New guidelines for treating 'intersex' babies

[Lilyofthevalley]

But Vilain’s research suggests there are factors at work that can’t be measured. The scientific dogma used to be that hormones alone could “masculinize” the brain, he said. But he identified 54 genes that work differently in the brains of male and female mouse embryos just 10 days after conception — before sex hormones are ever produced.

Doctors also once thought that how people were raised and their genitalia were enough to determine gender, said Reiner, who as a urologist performed sex-assignment surgeries on babies.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Lilyofthevalley:

But Vilain’s research suggests there are factors at work that can’t be measured. The scientific dogma used to be that hormones alone could “masculinize” the brain, he said. But he identified 54 genes that work differently in the brains of male and female mouse embryos just 10 days after conception — before sex hormones are ever produced.

Doctors also once thought that how people were raised and their genitalia were enough to determine gender, said Reiner, who as a urologist performed sex-assignment surgeries on babies.

Not to sound ignorant or anything, but could you please explain the significance of this? This topic just seemed to just pop out of the blue without any reference.

 

[Lilyofthevalley]

What are these parent’s supposed to do? These new guidelines make it hard for parent’s to determine what to do if they have a child born with this disorder.

 

[Pinklady]

I read what I think is probably the same article on this subject.

To give you the short version…doctors are now advising parents to wait a few years before deciding to have surgery to assign a sex to a child born with this problem. There seems to be more at work, in this cases, in deciding sexual identity than just genes and genitalia. There’ve been many examples of children being assigned to one sex but after a few years starting to identify with the opposite sex.

So even though it may be easier to just do a quick sex-assignment surgery, the thinking now is that it should be put off for a few years until the child has expressed which sex it identifies with.