Rare gender identity defect hits Gaza families

[Syne]

Rare gender identity defect hits Gaza families
By Ivan Watson, CNN
December 17, 2009 12:08 p.m. EST
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/12/17/gaza.gender.id/index.html

There are an unusually high number of male pseudohermaphrodite births in the Gaza neighborhood of Jabalya, where Nadir and Ahmed live.

Dr. Jehad Abudaia, a Canadian-Palestinian pediatrician and urologist practicing in Gaza, says he has diagnosed nearly 80 cases like Nadir's and Ahmed's in the last seven years.

"It is astonishing that we have [so] many cases with this defect, which is very rare all over the world," Abudaia says. He attributes the high frequency of this birth defect to "consanguinity," or in-breeding.

[Butterfly]

Rare gender identity defect hits Gaza families
Intersex News
By Ivan Watson, CNN
December 17, 2009 -- Updated 1708 GMT (0108 HKT)


http://intersexnews.blogspot.com/2009/12/rare-gender-identity-defect-hits-gaza.html


Gaza City (CNN) -- Two Palestinian teenagers stroll amid the mounds of rubble left by last year's Israeli military offensive, listening to the tinny beat of a Turkish pop song playing on a cell phone.


Nadir Mohammed Saleh and Ahmed Fayiz Abed Rabo are cousins and next-door neighbors. With their gelled hair, buttoned-down shirts and jeans, they look much like any other 16-year-old Palestinian boy. But looks, Ahmed says, can be deceiving.


"Only my appearance, my haircut and clothing, makes me look like a boy," Ahmed says, gesturing with his hands across his face. "Inside, I am like a female. I am a girl."