This document may be redistributed and reused, subject to certain conditions. Pediatric Endocrinologists and other medical professionals will have to deal with infants whose external genitalia are not quite masculine or feminine. They will also have to face a family in disarray: a tired mother recovering from delivery, an anxious father, siblings, grandparents, coworkers, and neighbors, all of whom will want to know whether the baby is a girl or a boy.
The introduction of the book underlines a movement in the early s, during which a group of intersex activists loudly brought their problems to the attention of the medical community and the world.
Karkazis reports that the next important step, in the s, is the work of John Money, with Lawson Wilkins, J. Hampson, and Anke Ehrhardt. In Part 2, the author reviews the methods used for sex assignment in intersex infants.
Part 3 considers the question of the actual sex assignment of newborns with ambiguous external genitalia. In this section, Dr. Karkazis interviewed the parents of infants presenting with either complete androgen insensitivity syndrome CAIS or congenital adrenal hyperplasia. This choice of disorders is probably inappropriate, given that these two groups make up the less problematic patients as far as decision about sex assignment is concerned. The last fifty pages of the book report on the history of activism related to intersex, particularly the activities of the Intersex Society of North America ISNA.
In summary, this book would be an interesting read for all involved in the study of disorders of sexual development DSD , including pediatricians, geneticists, gynecologists, and urologists. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U.
