DES sons...(Diethylstilbestrol Hormone) were you exposed?

[JLT1]

HI,

Generally, endocrine disrupting chemicals follow a pattern: weak - alteration in primary sexual characteristics like gonads and some brain, moderate - secondary structures like bones, and much of the brain, high - tertiary characteristics or everything else, including the structure of the brain....

Jen

[big kim]

I am convinced I am. I was born in October 1957 in England. Mum had a miscarriage before me. I was very tall, long arms & legs, no Adam's apple.

[HughE]

We have a much larger and more complex brain than most animals, and our brain continues to undergo development a lot longer than is the case for most animal brains. Our brain development continues throughout the 9 months of our gestation, whereas things associated with our physical attributes (like major organ development, limb development and so forth), have all largely finished by the end of the first trimester. Because it has such a long window of vulnerability, our brain tends to be disproportionately affected by any kind of toxic exposure taking place during our prenatal development, so it should hardly come as a surprise that it tends to be the main thing affected when you expose an unborn baby to feminising hormones such as DES.

Furthermore, the way miscarriage preventatives such as DES (and the drug that has since replaced it, hydroxyprogesterone caproate) tend to be prescribed means that the exposure during the first trimester is small, with much heavier exposure during the second and third trimesters. Since most or all of the exposure doesn't occur until after the physical things associated with your sex have already completed their development, that makes it even less likely that there will be obvious physical effects, and more likely that the main place the effects will show up is in the brain. A website called Hormones Matter recently published an article I wrote explaining how this works:

https://www.hormonesmatter.com/maternal-des-exposure-intersex-development-males/

Once you understand that it's hormones produced in the testicles that drive male development, that DES works very well as a chemical castration agent, and that it was typically given in progressively increasing doses that went higher and higher as the pregnancy continued, it's easy to see how it could have produced male appearing people with female brains. The exposure was still small enough during the first trimester so that a male baby's testicles could still produce testosterone. However, the dosage was progressively ramped up, and from the second trimester onwards, enough DES was crossing the placenta to chemically castrate a male fetus, causing that future person's testicular hormone production to drop to zero throughout the second and third trimesters. Since testicular hormones are what drive male development, and in the absence of those hormones, whether XX or XY, a fetus will develop as female by default, it's produced people who developed as male during the first trimester, but as female during the second and third trimesters. Because of the way development takes place in an unborn child, this results in people who physically appear to be male, but have female brains.

I think it's highly likely that hydroxyprogesterone caproate is doing the same thing, since it has similar pharmacological properties to a drug often used to chemically castrate sex offenders (medroxyprogesterone acetate), and is being given to pregnant women in what look like very high doses. The difference between DES and hydroxyprogesterone caproate is that the guidelines say to not initiate treatment until at least week 16 after conception, whereas, under the standard dosing schedule, DES was already being given in quite high doses earlier than that. So you'd expect the physical effects from hydroxyprogesterone caproate to be a lot less than from DES, even though it could still be causing female brain development to occur.

On another note, I recently found something that reinforces my opinion that the medical authorities have known for a long time that the male assigned children from DES pregnancies are often heavily physically and psychologically feminized, and they've opted for a cover up:

https://twitter.com/HughEaston/status/1032050001428525056

[Virginia]

Thank you for chiming in to share your knowledge on this topic, HughE. I for one have come to respect you as the DES expert on gender forums.

My understanding is that the human brain continues to develop well beyond birth, into the 20's actually. Another reason teenage drug use has such devastating consequences on the rest of a young person's life.

[MxKale]

So, this is a fascinating thread for me.

There are things about my Dad that didn't make sense that actually do with this information. I know my grandmother took DES with him because she told my parents before they got married as she was worried they wouldn't be able to have children. He was the only child she took DES with.

My father has two brothers, an older and a younger one, and he's very differently built than they are. His older brother is 6' tall, very stocky and has a deep voice. Then while his younger brother is shorter than that he is closer to 6' than my Dad is; my uncle also has a deeper voice and is more muscular. In comparison my Dad is proportioned a lot more like his mom. At his tallest he was 5' 9". He's also very slight but that had been attributed to him cutting weight for wrestling.

I actually made a quick sketch comparing the profiles of my father, my brother and myself. Mine is orange, my father's is teal and my brother's is blue. I tried to line them up at the brow so I could keep them at the same scale.



But, I actually don't think my brother or I would be surprised if it turned out our dad was a woman though. We would sometimes joke about him being more like a mom than Mom when we were kids. Then on top of that while I'm not "out" to my parents he's the one who has seemingly picked up on it and keeps encouraging me to buy a suit.

[KathyLauren]

Hi, MxKale!

Welcome to Susan's Place.

Many of us older trans women suspect (or know in some cases) that we were exposed to DES in utero.  It is kind of water under the bridge at this point, but it is interesting to have a biological explanation for why we are who we are.

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[Paige]

@KathyLauren

Hi Kathy Lauren,

Do you know how DES was prescribed in Canada?  Was it as common as the US?  I've had a suspicion for quite some time I was a DES baby.  I was born in 62, my brother is 6'4",  I'm 5'9" with many female features. 

My mother said she didn't take anything when she was pregnant with me.  She's a nurse so she should know but I wonder if they told her it was vitamins.  I've also thought she may not remember or doesn't want to tell me. 

It would make a lot of sense.

Thanks,
Paige

[KathyLauren]

Do you know how DES was prescribed in Canada? 

Sorry, I know nothing about its use in Canada.  I think I have read that it was used here, which would make sense given its use in the U.S..  I know it was routinely prescribed in the U.S. and in the U.K., where I was born.

[jkredman]

I was a DES son. 

I will eventually be a DES daughter.

Maybe it had something to do with the way I am.   It really doesn't matter to me.  What matters is finally being true to the woman I've repressed for so many years.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[KathyLauren]

Hi, jkredman!

Welcome to Susan's Place.

I find that knowing about DES brings me a little closure on why I am the way I am.  It is comforting to know that I am not imagining the whole thing, that it is something real. 

But, as you say, it really doesn't matter.  We are who we are, and we are just trying to be our authentic selves, whatever the cause.

Please feel free to stop by the Introductions forum to tell the members about yourself.  Here is some information that we like to share with new members:

Things that you should read

Site Terms of Service & Rules to Live By	Standard Terms & Definitions	Post Ranks (including when you can upload an avatar)
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[HughE]

I'm not sure if there are still any UK based DES "sons" here, but ITV are currently doing an investigation into DES, and looking for people with a history of DES exposure to share their stories.

This is only for people living in the UK unfortunately.

I've spoken to the producer and mentioned that many of us seem to be both physically and psychologically feminised. If anyone would like to share their story, the contact details are as follows:

Sarah Corker, https://x.com/SarahCorkerNews

Email: socialaffairs@itv.com

[Allie Jayne]

Being a DES child should matter to us all, as the effects of DES have recently been found to be passed down at least one generation, maybe more. Rates of being trans are just one of the many conditions which have been linked to DES, and these include reproductive problems and higher rates of cancer.

Of course, for many of us born in the '40's, '50's '60's and '70's, there are no records which clearly indicate our mothers were administered DES, and most mothers were simply unaware what their doctors were giving them! All we can do is try to find if our pregnancies fit the profile of those most commonly administered DES.

Hugs,

Allie

[aaajjj55]

It was here about 8 years ago that I first became aware of DES, thanks to another member raising it when I was looking for answers as to why I am the way that I am.  I was therefore interested to see that, as mentioned by HughE above, Channel 4 has picked up this issue, albeit the one report I saw was focussed on those who took DES and made only passing mention of daughters with no mention of sons.

Whilst I have no direct proof that my mother took DES, she often talked about being prescribed something during pregnancy (which she thought was thalidomide but that never really added up given that, whilst she only took the medication for a short time, I have no traces whatsoever of any of the horrific side effects).  Having had a miscarriage before me, the prescription of DES seems logical and the side effects she experienced, in particular nausea, are those of DES too.

Over the years, I've tried to find ratification of a link between DES and TG but, at least the last time I had a good look, nothing stood out.  In fact what I did find were assertions either that there was no link or that the research itself was inconclusive.

I remain very open minded about all of this.  Without a doubt, many in our position look for hard scientific reasoning to support the way we are and I certainly heavily relied on a link with DES when confessing my feelings to my wife. I do sometimes wonder whether, anecdotally, the fact that many of us grasp this particular nettle has made the link appear stronger than it really is, or even whether the link is illusory.

But the point that many on the outside seem to miss is that DES is synthesised oestrogen which was administered in very high concentrations.  That is irrefutable fact.  Also irrefutable is the fact that medication taken by the mother can pass to the foetus, thalidomide giving us all the proof we need of that.  Against that, it is not unreasonable to suggest that ingesting high concentrations of oestrogen during the early stages of pregnancy is not going to reduce the probability of resultant male offspring having gender related issues.

Whether we will ever get a definitive answer to this is doubtful.  I suspect that the government will do their utmost not to dig into this due to the attendant risk of multiple compensation claims.  In any event, as observed above, medical records no longer exist (I did look into getting my late mother's medical records but, as far as I remember, following their computerisation, they only go back as far as 1988 (I was born in 1960)) and many of the mothers that did take it are either deceased or suffering from diminished memory so definitive study will be difficult.  That said, it is gratifying that Channel 4 is pursuing this and it would be even more gratifying to see them turn their attention onto this particular issue.  We can but hope.

[Lori Dee]

Although not related specifically to DES, there were studies done to examine genes and hormone exposure at the time of birth or immediately preceding. The studies are not conclusive; however, they indicate how exposure to estrogen by the fetal brain has certain effects. Since the mother already has estrogen in her system, it may or may not affect the fetal brain depending on these genetic factors. If we add high doses of a synthetic estrogen, like DES, into the mix, it makes sense that the effect could be compounded.

Here is one of the studies:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200205084203.htm

[KathyLauren]

ingesting high concentrations of oestrogen during the early stages of pregnancy is not going to reduce the probability of resultant male offspring having gender related issues.

[emphasis added]

The interesting thing about DES is that, in a typical usage, the dosage started low in early pregnancy and ramped up in the later stages.  A typical course of DES started with 5mg per day at week 7 of the pregnancy and increased to 125mg per day by week 35.  This means that, in the first trimester, when the genitals are forming, the dose is relatively low, so genital development is normal.  But by the second and third trimester, when the brain is developing, the dose is much higher, likely high enough to totally suppress testosterone in the fetus.

Even though the relevant data were not collected at the time, and experimentation would be highly unethical now, the correlation between DES use and trans-female offspring is established.  Given the dosage regime, a causative link is probable, even if it cannot be proved.

I got the dosage data from a post here on Susan's Place, but unfortunately that thread no longer exists.

[HughE]

My understanding is that the human brain continues to develop well beyond birth, into the 20's actually. Another reason teenage drug use has such devastating consequences on the rest of a young person's life.

Yes, the human brain continues to develop and to grow more connections between cells throughout childhood and adolescence. However the important stuff as far as sex differences in the brain are concerned seems to happen during the prenatal period, and I think probably for a few months after birth as well, since male babies continue to produce testosterone for several months after they're born, before their testicles enter a quiescent state until puberty. Nature doesn't normally do things for no reason.

In any case, there are hardwired sex differences between male and female brains, which aren't directly the result of genetics, but are instead determined by what hormones are present during the prenatal/perinatal period. This is something that was originally discovered in the late 1950s during research on guinea pigs, and has since been shown to also apply to numerous different animal species (including Rhesus monkeys, which are one of the closest animal models to human beings). The theory is called the Organisational-activational hypothesis. The brain is organised along male or female lines during the prenatal period, by the presence or absence of testosterone and other androgenic hormones. Those sex-specific differences in the way the brain works remain largely dormant during childhood, but are then activated by the surge of male or female hormones during puberty and adult life, where they give rise to adult male or female social and sexual behaviour.

Hormones only have an organisational effect during a specific period early in life, which in most species is during their prenatal development (in rodents it's actually immediately after they're born, since they're born in an earlier stage of development than us, roughly the equivalent of the second trimester in a human pregnancy).

Once that critical organisational period has ended, whatever happened during it is completely permanent and is there for the remainder of your life. There's nothing you can do about it except learn to live with it.

There's a large body of evidence showing that a person's gender identity is one of the things determined by hardwired sex differnces in the brain, laid down during the organisational period. This includes things like autopsies of transgender people's brains, which found that the sexually dimorphic regions of their brains more closely match the gender they identified as than their birth assigned sex. Probably the strongest evidence though, are the boys who were turned into girls.

It used to be believed that people are born "gender neutral", and learn to think and act like boys or girls from early childhood experiences (Dr Money's "gender neutrality" theory). On the basis of that theory, for 30 years it became routine practice for doctors to reassign baby boys born with damaged or missing penises to female, since it's very difficult to surgically reconstruct a penis but very easy to turn it into a vagina. The parents of these children were told to raise them as girls. Raised as girls and growing up with a vagina rather than a penis (and often given female hormones in adolescence as well), everyone assumed they'd fit in fine as female and never know the difference.

Then in 1994 I think, word got out that the first kid to be put through this treatment, David Reimer, had rejected the female identity and was now living as a man. Subsequent studies have shown his case is fairly typical of what happens, most of the kids put through these surgeries have very unhappy confused childhoods, feel totally out of place as a girl and a woman, and end up rejecting the female identity once they're old enough to do so.

From that awful experience we know that gender identity is hardwired, not learned, and is part of the stuff that's built into the brain during the organisational period. Just like sexual orientation. And the whole thing is dependent on what hormones were present during the organisational period (which in humans is thought to be roughly weeks 20 to 40 of prenatal development (and I think possibly continues for a few months after birth as well). This is why it's such a bad idea to be giving hormones to pregnant women. They alter the hormonal environment the developing baby is being exposed to, and there's a very high risk the future sex of the baby's brain could be altered as a result.

Admittedly they tend to be used in lifesaving situations where the baby's life would otherwise have been lost, so often there isn't any alternative to giving them, but I think the medical industry should be honest with parents and the public that a transgender child can be one possible outcome of a pregnancy in which these substances are used.

[HughE]

Over the years, I've tried to find ratification of a link between DES and TG but, at least the last time I had a good look, nothing stood out.  In fact what I did find were assertions either that there was no link or that the research itself was inconclusive.

Well, no research conducted within the US has found a link between DES and MTF transgender, but research everywhere else has! In particular there's Scot Kerlin's 5 year DES sons study, in which 150 out of 500 DES "sons" turned out to have female or nonbinary gender identities. Recent studies from Hhorages France (who have the world's largest group of DES exposed families) have found a high incidence of MTFs as well. Both Scott's work and Hhorages also found a high incidence of physical intersex related anomalies.

The early work coming out of the US, looking at teenaged DES sons from the Chicago cohort (the children of participants in the original 1950s Dieckmann study that found that DES is completely worthless for preventing miscarriages), actually found significant issues with their DES sons too. In particular, dramatically lowered sperm counts, high rates of severely abnormal sperm, hypoplastic testicles, hypospadias, micropenis and other intersex related genital anomalies.

All further research on that group was quickly shut down by a lawsuit that mysteriously appeared out of nowhere. TPTB substituted a different group for their subsequent DES sons research, the Mayo cohort, whose average exposure was 15x less than the Chicago group (whose mothers had been given the standard "Smith and Smith" dosing schedule, that resulted in a cumulative exposure during the pregnancy of over 12 grams of DES). Unsurprisingly, the Mayo group showed no clear signs of anything, and TPTB have used that to claim that nothing happened to the DES sons. The whole thing reeks of a cover up.

Ever since that time, the same small group of researchers in the US have been periodically issuing studies showing slightly higher rates of various minor problems in the daughters, with no mention of the sons. TPTB have used these studies to bury the whole thing.

I should also mention that there were a number of psychological studies carried out in the 1960s and 70s, which found measureable, permanent differences in the psychology and behaviour of children from hormone assisted pregnancies when compared to their unexposed peers. The effects were described as subtle, but having lived through it, I can tell you they're anything but. It's just that humans are way more versatile and adaptable than most animals, and we learn from a young age to copy the appropriate behaviour of people of our assigned sex, without even realising that's what we're doing. At least that's what happened to me, and reading other people's stories, it seems to be a common way of dealing with it. So to an outside observer it looks like nothing much has happened, when actually it has.

These psychological studies didn't look for effects on gender identity because the universally held belief at the time was that people are born gender neutral, and learn their gender identity through early childhood experiences.

But the point that many on the outside seem to miss is that DES is synthesised oestrogen which was administered in very high concentrations.  That is irrefutable fact.  Also irrefutable is the fact that medication taken by the mother can pass to the foetus, thalidomide giving us all the proof we need of that.  Against that, it is not unreasonable to suggest that ingesting high concentrations of oestrogen during the early stages of pregnancy is not going to reduce the probability of resultant male offspring having gender related issues.

There is no doubt at all that DES crosses the placenta and affects a developing foetus. There is ample evidence of that from the DES daughters, who ended up with physical abnormalities of their cervix, uterus and fallopian tubes, as well as dramatically elevated rates of CCA and other cancers, and high rates of things like endometriosis, ectopic pregnancies, autoimmune disorders and premature menopause.

My own feeling is that DES has feminising effects on XY people, not by acting as an estrogen, but through chemical castration. DES is one of the most potent and effective chemical castration drugs ever developed. For many years it was the gold standard in prostate cancer treatment due to its ability to completely shut down testicular hormone production, just as effectively as surgical removal of the testicles. Male development in an unborn baby boy (and in particular, masculinisation of the brain) is driven, not by genetics, but by hormones produced in the testicles. Take away those hormones and you get female development instead. There's a condition called Swyer's syndrome (where the testicles of an XY person fail to develop) that very ably demonstrates this.

Whether we will ever get a definitive answer to this is doubtful.  I suspect that the government will do their utmost not to dig into this due to the attendant risk of multiple compensation claims.

Certainly an answer is unlikely in the US, where all the signs are of a systematic cover up that's been in effect since shortly after DES was pulled off the market. Maybe elsewhere though. Scott Kerlin managed to get his research published, even though not much attention was paid to it. The charity Hhorages France are continuing to carry out active research into the effects of DES and other similar pregnancy hormones, and they've published a number of papers.