Doctors fooled by man's 'pregnancy'

MALAYBALAY (Philippines), June 8, 1992. -- A Filipino male nurse who captured world attention by claiming to be six months pregnant is a fake, his doctor said today. 

Dr Clarita Paggao said Edwin Bayron, also known as Carlo, a 32 year old homosexual nurse who has since disappeared, fooled her and other doctors by concocting details of his medical history.

He was never given a complete physical examination until last week when he was revealed as a fraud.

He hoodwinked medical staff, lawyers and journalists by claiming that he was a hermaphrodite, born with both male and female sexual organs, who later had an operation to make him a woman.

Philippine Health Secretary Antonio Periquet had even offered to cover all expenses for the birth. "He has fooled all of us for reasons he alone can explain," said Paggao, chief gynecologist at the Bukidnon provincial hospital in the southern Philippines where Bayron worked.

"That is why I want to see him again, and to undress him in public so that the whole world will know that he is a fake." Paggao and provincial health officials had earlier said Bayron was pregnant, based on an ultra sound scan and two urine tests.

Interviewed on May 27 Paggao had said she had felt a fetus kicking inside Bayron's swollen stomach, and that the ultra-sound scan showed it was a boy.

The elaborate hoax was apparently hatched to support Bayron's court application for a legal change of name and sex so that he could marry his Army officer lover.