I don't understand how testing for pre-natal hormone techniques in humans will ever take off.

Think of it, for this to be developed, there would need to be large, randomized, studies done eventually on human subjects. But who would volunteer for such a study? Imagine decades down the line, studies in lab animals shows that hormonal treatment can alter sexuality in animals, what parent would subject their child to it on the off chance that their kid might be gay? And also not knowing what host of side effects might result - intelligence, fertility, and so on!

For *real* diseases, there are true motivators - you don't want your kid to get sick and die, or be crippled with Polio, or whatever - so many people would be willing to volunteer for such studies. But for possible homosexuality? One's fear of homosexuality would have to border on paranoia to think that the risk of being in an early study is worth the "rewards."

Very good response.

This (and other posts anbout drug and treatment development, qv) assume that this hormonal tinkering would be done by legitimate physicians in the developed world. Like cloning, abortion for gender selection and human organ harvesting, this is something that is far more likely to take place in parts of the world not bound by the moral, ethical and legal codes that protect those of us in the developed world.

I think you have a point, samfaith. I agree that if this were *ever* going to happen, it would happen in a place like China, where there are enough resources to pay for development of a gay-prevention therapy, and the population is already used to the government meddling in their reproductive lives. However, it would still take an improbably long time to make it feasible-- here's why:

Let's assume two things: approximately 10% of all baby boys grow up to be gay men, and that the hormones would need to be started within the first month of conception (so they can't tell if they're treating girls or boys). Still, gay men are more common than gay women, so their desired end point is a reduction in the number of gay baby boys in the treated group.

In order to get 25 gay boys in the placebo group, they start with something like 1,000 pregnant women-- 500 are carrying boys, 50 of which "should" be gay; half receive treatment, and half given placebo. Let's say these first treated babies are born in 2015, which is a pretty optimistic date because of the amount of animal-based work required to guess at a human dose. Asuming these first 500 boys aren't born with any major health defects, the researchers sit back and wait for their data. They wait and wait and wait. By 2030, they start interviewing the boys: are you gay? Maybe they see if the boys get aroused when they show them gay porn. Regardless, their methods aren't likely to produce good data that early in the game-- what 15-year-old volunteers that he's gay to some random government researcher? And don't most 15-year-olds get erections if they feel a stiff breeze? So they wait another 10 years, until the boys are 25. It is now 2040. They go around again, finding that half of their original test subjects are lost because they've moved to a different state, or emigrated. (Long-term studies are very expensive and people get lost to follow-up all the time.) Again, they ask if the boys are gay. Most of the boys in both groups are married-- social pressure counts for something-- so they ask them about their sex lives with their wives, and try the arousal test again. Maybe they find that of the 300 boys they've managed to track down, 12 boys in the treated group are gay, versus 15 in the placebo group. Does that reach statistical significance? I bet you it doesn't.

So they ask themselves: did the treatment work? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe our sample size was too small. Maybe the dose was wrong. So, in 2040 they take 2,000 pregnant women...

Get the picture?