Strange Carribean Village Where Girls Develop Penis

Yesterday
The small village of Salinas in the Barahona
province of the southwestern part of the Dominican
Republic is like many other Caribbean getaway spot,
but there is something very spectacular that sets it
apart from all the rest.
Salinas, which is located near Barahona, is the home
to pristine beaches not yet sullied by the outside
world, but it is not this fact that makes it differ from
others. What makes it peculiar are stories about
children nicknamed “guevedoces”.
There are two tales which are most predominant at
this village. One tells of how some of the people
there were born with a rare condition that made their
feet look like lobster feet.
And the other tale is of how a number of children
were presumably born as girls and later turned into
boys once they hit puberty.
The girls were called guevedoces, or “penis at 12”.
Statistics show that at puberty one in 90 children
born there make a natural transformation from female
to male. According to medical terms, such children
are known as ‘pseudohermaphrodite’.
The villagers claim that at birth the babies looked like
girls and were raised that way. However, as they
grew older, their voices deepened and it was
discovered they had testicles, eventually turning into
adult men.
Certain doctors from Cornell University in upstate
New York traveled to this strange village to study
some of the children with this medical anomaly.
Some of the children were brought back to the
USA for further research.
Endocrinologist Dr. Julianne Imperato, who in the
1970s travelled to the region to learn more about
rumours that girls were morphing into boys,
uncovered the phenomenon.
Guevedoces are otherwise called ‘machihembras’,
which means first ‘female and then male’. According
to research, they look like girls at birth with no testes
and what appears to be a vagina. But when the
puberty sets in, the penis grows and testicles
descend and only at that point can their true sex be
determined.
A rare genetic disorder is believed to be responsible
for the anomaly.
According to researchers, there is a missing enzyme
that prevents the production of the male sex hormone
– dihydro-testosterone – in the womb – and creates
what looks like a baby girl on birth.
However, it is only until puberty, that the
testosterone begins to flow, causing break in voices
and growth of male sexual reproductive organ which
affirms their sex as male.
A report by Dr. Imperato reveals that the deficient
enzyme is called 5-α-reductase, which normally
converts testosterone into dihydro-testosterone.
Her research was picked up by the American
pharmaceutical giant, Merck, and a drug called
‘finasteride’ was created. The finasteride is said to
have the capacity to block the action of 5-α-
reductase. The drug is now widely used to treat
benign enlargement of the prostate and male pattern
baldness.