Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Antiandrogens emerged in 1970s West Germany at the intersection of pharmaceutical research, animal experimentation, and clinical endocrinology. This study traces how antiandrogens became central tools for conceptualizing human sex differentiation. Focusing on the Antiandrogens Working Group and the work of Schering researcher Friedmund Neumann, the article situates West German antiandrogen research within a longer experimental tradition of androgen-centered models of prenatal sex development. It argues that antiandrogens functioned not only as therapeutic substances but as epistemic instruments that reshaped scientific understandings of sex differentiation in the late twentieth century.

Methods: Archival materials and medical periodicals were analyzed using historical hermeneutical source interpretation.

Results: It argues that antiandrogens functioned as what Lara Keuck termed ‘exploratory tool’: an experimentally productive category that enabled new forms of knowledge about prenatal hormonal effects and sex differentiation. Antiandrogen research allowed Schering researcher and veterinarian Friedmund Neumann to inscribe his research on antiandrogens into already established experimental systems for researching the role of androgens in human sex development. While since the 1950s the search for the hormonal causes of sexual development focused on the psyche, the brain, and behavior, Neumanns approach diverged from contemporary research. Although drawing on the work of Alfred Jost, Neumann did not focus on behavior but continued to investigate sex development. By examining antiandrogens as both therapeutic substances and epistemic objects, the aim is to show how a substance which today is used in gender-affirming care, linked industrial research and experimental practices.

Conclusions: Findings complicate dominant historiographies that locate late-twentieth-century research on sex differentiation primarily in psychology and brain organization theory. In contrast to U.S.-centered narratives emphasizing brain organization theory, West German antiandrogen research sustained a material, experimental, and genital-focused model of sex development. Possible applications and communication of the potential of androgens in sex development research were not only shared within the practitioners working group but also communicated to a broader medical audience. Antiandrogens as potent substances had thus arrived in the broader medical community in the 1970s and were established as antagonistic to androgens, having a lasting impact on knowledge about sexual development.