Man Who Lived 14 Years as a Girl Loses DES Suit

A Superior Court jury in Torrance today ruled against a man who sued a drug company for $9 million for manufacturing a hormone he said caused him to spend his first 14 years of life as a “girl.”

Following five weeks of testimony, the jury ruled 11 to 1 in favor of E.R. Squibb & Sons Inc., one of the drug companies that made the artificial female hormone DES.

The 38-year-old man, whose identify has been withheld to protect his privacy, claims the DES that his mother took during pregnancy to prevent a miscarriage in 1947 stopped the proper production of the male hormone testosterone and left him with the body of a female.

He testified the hormone was also responsible for causing him to have testicular cancer, which is now in remission.

Squibb lawyers claim the man’s condition was the result of a congenital enzyme deficiency that caused him to be born a “pseudo-hermaphrodite,” a person with genitalia resembling those of the opposite sex.

“I think justice has been done,” Squibb attorney Debra Pole said following the verdict. “We had a very intelligent jury.”

The man’s attorney had no immediate comment.

During the trial, the man told jurors he spent his first 14 years as a girl named Kathleen--a tomboy who felt increasingly awkward as adolescence approached. At puberty, when his voice began to change, doctors determined that he was actually a male whose testicles had not descended from his abdomen.

He cut his hair, changed his name and had surgery to reconstruct his penis, in a transformation he said made him feel he had been freed from prison.

The man is now a veterinarian who lives with his wife in Northern California.