The Region - News from May 29, 1986

A Torrance Superior Court jury has ruled that the artificial hormone DES was not responsible for causing a man to be born with birth defects so severe that he was thought to be a girl until the age of 14. Jurors deliberated less than two days before reaching an 11-1 verdict in favor of E. R. Squibb & Sons Inc., which manufactured DES until 1968. The company had claimed the man’s condition was caused by a naturally occurring enzyme deficiency that caused him to be born a male “pseudo-hermaphrodite”--a congenital abnormality in which the person’s external genitalia resemble those of the opposite sex. “I felt a great deal of sympathy for the man,” said Michael Pepe, 27, who served on the jury. “ . . . If there had been another piece of evidence to show DES caused his condition, I could have gone his way.”