Can a Drug manipulate Gender Identity?

[HughE]

I usually don't post promos on my page, but over the course of 3 months, hundreds of hours of research, this is the most important story of my career. I hope it will help many, many people.

There was a drug, given to 5 million women to prevent miscarriages. It caused vaginal cancer and a whole bunch of other problems for the daughters of women who took it.

Certain doctors and researchers and those in the community believe the drug can make a person transgender.

This has been a controversial, difficult story to put together. There are many conflicting viewpoints. Opposing sides who hung up the phone on me. Angry mothers. A major drug manufacturer who declined my request for an interview. America wasn't ready to hear this story 10, or 15 years ago.

But now is the time.

I'm holding two live sessions tomorrow: around 9:15pm and 11:15pm during the newscast. Two in the transgender community will be joining me for each.

-Dion Lim, anchor/reporter at WTSP 10 News/CBS Tampa



Hopefully, Dion's story will be the breakthough needed to finally draw public attention to a gigantic medical disaster that has remained hidden for decades, and blighted the lives of millions. This is the teaser for it; I think the full story is being broadcast tomorrow at 10pm/11pm EST.

[Chloe]

You talking about the very well known effects of BPA?

Found a very good article here:
healthmasters.com/blog/chemical-gender-manipulation

. . .  a few endocrine disruptor's and their effect. Fluoride, bromide, iodine, and chlorine are all halogens. The fluoride is in our tooth paste, bromide is in baked goods, chlorine is in our water.

Iodine is used by the thyroid. When these other halogens are consumed, the thyroid thinks they
are iodine and absorbs them. This is bad.

I do not drink tap water or anything out of a bottle and been taking 'Survival Shield X-2 - Nascent Iodine' for over a year.

[Dee Marshall]

No, Kiera, they're referring to di-ethyl stylbestrol (DES). It affects the fetus, and the mother and hasn't been used since about 1973 in the US. The carcinogenic effects on mothers and their female fetuses were discovered about then and a lawsuit ensued. Much later the gender-bending effects upon male fetuses were suspected but not actually proved. Some people believe any research into that has been scotched or sabotaged to save the pharmaceutical companies from facing a lawsuit over a drug that they haven't manufactured in 40 years.

[Elis]

I find this absolutely fascinating; it's great to hear you're researching this. There are a few trans women on here who say their mum's took this drug while pregnant with them. Makes me wonder if in the future they'll be cases of people trying to sue the drug company for the trans affects it had on them; similar to the court case against the pharmacy company giving out thalidomide.

[Deborah]

My mother took DES and I wouldn't sue.  However, I do want it acknowledged so the question of covering it with medical insurance is put to rest and so the arguments of the moral bigots are once and for all destroyed.


Sapere Aude

[Dee Marshall]

I wouldn't sue either. Then again, I have no way to prove my mother took it. She fits the profile. The drug companies know that enough people would, though. Can you honestly say that if someone filed a class action suit you wouldn't participate? I can't. There's a certain justice in the medical companies that made us this way having to pay for our transitions.

[Deborah]

I can't prove it either.  But my mother, who is now deceased, told me she was given DES a few years ago after she saw an article about it in the news. 

The article mentioned all sorts of problems the DES could cause except it neglected to mention the effect on gender identity.


Sapere Aude

[cheryl reeves]

Like I stated in another post,I found my mom took prenatal vitamins that had DES,I was her firstborn and looked like a girl,my middle sis was born 2 yrs later and acted and looked more like a boy then I did. Puberty came and I developed like a girl,grew breasts to a small b cup and started too wear baggy shirts,no Adam's Apple my throat looks like a female's,the only thing besides facial hair that makes me male is my appendage that I grew to love. When clean shaved and my hair down I get strange looks in the mens rm.

[RobynD]

I'll never know for sure. My mom was was at an advanced age for being pregnant at the time (43) and she had had previous miscarriages and healthy births.  I would not be surprised if she did.

[Shadow Wolf]

Though there were problems found with the drug, I suspect the "trans-issue" is probably nothing more than how some people attack vaccines for causing Autism.

[Deborah]

DES bathed a developing male fetus in an estrogenic drug ten times stronger than what they used to castrate sex offenders at the time.  There is science and observation behind this conclusion unlike the vaccination conspiracy theories.


Sapere Aude

[Michelle_P]

Another anecdotal data point.   I'm a DES 'son', exposed in utero to a fairly high dosage.  Mom had several miscarriages before me, and didn't want to lose another baby, so was placed on DES.  It definitely had an effect.

The most obviously visible changes were the undescended testicles, along with some feminine bone structure appearing at the extremities, both feet and hands.  (This does make shoe shopping easier!). The testicle thing combined with delayed onset of puberty caused severe social problems in high school.  Think locker room.  I was given a series of injections at age 15 'so you'll grow up right'.  The shots turned an effeminate A student into a hairy, angry D student, so I suppose they worked.   

[Dee Marshall]

I'll never know for sure. My mom was was at an advanced age for being pregnant at the time (43) and she had had previous miscarriages and healthy births.  I would not be surprised if she did.

Robyn! Are you a twin sister I never knew about? I had four sisters and two brothers. Only 5 of us were born, one sister died within a year, one brother died within 3.

[suzifrommd]

This is a very timely story. What with all the talk about us being sinful, going against God's word, etc., a reminder of the biological basis of gender would be very timely.

[Emileeeee]

My mother never took it to my knowledge and I was born shortly after that 1973 number. She did tell me last year that the doctors gave her something to help her get her periods several months into her pregnancy with me because nobody knew she was pregnant yet though. Within the past month, she's told me about trips to the hospital for me as a child that when combined with my completely backwards hormone levels pre-HRT (more E than women and less T than women) makes it sound like I've been living with an undiagnosed intersex condition all these years.

[HughE]

I'm not in the US so had no way of viewing it live, but here's a link to what seems to be the full segment that was broadcast yesterday:

http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/did-a-drug-lead-to-transgender-/215338199

There are also videos of two live Q&A sessions on Dion Lim's Facebook page, one held before the broadcast and the other after.

https://www.facebook.com/Dion-Lim-146674682074805/

One thing I should mention is that, in the video, Dion says DES babies were exposed to the equivalent amount of artificial estrogen to 50,000 birth control pills. Actually, under the standard dosing schedule, it was more like 500,000 modern low dose birth control pills, a ridiculously large amount that must have caused quite a few fatalities amongst the mothers, never mind abnormalities in their children!

DES had been discontinued as a miscarriage treatment in most places by about 1980, however it was replaced by a class of hormones called progestins, which are also manmade female hormones and have feminizing properties if you give them to adult men. If they have feminizing effects on unborn male babies as well (and why wouldn't they?), this might explain why more and more trans kids are continuing to be born even though DES has long since been phased out.

[stephaniec]

This could be very true and makes a lot of sense , but for me there is a lot more to the story of the transgender than a medical mishap.

[cheryl reeves]

->-bleeped-<- can be dated to the time humans started to populate the earth. For some reason some of us are born this way,while others are normal. I remember a story of this lady in the mid 1800's who married soldiers from a fort out in Indian country,everyone one husband would be killed she would marry another soldier, she even married a few officers, When she died they found she was actually a he,but out of respect they buried her as the woman she was. Trans cultures can be found in every pagan society, Rome this culture was excepted,in some American Indian tribes they had a voice and we looked up to for these people were thought too be born with twin souls. So even without a drug some of us are born this way.

[cindianna_jones]

My mother once told me she was on a drug while she was pregnant with me. She didn't remember what it was but the timeframe was in that era. Who knows? While I'm open to the idea that certain drugs may influence our identity, I don't acknowledge this as the only cause.

We are talking about biology here. It's complicated, messy, and can never be explained with certainty. I've always said that the greatest and best delineated fact of the transgender cause is that we exist. We can be counted. That IS a fact.

[Deborah]

The proximate cause is incorrect hormone levels at specific stages of pregnancy.  This is really not a controversial conclusion at all amongst those who have done the studies.  Exogenous drugs such as DES can induce this.  It can also happen due to other factors concerning the pregnancy.


Sapere Aude