Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
Subject: Re: Propecia
From: dean.lenort@att.net (Dean Lenort)
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 00:00:20 GMT
Message-ID: <35b7ca7c.414738@netnews2.worldnet.att.net>

[Redacted] wrote:

>dean.lenort@att.net (Dean Lenort) writes:
>
>> Propecia, the new baldness pill for men (I pay attention to these ads!) has
>> a commercial with disclaimers along the lines of- "Women who may some day
>> have even the remotest possibility of just maybe becoming pregnant
>> shouldn't come within an astronomical unit of this medicine".  And as we
>> are all aware pregnant women can't touch cat litter because it could prove
>> harmful to the unborn child.
>
>Propecia works by inhibiting an enzyme which reduces testosterone to
>something called (in a rare display of SENSE by the scientific naming
>guys) "reduced testosterone".  
>
>It turns out that there are really 2 testosterones running around in males
>, the normal stuff and this reduced stuff.  It also turns out that they
>have relatively distinct duties: reduced testosterone is responsible for
>many secondary sexual characteristics that happen at the skin, for example,
>while the real stuff controls sperm production.  
>
>One of the critical jobs of reduced testerone is to get made in male
>embryos so that a penis develops and the development of the vagina is
>inhibited.  A pregnant woman taking Propecia who carries a female child
>will give birth (we think) to a normal female.  A pregnant woman taking
>Propecia who carries a male fetus will give birth to a pseudohermaphrodite:
>an externally female kid (kinda), who will, at puberty, turn male.  

<Little Timmy> Mommy, I'm scared.
<Little Timmy's Mommy> What's scaring you little Timmy?
<LT (Not Lawrence Taylor)> [Redacted] is making a serious scientific post 
                           and he hasn't written anything mean!
<LTM> He is?  Let's read some more and see where it takes us.  I'm sure 
      he'll turn mean soon enough.

>AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

<LTM> See!  That seems more like the right kind of thing.
<LT>  But Mommy, this is just an exclamation.  It is not someone being beat
      up or anything!
<LTM> Hmm.  I think you're right.  Let's see what else he has to say.

>The cat litter thing is different: toxoplasmosis, a nasty bacterium, 
>is found in cat poop and if mom gets it, it can run across the umbilicus
>and infect the fetus.  (It can also get across the blood-brain-barrier,
>which is why AIDS patients aren't supposed to touch litterboxes either.
>Toxoplasmosis in the brain is what killed Tommy in the movie _Trainspotting_.)
>
>There's this rumor that Jamie Lee Curtis is one of them pseudohermaphrodites
>(but for genetic reasons, not due to Propecia.)  I taught my students
>about sex-determination and the pseudohermaphrodism thing last semester
>with some caution, b/c I knew that a couple of my students were born-again
>creationist whackos.  Many of these B-ACW's are EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE
>when phrases like "obvious penis at birth" and "suddenly sprout a penis
>at age 13" are flying around, so I tried to be sensitive and to use nice,
>safe, clinical terminology.  

<LT>  See Mommy?  He is being all serious and saying he's a teacher!  Can
      he do that Mommy?
<LTM> Of course he can Timmy.  He's Allowed.  There's still a lot of 
      article ahead of us for things to right themselves.  Maybe there's 
      something farther down in the post.

>After class, one of the B-ACW's, a little, quiet woman who blushed 
>frequently in class, was walking with me b/c she had a question about
>this pseudohermaphrodism thing (so to speak).  

<LT>  I'm very scared Mommy.  He's still telling a story.
<LTM> I'm scared too Timmy.  First it was Rone becoming Happy Nice Rone, 
      but I never thought we'd see something like this.  But perhaps 
      there's still hope!  I still see just a little more writing below.
<LT>  But it's such a tiny little paragraph Mommy!  I'm very frightened.
<LTM> Be brave Little Timmy.  Be brave.

>I asked her if she had heard this rumor that Jamie Lee Curtis was
>a pseudohermaphrodite and she said: "I heard she's just got a monster-huge
>clit."  

<LT>  Whew Mommy.  That was a close one.  You can let go of me now.
<LTM> Yes, that was close Timmy.  Very close.
--
Dean Lenort           |    Communism's a lot like using DOS,
dean.lenort@att.net   |    only it's a political system and
                      |    it doesn't have subdirectories. -Kibo