Researcher Accused of Misleading Pregnant Women
By Sara Reardon,
New Scientist
| 08. 09. 2012
Freedom of information requests have revealed that
pregnant women may not have been given all the facts before taking an
experimental treatment to prevent female fetuses from being masculinised
as a result of a rare genetic disorder.
Research has provided some evidence that dexamethasone,
a drug normally prescribed to relieve inflammation, can prevent girls
with a rare hormonal disease from developing male genitalia and same-sex
attraction if they are treated as fetuses. But as yet, no clinical
studies show that this treatment is safe, says Alice Dreger
of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She claims that
researchers have misled an unknown number of pregnant women into taking
the experimental treatment without properly informing them of its risks.
Since the 1980s, Maria New of Mount
Sinai School of Medicine in New York has studied and popularised the
idea of prescribing dexamethasone "off-label" to women at risk of having
foetuses with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). The treatment is
now taught as standard practice in medical schools. But because the drug
must be given very early in pregnancy before the fetus' gender...
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