HISTORY OF MEDICINE – In wanting to clear up a mystery, an endocrinologist from New York University provoked a mini-revolution.
When Julianne Imperato-McGinley went to Las Salinas in the early 1970s, she had no idea that she was going to put the pharmaceutical laboratory Merck on the trail of a blockbuster. In this small village in the Dominican Republic, the young endocrinologist from New York University wants to clear up a mystery: here, children are born girls, and become boys in adolescence. They are called the “güevedoces”, “penis at 12 years old”. In the village there is approximately 1 güevedoce for 90 boys.
At birth, güevedoces look like little girls and are raised as such. But “at pubertywrites the Imperato-McGinley team in Science in 1974, their voice becomes deeper and they develop a typical male phenotype with a substantial increase in muscle mass; there is no breast augmentation. The phallus enlarges to become a functional penis”.
In utero
The scrotum becomes rough and hyperpigmented, the testicles descend, ejaculation appears…
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