has two adult children from a previous marriage.

"Their society is finished, they have no morals," said Uganda's ruling-party spokeswoman, Mary Karooro Okurutu, described the marriage as "disgusting."

The East African nation frowns on homosexuality and is considering proposed legislation that would impose the death penalty for some gays. The bill has sparked protests in London, New York and Washington.

The Nordic countries have been at the forefront of gay freedoms.

In 1989, Denmark became the first country in the world to allow registered gay partnerships and Sweden's Lutheran church last year ordained its first openly gay bishop.

All five Nordic nations reached top-ten rankings in a 2010 study of the legal situation for lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Europe.

Even Finland, the remotest country in the region, which has been slower than its neighbors in adapting to Scandinavian lifestyle trends scored six out of 10 points.

Russia and Ukraine both received bottom-rankings in the 2010 Rainbow Europe index by ILGA-Europe, a non-governmental umbrella organization representing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups.

Even in the neighboring Baltic countries that have a long history of dealings with the Nordics, gay tolerance is generally low.

Same-sex marriages are not legal and are generally frowned upon in Estonia, Latvia and particularly in predominantly Catholic Lithuania.

Gay pride marches in Latvia and Lithuania typically attract crowds of angry counter-demonstrators far larger than the marches themselves.

Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip concedes he is "somewhat conservative" on the question of gay marriages.

"I consider marriage a holy matrimony between a man and a woman," Ansip said Wednesday. "But I do fully accept that same-sex partners possess the same kind of legal guarantees as registered marriages currently do."

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

You know, here's the thing. I wouldn't mind being asked to work until 70 or 75 (which I plan on doing anyway) to buy the Baby Boom generation some time with Social Security and Medicare I would be happy to do so. I'm 43, it is not unreasonable for me to expect to be capable of working into my seventies. In fact, my 'third act' career plan--for which I am getting my degree(s) now--actually is predicated on me having another 20 to 25 years of work *after* I get out of school in 2014 or 2015.

In fact, I wish that the President would ask that of my generation because that would buy Social Security and Medicare the time they need to recover from the big hit the preceding generation is going to give it. But NOT for the war. Also, I think that this should only apply to people born AFTER 1965. If you are within 15 years of retirement, it would be inhumane to ask that of you but for those of us who have two decades before retirement now, what is another decade?

Cheers
Aj

I certainly wish you those years of employment. However, not everyone can do this as disabled people, etc. We live longer and in most cases, much stronger and healthier, but not everyone. Things happen to people, we never really know what is around a corner.

I'm in this generation and paid my dues along the way so that generations ahead of me had a solvent SS system (although, one needs other retirement planning as well). Glad to do so. I am not just a little tired of hearing about how younger generations should not be saddled with this. Then, again, I view this system in a more global manner in terms of a society taking responsibility for it's elders during modern times. The US is youth oriented and does not hold elders in esteem in general. But, that is for another thread.

I continue to pay property taxes and other taxes that support education and other services needed by people younger than myself. Glad to do this, too. It isn't like one hits retirement and is not taxed in ways that support younger people. Frankly, I would like to see my tax dollars be going for the things that really do help younger generations build a future, such as education.

I guess I also feel that retirement ought to be an individual choice with preparation.

Now, I am about 3 years from actually being able to draw my SS (at 62), then Medi-Care at 65 (and will continue to pay for supplemental health insurance). I am not just a little pissed with people wanting to mess with what I worked for. Yes, I have other forms of income, but many do not and no matter how healthy one is, age does bring on health issues and expenses.

[Nat]

Doctor Treating Pregnant Women With Experimental Drug To Prevent Lesbianism

Two weeks ago, Time magazine reported on our ongoing efforts to protect the rights of pregnant women offered dexamethasone, a risky Class C steroid aimed at female fetuses that may have a form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). It appears many women and children exposed to dexamethasone through this off-label use are not being enrolled in controlled clinical trials with IRB oversight, in spite of a persistent consensus among experts that this is the only way this treatment should be happening.

We have learned that, this August, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism will publish an expert consensus again stating this use of prenatal dexamethasone should only happen via IRB-approved clinical trials through research centers large enough to obtain meaningful data. An announcement of the consensus came at the Endocrine Society’s meeting in San Diego last week (and an earlier version is available here).

This consensus has been endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society, the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology, the European Society of Endocrinology, the Society of Pediatric Urology, the Androgen Excess and PCOS Society, and the CARES Foundation. It was reached after review of the existing literature and consultation with researchers indicated significant cause for concern, including the fact that most of the children treated prenatally have been absent from follow-up studies.

The majority of researchers and clinicians interested in the use of prenatal “dex” focus on preventing development of ambiguous genitalia in girls with CAH. CAH results in an excess of androgens prenatally, and this can lead to a “masculinizing” of a female fetus’s genitals. One group of researchers, however, seems to be suggesting that prenatal dex also might prevent affected girls from turning out to be homosexual or bisexual.

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. In a paper entitled “Sexual Orientation in Women with Classical or Non-Classical Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia as a Function of Degree of Prenatal Androgen Excess” published in 2008 in Archives of Sexual Behavior, Meyer-Bahlburg and New (with two others) gather evidence of “a dose-response relationship of androgens with sexual orientation” through a study of women with various forms of CAH.

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.”

They go on to suggest that the work might offer some insight into the influence of prenatal hormones on the development of sexual orientation in general. “That this may apply also to sexual orientation in at least a subgroup of women is suggested by the fact that earlier research has repeatedly shown that about one-third of homosexual women have (modestly) increased levels of androgens.” They “conclude that the findings support a sexual-differentiation perspective involving prenatal androgens on the development of sexual orientation.”

And it isn’t just that many women with CAH have a lower interest, compared to other women, in having sex with men. In another paper entitled “What Causes Low Rates of Child-Bearing in Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?” Meyer-Bahlburg writes that “CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls’ behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: “Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior.”

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:

“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 . . .”

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. In a 2001 presentation to the CARES Foundation (a videotape of which we have), New seemed to suggest to parents that one of the goals of treatment of girls with CAH is to turn them into wives and mothers. Showing a slide of the ambiguous genitals of a girl with CAH, New told the assembled parents:

“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. And she has all the machinery for motherhood, and therefore nothing should stop that, if we can repair her surgically and help her psychologically to continue to grow and develop as a girl.”

In the Q&A period, during a discussion of prenatal dex treatments, an audience member asked New, “Isn’t there a benefit to the female babies in terms of reducing the androgen effects on the brain?” New answered, “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.” At that point, she’ll know if they are interested in taking men and making babies.

In a previous Bioethics Forum post, Alice Dreger noted an instance of a prospective father using knowledge of the fraternal birth order effect to try to avoid having a gay son by a surrogate pregnancy. There may be other individualized instances of parents trying to ensure heterosexual children before birth. But the use of prenatal dexamethasone treatments for CAH represents, to our knowledge, the first systematic medical effort attached to a “paradigm” of attempting in utero to reduce rates of homosexuality, bisexuality, and “low maternal interest.”

Researchers working on an interesting project tend to suggest how their work could have broader implications. This is no exception: the 2008 paper by Meyer-Bahlburg et al hints that variation in sexual orientation beyond the population of girls with CAH might also be partly explainable through prenatal androgen exposure. Such reasoning could lead to the pursuit of other “screening” and “treatment” methods for manipulating intrauterine environments.

While everyone has been busy watching geneticists at the frontier of the brave new world, none of us seem to have noticed what some pediatricians are up to. Perhaps it is because so many people are fascinated by the idea of a “gay gene” that prenatal “lesbian hormones” have slipped past public scrutiny. In any case, we think Nimkarn and New’s “paradigm for prenatal diagnosis and treatment” suggests a reason why activists for gay and lesbian rights should be wary of believing that claims for the innateness of homosexuality will lead to liberation. Evidence that homosexual orientation is inborn could, instead, very well lead to new means of pathologization and prevention, as it seems to be in the case we’ve been tracking.

Needless to say, we do not think it reasonable or just to use medicine to try to prevent homosexual and bisexual orientations. Nor do we think it reasonable to use medicine to prevent uppity women, like the sort who might raise just these kinds of alarms. Consider that our declaration of our conflict of interest.

Alice Dreger is a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Ellen K. Feder is an associate professor and acting chair of American University’s Department of Philosophy and Religion. Anne Tamar-Mattis, an attorney, is the executive director of Advocates for Informed Choice, which employs legal advocacy to support the rights of children with intersex conditions or disorders of sex development.



Read more: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bio...#ixzz0sU0BA0dy

[Blaze]

Reflecting off of Nat posting, this was on our news tonight also. Things that make you go hmmmm.

Can homosexuality be prevented in the womb?

Updated at 04:38 PM today


Tags:
healthcheck, christi myers

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Christi Myers
More: Bio, News Team


HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Can homosexuality be prevented in the womb? The first known experiment to do just that is underway and it's stirring controversy.

Related Content

more: Ask your Healthcheck question
more: Medical story search

A group of New York clinicians is gearing this prenatal treatment toward girls and women with a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia. CAH is a serious hormonal disruption that sometimes results in ambiguous genitalia.
Previous research has shown that females born with CAH have increased rates of tomboyism and lesbianism. A steroid called dexamethasone, or DEX, has shown some success in preventing this. It's why researchers in this study believe it has promise in preventing girls from turning out to be homosexual or bisexual.
(Copyright ©2010 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

[Softhearted]

source: http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/05/...cine-not-well/

"How Do American Journalists Cover Medicine? Not Very Well

By Scott Hensley
Journalist, heal thyself.

When it comes to covering the medical news of the day, journalists could do a much better job.

An independent analysis of 500 stories about medical topics by major consumer print and broadcast outlets in the U.S. found “journalists usually fail to discuss costs, the quality of the evidence, the existence of alternative options, and the absolute magnitude of potential benefits and harms.”

The findings from 22 months of media scrutiny appear in the current issue of PLoS Medicine. The work was done by HealthNewsReview.org, which started looking over our shoulder in April 2006.

Here’s a table from the PLoS paper that catalogs our shortcomings:

(sorry, the image did not want to download... argh!!!)

As self-respecting journalists, we asked who’s behind this schoolmarmish outfit and how do they do what they do? The reviewers are a bunch of doctors and public health types, and their painstaking process for deciding how vigorously to wag fingers at us is described here.

A reformed journalist named Gary Schwitzer, author of the PLoS paper, serves as the third reviewer of each piece. He’s also publisher of the reviews, a professor of journalism at the University of Minnesota, and, gasp, a blogger. Maybe that makes him a peer reviewer?

What about funding, you ask? Any hidden agenda? A-ha! All this journalistic second-guessing can be laid at that feet of that dastardly quality guru Jack Wennberg from Dartmouth. The financial support for the graders comes from the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, founded in 1989 by Wennberg and colleagues.

Bonus Prescription: What can be done? A PLoS editorial that accompanies Schwitzer’s paper calls the findings “a wake-up call for all of us involved in disseminating health research—researchers, academic institutions, journal editors, reporters, and media organizations—to work collaboratively to improve the standards of health reporting.”


Another article:
source: http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/05/...research-hype/

"Academic Medical Centers Often Guilty of Research Hype

By Sarah Rubenstein
The media may be guilty of exaggerating the results of medical studies, but academic medical centers that hype the results aren’t blameless themselves.

A piece out in the Annals of Internal Medicine takes a look at press releases that academic medical centers sent out about their research, examining such details as whether they gave information on the studies’ size, hard results numbers and cautions about how solid the results are and what they mean. The conclusion: The press releases “often promote research that has uncertain relevance to human health and do not provide key facts or acknowledge important limitations.”

The authors, led by Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth, looked at releases from EurekAlert issued by 20 academic medical centers and their affiliates in 2005. (EurekAlert compiles many press releases and sends them to journalists.) The researchers found that 58 out of 200 releases, or 29%, exaggerated the findings’ importance.

Exaggeration was more common in releases about animal studies than human studies. Out of the 200 releases, 195 included quotes from the scientific investigators: 26% of them were “judged to overstate research importance,” the authors write.

One example they cite: A release from the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah that had to do with a study of mice with skin cancer and was titled, “Scientists inhibit cancer gene.” It quotes the lead investigator, Matthew Topham, saying that the “implication is that a drug therapy could be developed to reduce tumors caused by Ras without significant side effects.” This was an exaggeration, the Dartmouth folks write, because “neither treatment efficacy nor tolerability in humans was assessed.”

We put in a call to Topham, who told us he thought the critique itself was an exaggeration. Though he acknowledged the release could have explicitly said the results wouldn’t necessarily be the same in humans, “we were very careful to say we had done this in mice.” The word “implication” used in the press release “suggests that we have not done anything in humans,” he says, adding he assumed it was common knowledge that animal results don’t always translate into human results.

The authors of the Annals piece didn’t look at how often exaggerated press releases actually resulted in exaggerated news reports. However, they wrote, “We believe that academic centers contribute to poor media coverage and are forgoing an opportunity to help journalists do better.”

Woloshin and Schwartz have written before about medical research and the media, including another piece about flawed press releases from medical journals and one about news reports that “often omit basic study facts and cautions” about research presentations at scientific meetings. They’re not the only ones who make a case that journalists don’t cover medicine very well."

Even if these articles date a few years back, I doubt that the situation has changed much.

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by Nat

Doctor Treating Pregnant Women With Experimental Drug To Prevent Lesbianism

<big ole snip>

Read more: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bio...#ixzz0sU0BA0dy

Here is a thread about this:
http://www.butchfemmeplanet.com/foru...ead.php?t=1682

[AtLast]

This is just plain scary!!! Think about the folks that would want to do this!

What is fascinating on the other side of the coin is that this could actually be data supporting homosexuality as being determined biologically- something many (as in qeer hating wing-nuts) do not want to believe.

Originally Posted by Nat

Doctor Treating Pregnant Women With Experimental Drug To Prevent Lesbianism

Two weeks ago, Time magazine reported on our ongoing efforts to protect the rights of pregnant women offered dexamethasone, a risky Class C steroid aimed at female fetuses that may have a form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). It appears many women and children exposed to dexamethasone through this off-label use are not being enrolled in controlled clinical trials with IRB oversight, in spite of a persistent consensus among experts that this is the only way this treatment should be happening.

We have learned that, this August, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism will publish an expert consensus again stating this use of prenatal dexamethasone should only happen via IRB-approved clinical trials through research centers large enough to obtain meaningful data. An announcement of the consensus came at the Endocrine Society’s meeting in San Diego last week (and an earlier version is available here).

This consensus has been endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society, the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology, the European Society of Endocrinology, the Society of Pediatric Urology, the Androgen Excess and PCOS Society, and the CARES Foundation. It was reached after review of the existing literature and consultation with researchers indicated significant cause for concern, including the fact that most of the children treated prenatally have been absent from follow-up studies.

The majority of researchers and clinicians interested in the use of prenatal “dex” focus on preventing development of ambiguous genitalia in girls with CAH. CAH results in an excess of androgens prenatally, and this can lead to a “masculinizing” of a female fetus’s genitals. One group of researchers, however, seems to be suggesting that prenatal dex also might prevent affected girls from turning out to be homosexual or bisexual. 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. In a paper entitled “Sexual Orientation in Women with Classical or Non-Classical Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia as a Function of Degree of Prenatal Androgen Excess” published in 2008 in Archives of Sexual Behavior, Meyer-Bahlburg and New (with two others) gather evidence of “a dose-response relationship of androgens with sexual orientation” through a study of women with various forms of CAH.

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.”

They go on to suggest that the work might offer some insight into the influence of prenatal hormones on the development of sexual orientation in general. “That this may apply also to sexual orientation in at least a subgroup of women is suggested by the fact that earlier research has repeatedly shown that about one-third of homosexual women have (modestly) increased levels of androgens.” They “conclude that the findings support a sexual-differentiation perspective involving prenatal androgens on the development of sexual orientation.”

And it isn’t just that many women with CAH have a lower interest, compared to other women, in having sex with men. In another paper entitled “What Causes Low Rates of Child-Bearing in Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?” Meyer-Bahlburg writes that “CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls’ behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: “Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior.”

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:

“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 . . .”

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. In a 2001 presentation to the CARES Foundation (a videotape of which we have), New seemed to suggest to parents that one of the goals of treatment of girls with CAH is to turn them into wives and mothers. Showing a slide of the ambiguous genitals of a girl with CAH, New told the assembled parents:

“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. And she has all the machinery for motherhood, and therefore nothing should stop that, if we can repair her surgically and help her psychologically to continue to grow and develop as a girl.”

In the Q&A period, during a discussion of prenatal dex treatments, an audience member asked New, “Isn’t there a benefit to the female babies in terms of reducing the androgen effects on the brain?” New answered, “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.” At that point, she’ll know if they are interested in taking men and making babies.

In a previous Bioethics Forum post, Alice Dreger noted an instance of a prospective father using knowledge of the fraternal birth order effect to try to avoid having a gay son by a surrogate pregnancy. There may be other individualized instances of parents trying to ensure heterosexual children before birth. But the use of prenatal dexamethasone treatments for CAH represents, to our knowledge, the first systematic medical effort attached to a “paradigm” of attempting in utero to reduce rates of homosexuality, bisexuality, and “low maternal interest.”

Researchers working on an interesting project tend to suggest how their work could have broader implications. This is no exception: the 2008 paper by Meyer-Bahlburg et al hints that variation in sexual orientation beyond the population of girls with CAH might also be partly explainable through prenatal androgen exposure. Such reasoning could lead to the pursuit of other “screening” and “treatment” methods for manipulating intrauterine environments.

While everyone has been busy watching geneticists at the frontier of the brave new world, none of us seem to have noticed what some pediatricians are up to. Perhaps it is because so many people are fascinated by the idea of a “gay gene” that prenatal “lesbian hormones” have slipped past public scrutiny. In any case, we think Nimkarn and New’s “paradigm for prenatal diagnosis and treatment” suggests a reason why activists for gay and lesbian rights should be wary of believing that claims for the innateness of homosexuality will lead to liberation. Evidence that homosexual orientation is inborn could, instead, very well lead to new means of pathologization and prevention, as it seems to be in the case we’ve been tracking.

Needless to say, we do not think it reasonable or just to use medicine to try to prevent homosexual and bisexual orientations. Nor do we think it reasonable to use medicine to prevent uppity women, like the sort who might raise just these kinds of alarms. Consider that our declaration of our conflict of interest.

Alice Dreger is a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Ellen K. Feder is an associate professor and acting chair of American University’s Department of Philosophy and Religion. Anne Tamar-Mattis, an attorney, is the executive director of Advocates for Informed Choice, which employs legal advocacy to support the rights of children with intersex conditions or disorders of sex development.



Read more: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bio...#ixzz0sU0BA0dy

[Nat]

Originally Posted by AtLastHome

This is just plain scary!!! Think about the folks that would want to do this!

What is fascinating on the other side of the coin is that this could actually be data supporting homosexuality as being determined biologically- something many (as in qeer hating wing-nuts) do not want to believe.

If the way we are different is a choice, we are immoral sinners going straight to hell. If the way we are different is biological, we can be eradicated through science.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Nat

If the way we are different is a choice, we are immoral sinners going straight to hell. If the way we are different is biological, we can be eradicated through science.

Guess they have it covered.... ARGH!

[MsDemeanor]

Originally Posted by Nat

If the way we are different is biological, we can be eradicated through science.

You glass half empty people *shaking head*. If it is biological, science can make MORE of us!!!!

[MsDemeanor]

Oregon gets it - at least the Democrats do. The usual suspects - those pro-business anti-people Republicans - voted against the bill.
New (Oregon) law prohibits credit history checks by most employers


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