OII's position statement on the use of Dexamethasone during pregnancy

We, the board members of the Organisation Intersex International, wish to express our support of Drs. Feder, Dreger and Lindemann, for their vigilance and efforts to ensure the safety of intersex infants and their mothers who are currently being prescribed dexamethasone.

We share their concerns about this experimental use of dexamethasone currently underway in the United States.

We would like our friends and allies to read the letter that Drs. Feder, Dreger and Lindemann have signed to request an investigation into this serious matter.

We thank them for their support and await the results of this enquiry, hoping that, whatever the outcome, intersex children and their parents will be granted their inalienable human rights and treated with all the dignity that any child and parent should expect.

For more information:

fetaldex.org

Bioethics Forum - Fetal Cosmetology

Online at: http://www.intersexualite.org/dex.html

Fetal Cosmetology

HUMAN BODIES
Hilde Lindemann, Ellen K. Feder, and Alice Dreger, 02/08/2010

There’s a common misperception that, now that the Johns Hopkins psychologist John Money is gone, so are all the ethical problems with the way people with genital anomalies are treated. Not so.

You may recall that Money lied about the life of his patient David Reimer (known as “John/Joan”), who as a baby had been sex-changed on Money’s recommendation following a circumcision accident in which a physician burned off most of Reimer’s penis. Despite David’s actual later reversion to a male gender identity, Money used a false version of Reimer’s story to convince clinicians that children with atypical sex could be made into “acceptable” versions of girls or boys if you just did surgery early, did hormone treatments as necessary, and avoided having the patients understand much beyond the party line about their genders.

Complete article:
Bioethics Forum - Fetal Cosmetology

Patient Advocate questions use of Dexamethasone on moms and their unborn babies

Patient Advocate questions use of Dexamethasone on moms and their unborn babies from Matthew Mikkelsen on Vimeo.

welcome to fetaldex.org

This site seeks to shed light on the practice by certain U.S. doctors of administering the steroid dexamethasone to pregnant women in an effort to prevent them from giving birth to girls with atypical genitalia. We are generally concerned that this treatment may be unethical in and of itself, but we are more immediately concerned that experiments using this off-label treatment may be occurring without clinicians adequately protecting the rights of their pregnant patients.

To visit the website and for more information: Click here

More resources:

Advocates for Informed Choice Statement on Use of Dexamethasone in Pregnant Women Who May Be Carrying a Fetus Affected with CAH

Click here

The gender police are back again

Excerpt from article:

"Gender issue" can mean just about anything, which is why the IOC uses the phrase. Scientists at the Florida International University met with the IOC and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in conjunction with the 2nd World Conference on Hormonal and Genetic Basis of Sexual Differentiation Disorders. The IOC is most worried about a condition referred to as "Disorders of Sexual Development."

In the eyes of the IOC, and obviously those in the medical world who dream up names for conditions that place people outside conventional sexuality, not being biologically absolutely a man or absolutely a woman is seen as a disorder.

Complete article: Click here

Intersex and Medical Treatment

People who promote "corrective" surgeries and hormone treatment for intersex children believe intersex children will grow up to be adults who fall short of social norms. However, these beliefs are purely speculation because they have never taken the time to speak with intersex adults like myself who did not undergo surgery, or to do follow-up studies on the children whose bodies they irrevocably changed. Doctors simply decided that these bodies, which nature created, are not desirable. In my personal experience, this couldn't be further from the truth.

Complete article: Click here