Word: glands
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...result of uncommon-sense reasoning, doctors are inducing early abortions with prostaglandin F2 alpha, a hormone-like substance derived from semen. The prostaglandins are a class of chemicals, 16 of which have now been isolated, that were originally believed to be secreted in the prostate gland. The first were found in human semen, which is still the richest source known. Now prostaglandins are known to occur in many other human tissues and in menstrual fluid. They are also found in the semen of sheep, and it was from the seminal vesicles of rams that medical researchers obtained their early supplies...
...these children sometimes become dwarfs is unknown. Some researchers suspect the pituitary gland, the body's governor of growth. Others believe that continuous anxiety makes a victim's digestive system less able to absorb food. Although doctors see a connection between a baby's mental state and growth, they cannot yet show how an emotional problem becomes a physical one. They do know that no matter how deprivation dwarfs thrive in a hospital, the spurt often ends when they return to the homes that started the trouble...
...GOITER, a grossly enlarged thyroid gland caused by iodine deficiency. The condition was thought to have been eliminated during the Depression by persuading people to use iodized salt in their food. Now it has become endemic again, said Schaefer, affecting 5% of those studied-even though enough iodine to prevent goiter costs less than ½ per person per year...
...Fuel. Aboard the Alpha Helix, Biochemist Eberhard Trams of the National Institutes of Health discovered that the brain's control of the pituitary gland was a major factor in the sudden aging of the salmon. As the fish enters fresh water, he found, the pituitary quickly grows to more than twice its normal size, and the central nervous system fails to maintain control. The gland then triggers a metabolic speedup that burns away practically all of the fat in the salmon's body. Biochemist Andrew Benson, associate director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, explains...
Clogging the Arteries. Both the pituitary gland changes and the loss of bone calcium in salmon are also familiar symptoms of aging in humans. "But in the fish," says Biochemist Trams, "the gland goes to hell in two weeks, a process that takes some 20 to 40 years in man." Thus the salmon makes an "ideal laboratory tool" for the investigation of geriatric ailments...