Word: estrogen
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When a team of Massachusetts General Hospital physicians discovered evidence of a link between a certain type of vaginal cancer and a synthetic estrogen widely taken by pregnant women over two decades, it was obvious that medicine had created a hormonal time bomb. The cancer showed up not in the women who had used diethylstilbestrol, or DES, but in their daughters-some 15 or 20 years after birth. Their sons are apparently not threatened by cancer, but there are indications that in some cases they may also be affected-by genital deformities or sterility. By 1971, when the federal Food...
...HEART. More than a million Americans suffer heart attacks every year, the large majority of them men. In fact, the risk of heart attacks among middle-aged men is five times as great as among their female counterparts. Why? For many years doctors suspected that the higher levels of estrogens-the female sex hormones -in women somehow protected them against heart attacks. Reason: it is only after menopause, when estrogen production drops, that the incidence of heart attacks begins to rise among women. Now a Columbia University internist has found evidence that undermines this theory...
...Americans' gradual realization that science and technology's dreamy wonders sometimes turn out to be nightmarish blunders. Detergents that make dishes gleam may kill rivers. Dyes that prettify the food may cause cancer. Pills that make sex safe may dangerously complicate health. DDT, cyclamates, thalidomide and estrogen are but a few of the mixed blessings that, all together, have taught the layman a singular lesson: the promising fruits of science and technology often come with hidden worms...
...women is understandably great. As the commonest cause of death among women, it kills 32,000 yearly in the U.S., and any report of increased risk raises the level of alarm. This happened last week when the New England Journal of Medicine published a report that women who take estrogen drugs after the menopause to replace natural hormones run a greater risk of breast cancer than others. The cautionary conclusion was based on a study of 1,891 Louisville women. Of those studied, 1,028 or slightly more than half, had had their ovaries removed. Overall, the doctors treating...
...authors, headed by Dr. Robert Hoover of the National Cancer Institute, conceded that the statistics must be examined with caution. But the general conclusion was clear: while the incidence of breast cancer changes imperceptibly if at all during the first few years on estrogen medication, it may rise sharply after ten years and it almost doubles after 15 years. But duration of treatment is not the only factor. The doses taken and the dosage schedule are also important. Harvard Gynecologist Robert Kistner reviewed the latest report judiciously. "Estrogen must be used selectively in postmenopausal women," he said. "Only patients with...