Researcher Accused of Misleading Pregnant Women

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...