Links for Keyword: Hormones & Behavior

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, or subscribe to our mailing list, to receive news updates. Learn more.

Links 81 - 100 of 296

EPA should test demasculinizing pollutants collectively, NRC says

By Janet Raloff On December 18, a National Research Council panel told the Environmental Protection Agency that sufficient data exist to begin assessing the potential health risks posed by phthalates, among the most ubiquitous pollutants on the planet. At the same time, the NRC panel strongly recommended that the agency adopt a “paradigm shift” in the way it assesses the chemicals’ toxicity to humans. Instead of evaluating each phthalate compound individually, EPA should begin assessing risks from likely combos of these and related chemicals — even if each chemical works differently, according to the panel’s new report. Phthalates are a widely used family of plasticizers and solvents. Owing to the chemicals’ presence in plastics, cosmetics, personal care products and even medicines, residues of these chemicals show up in everyone throughout the developed world. For more than a decade, studies in rodents have been demonstrating that exposures to phthalates early in life can perturb — in some cases derail — development of an animal’s reproductive organs (SN: 9/2/00, p. 152). Males are most sensitive, largely because these chemicals act as anti-androgens. That is, the chemicals lower concentrations of testosterone, the primary male sex hormone. Especially concerning: In females, phthalates can cross the placenta and pollute the womb. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2008

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 12359 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The Environmental Effect on Puberty

To say that kids are growing up faster than ever these days may be more than just cliché. Recent studies have shown that children are reaching puberty at younger and younger ages, and researchers are starting to see links between this trend and other societal ills such as ubiquitous pollution and sedentary lifestyles. In a 2007 report for the Breast Cancer Fund entitled “The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What We Know, What We Need to Know,” ecologist Sandra Steingraber argues that unfettered access to computers and TVs over the last 30 years has led to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle among kids in the U.S. and beyond. Active kids produce more melatonin, a natural hormone that serves as the body’s internal clock and calendar. This could explain why sedentary kids are likely to go through puberty sooner: Their bodies think their decreased melatonin production is a trigger to move into puberty. “[Melatonin is] an inhibitory signal for puberty,” says Steingraber. “The more melatonin you have, the later you go into puberty.” Of course, sedentary lifestyles are also linked to childhood obesity, a condition that often continues—along with the many health problems that can accompany it—into adulthood. A recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found that, between 2001 and 2004, 17.5 percent of children ages six to 11 were overweight—an effective doubling of obesity rates three decades ago. A study by the non-profit Obesity Society came up with a slightly higher figure—20 percent—with the percentages higher for Hispanic, African-American and Native American children. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

To Trust or Not to Trust: Ask Oxytocin

By Mauricio Delgado The development of trust is an essential social tool, allowing people to form productive and meaningful relationships, both at a professional and personal level. Bonds of trust are also extremely fragile, however and a single act of betrayal—such as a marital affair—can instantly erase years of trustworthy behavior. The consequences of such breaches in confidence can be disastrous, and not only for a relationship. People who have been betrayed in the past will sometimes start avoiding future social interactions, which is a potential precursor to social phobia. In light of these connections, recent research has attempted to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying trust behavior. This is the goal of an exciting new study by neuroscientist Thomas Baumgartner and colleagues at the University of Zurich in Germany that combines different disciplines (economics and neuroscience) and methodologies (neuroimaging and neuropharmacology) to investigate how the brain adapts to breaches of trust. To study social interactions, economists, and more recently neuroscientists, take advantage of a simple game played between two people called the “trust game.” (For more on greed and altruism, see this.) In a typical trust game, an investor (Player 1) is faced with a decision to keep a sum of money (say, $10) or share it with a trustee (Player 2). If shared, the investment is tripled ($30) and the trustee now faces the decision to repay the trust by sending back a larger amount of the initial investment (for example, $15 for each participant) or to defect and violate trust by keeping the money. In this game, the investor is therefore left with an important social dilemma: to trust or not to trust. Although it is more profitable to trust, doing so leaves the investor at risk of betrayal. © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 11822 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A Child, a Bizarre Tumor and a Perilous Operation

By KERIDWEN CORNELIUS PHOENIX — Three-year-old Grace Webster perches on the operating table, tiny and cold, covered only by a diaper and her sandy-blond Raggedy Ann hair. Her blue eyes gaze warily at the monster-size machines sprouting tube tentacles that encircle her — machines that will guide surgeons four inches into her brain. M.R.I. scans showed the tumor, a hypothalamic hamartoma, before the surgery, top, and the area of the brain after the tumor was removed. Grace had her first menstrual period at 14 months old. Her body is racked more than 10 times a day with seizures, some of them bizarrely mimicking laughter or rage. The source of her suffering is a hypothalamic hamartoma, or H.H., a tumor on the hypothalamus that strikes only a few thousand people in the world. And while the tumor is not malignant, until five years ago it was considered incurable, even when baffled doctors could diagnose it. Surgery was risky and largely ineffective. Medication seldom helped. Many children were institutionalized. Now, thanks to an innovative surgical procedure, scores of these children have been cured at two centers that specialize in the disease. One is in Melbourne, Australia; the other is the Barrow Neurological Institute here in Phoenix. It is 8 a.m. on April 20, 2007, and on the operating table at Barrow a nurse and a neuroanesthesiologist are trying to coax the anesthesia mask onto Grace’s mouth. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 11623 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Birds, Bugs Named as Steroid Users!

By NATALIE ANGIER I am a baseball fan of the most fitful and narrow-minded sort. I love the Yankees, but really only when they’re winning, I hate the Red Sox, especially when they’re winning, and the other teams, as far as I’m concerned, can all go take a whiff. Nevertheless, I care enough about the future of America’s beloved pastime to offer players who have been accused of using anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and other disreputable performance-enhancing drugs some exciting new excuses, culled from the behavioral and pharmaceutical annals of the nonhuman community. Among them: (a) this stuff isn’t for me, it’s for my wife, and any minute now I’ll explode out the contents of my stomach to give it to her; (b) this stuff isn’t mine, it belongs to the poor slob I pretended to befriend and then killed and ate; and (c) don’t blame me — my first dope pusher was my mother. Frown though we may on steroid-style supplementation as cheating, or as competitiveness taken to unsporting and unnatural extremes, in nature such pious niceties do not apply. In nature, as the saying has it, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether you win — and animals will do or ingest the most outrageous, dangerous, blechy things in their quest for victory. Egyptian vultures consume large amounts of cow and goat dung to extract traces of plant pigments that will turn the birds’ pasty faces a sexually alluring shade of mustard. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Gut Problem

By LISA SANDERS, M.D. “I’m sorry, Nonnie,” the slender 9-year-old girl said. “I tried to get to the bathroom.” She was pale, her lips trembled and her thin face was streaked with tears and vomit. “Don’t you worry about it, baby girl.” Her grandmother’s soft twang was as warm as a hug as she quickly wiped down the floor. “You can’t help it when you’re sick.” And she had been sick — for nearly six months. Last March, the child got some kind of terrible stomach bug. Her grandmother, with whom she was currently living, called the pediatrician. He said there was a flu going around and that she would probably be fine in a day or two. But over the next several days, nothing the little girl ate or drank would stay down. When she didn’t get better, the grandmother took the child to the doctor’s office. After one look at the girl, he sent her to the emergency room at a local hospital. The doctors there had her airlifted to Children’s Hospital in nearby Birmingham, Ala. The girl was badly dehydrated and spent the better part of the next week in the I.C.U. It seemed as if they ran a million tests, her grandmother told me. But none of them gave the doctors the answer they sought. They sent her home. After a couple of days, the girl was fine — running, laughing, playing with her little brother, eating as if there were no tomorrow. But a few weeks later, the nausea came back, and so did the vomiting and diarrhea. She went back to the pediatrician. He said it was probably a virus, but a couple of days later she ended up in a nearby hospital again. It was a cycle that was repeated many times over the next several months. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 11103 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Addicted to Water

By LISA SANDERS, M.D. The indifferent voice crackled through the hospital intercom. “Please, I am so, so thirsty,” answered the young woman in the bed. “I feel awful, but I know I’d feel better if I could just have a drink of water.” Her mouth was so dry it hurt, and her head pounded painfully. She felt dizzy and sweaty. “I’ll let your nurse know,” replied the voice. It seemed to the woman that her life had always revolved around water. She was always thirsty, always drinking. When she went out, she carried two or three water bottles with her. When she went to sleep, she needed two glasses of water at her bedside. That morning she had come to the hospital for a C-section to deliver a baby too big to get out any other way. Now the beautiful baby was sleeping, and the mother was desperately thirsty. When the nurse appeared with a pitcher of water, the woman almost wept with relief. The next morning, Dr. Heidi Chen, the OB-GYN intern, woke the patient early. The young doctor was worried, and it showed on her face. The patient had drunk an enormous amount of water in the hours following her C-section — well over three gallons. Her urine output had been just as remarkable. The doctor needed to figure out what was going on. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States; Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 10846 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Strange but True: Males Can Lactate

By Nikhil Swaminathan In late 2004 the Internet Movie Database reported that Dustin Hoffman suddenly had the urge to breast-feed. Had the then-67-year-old Hoffman—who brought mainstream culture face to face with autism in Rain Man and went mano a mano with an Ebola-like filovirus in Outbreak—never quite broken character from his 1982 film Tootsie? Nope. He was just really keen to help out with his first grandchild. Interestingly, he could have possibly lent a helping, er, breast, if he had held the suckling newborn to his nipples for a couple weeksalthough he could also have tried starving himself or taking a medication that would affect his brain's pituitary gland. There have been countless literary descriptions of men miraculously breast-feeding, from The Talmud to Tolstoy, where, in Anna Karenina, there is a short anecdote of a baby suckling an Englishman for sustenance while on board a ship. The little anthropological evidence documented suggests it is possible. In the 1896 compendium Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, George Gould and Walter Pyle catalogue several instances of male nursing being observed. Among them was a South American man, observed by Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who subbed as wet nurse after his wife fell ill as well as male missionaries in Brazil that were the sole milk supply for their children because their wives had shriveled breasts. More recently, Agence France-Presse reported a short piece in 2002 on a 38-year-old man in Sri Lanka who nursed his two daughters through their infancy after his wife died during the birth of her second child. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 10701 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Money isn't everything

From The Economist print edition PSYCHOLOGISTS have known for a long time that economists are wrong. Most economists—at least, those of the classical persuasion—believe that any financial gain, however small, is worth having. But psychologists know this is not true. They know because of the ultimatum game, the outcome of which is often the rejection of free money. In this game, one player divides a pot of money between himself and another. The other then chooses whether to accept the offer. If he rejects it, neither player benefits. And despite the instincts of classical economics, a stingy offer (one that is less than about a quarter of the total) is, indeed, usually rejected. The question is, why? One explanation of the rejectionist strategy is that human psychology is adapted for repeated interactions rather than one-off trades. In this case, taking a tough, if self-sacrificial, line at the beginning pays dividends in future rounds of the game. Rejecting a stingy offer in a one-off game is thus just a single move in a larger strategy. And indeed, when one-off ultimatum games are played by trained economists, who know all this, they do tend to accept stingy offers more often than other people would. But even they have their limits. To throw some light on why those limits exist, Terence Burnham of Harvard University recently gathered a group of students of microeconomics and asked them to play the ultimatum game. All of the students he recruited were men. © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2007

Bad Medicine

By SHERWIN B. NULAND Noga Arikha’s “Passions and Tempers” illustrates some of the rewards and some of the pitfalls of historical scholarship. To Arikha’s immense credit, she provides a thoroughly documented account of the ways in which a wrong-headed theory dominated medical thinking for more than 2,000 years, refusing to yield place at the bedside long after it had been proved erroneous by clear-eyed observation and the development of experimental science. One of Arikha’s contributions to the general reader’s knowledge, in fact, is to use the history of the humors — those bodily fluids once thought to hold the key to understanding human health and personality — to demonstrate the difficulty that physicians have always had in giving up outmoded ways of treating actual patients. This has almost invariably been the case, even when not only the theoretical but also the practical basis for a changed approach has already been established, sometimes by the very clinicians who cannot bring themselves to abandon the discredited practices. Arikha is hardly treading new ground here, but she does provide convincing and very specific evidence of a human failing that dogged the profession until at least the middle of the 20th century, and in certain ways continues to influence modern-day diagnosis and therapy. The complex of notions constituting the background of Arikha’s narrative would eventually form the basis from which Western scientific medicine emerged. Its preliminary formulations were brought together over the course of several centuries, in a body of writings that came to be associated with the name of Hippocrates, born on the Greek island of Kos around 460 B.C. But its ultimate codification was the work of the great physician Galen, who lived in the Roman Empire from about A.D. 130 to 201, leaving behind a multitude of texts with claims stated so authoritatively that his influence did not begin to dissipate until the 16th century. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Disfiguring Treatment? No, It Was Healing

By RICHARD WASSERSUG, M.D. My daughter and I were talking about outing oneself — the act of disclosing one’s inner identity. The discussion was not purely academic. “Dad, when most people out themselves, they open the closet door and just come out,” she said. “You, Dad, you went through the wall.” I had just told my daughter that I was a eunuch. It all started with a diagnosis of prostate cancer in 1998, when I was 52. Two years later, after failed surgery and radiation, I started hormonal therapy. This meant taking chemicals that slow the growth of prostate cancer cells by depriving them of androgen — in effect, castrating the patient. Chemical castration is the common treatment for advanced prostate cancer, and more than 250,000 American men are taking these drugs. But few people know of any men taking them, simply because we hide. It is shameful to be castrated. My initial response to the therapy was typical. My mood plummeted along with my testosterone level. Hair vanished from my arms and legs. Muscle disappeared, fat appeared. My memory suffered. Not only was I now more likely to lose my car keys, I occasionally couldn’t remember where I left the car. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 10137 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Raging Hormones

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Six years ago, Dr. Paul Savage was a pudgy mess. A 38-year-old emergency-room director in Waukegan, Ill., he weighed 267 pounds, suffered from high blood pressure and shortness of breath and had sallow skin that drooped in wattles around his chin. Today, at 44, he’s a new, unrecognizable man. Almost 100 pounds lighter, he boasts 12 percent body fat, a superhero jaw line and skin tone that seems almost incandescent. Savage says he owes much of his transformation to the self-administration of human growth hormone (H.G.H.). “I worked with a personal trainer and a nutritionist first,” he says. “I actually gained three pounds. Then I started growth hormone, and the weight dropped away.” Like a freshly hatched evangelist, Savage quit emergency-room medicine and in 2004 co-established a clinic in Chicago dedicated to hormone therapy, with an emphasis on H.G.H. His franchise, which operates under the name BodyLogicMD, serves about 1,500 people nationwide, many of whom pay upward of $15,000 for a yearly cycle of growth-hormone injections. The patient count rises by almost 100 each month. According to a 2005 article in The Journal of the American Medical Association, human growth hormone is being prescribed to tens of thousands of people each year at anti-aging or “age management” facilities like Savage’s. Those who take H.G.H. — including many doctors — say it can restore sagging physiques, flagging endurance and wilting libidos as well as cure depression and sharpen mental acuity. “I can’t believe everybody isn’t taking this,” says Dr. Darren Clair, 53, the founder of Vibrance Health Services, an age-management clinic in Beverly Hills, Calif., and himself a dedicated H.G.H. user. No one has yet claimed that H.G.H. reduces foot odor and freshens breath, though that could be coming. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 9256 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Does Testosterone Build a Better Athlete?

By NATASHA SINGER Tests that indicated high testosterone levels for Floyd Landis during the Tour de France have again raised questions about whether such substances provide an unfair advantage. But does taking testosterone — a controlled substance whose possession is illegal unless prescribed for medical reasons — automatically improve athletic performance? In sports, testosterone shots or creams are supposed to be magic bullets that spur athletes to train harder, run or bicycle more quickly, jump higher, swim faster, hit a baseball farther, recover sooner, and, let’s not forget, increased sex drive and combativeness. Certainly, the idea that taking doses of the hormone gives competitors an unfair advantage is behind the brouhaha over Floyd Landis, the 2006 Tour de France winner who French officials say tested positive for elevated testosterone on the day of his remarkable comeback during Stage 17. Mr. Landis has denied taking any performance-enhancing substances. But some leading experts who study testosterone are not convinced that supplementing the hormone improves endurance or overall athletic performance. Unlike a hyper-caffeinated sports drink, the synthetic hormone does not provide an instant jolt, but works over time to bulk and fortify muscles. What other effects taking testosterone may have on athletes is the subject of heated debate. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

In Opera, a Different Kind of Less Is More: 'Handel and the Castrati'

By ALAN RIDING LONDON, — More than most art forms, opera demands a suspension of disbelief. For a long time this included accepting that a man could sing with the voice of a woman. It was not a natural gift, but the results often drove audiences wild: castrati, as they were known, were among the rulers of the 18th-century opera stage. True, most of the Italian boys who were castrated to preserve their unbroken voices never achieved fame . Yet enough did to encourage some impoverished parents to allow one or two of their sons to undergo this pre-pubescent mutilation. In the 1730's, it has been estimated, as many as 4,000 boys were so altered each year. Intense musical training followed, so that, by their midteens, the youths were ready to sing in church choirs. Then, with opera all the rage from Naples to Venice, the best voices were selected by theater managers for the stage. A few became stars across Europe. Those seeking the highest fees headed for London, where Handel was presiding over a boom in Italian opera. "Handel and the Castrati," a revealing small show at the Handel House Museum here through Oct. 1, tells their stories. On display are a few objects, including an 18th-century iron "castratori" instrument, as well as paintings, engravings, music scores and recorded excerpts from Handel operas and oratorios, with castrato roles now sung by counter-tenors and mezzo-sopranos. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 9: Hearing, Vestibular Perception, Taste, and Smell
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 6: Hearing, Balance, Taste, and Smell
Link ID: 8802 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PMS-Free Women's Brains Work Overtime

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — As women experience their regular menstrual cycle, they undergo bodily changes that can cause emotional mood swings, but scientists have just discovered that women without problems associated with PMS have brains that can regulate the cyclical emotional overloads. The study, published in a recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, represents the first time that PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome) has been studied using functional MRI brain scanning, along with tests designed to probe emotional changes. The findings suggest that PMS and more serious symptoms associated with menstruation are driven by forces that may be beyond a woman's control. "In the past, many women suffering from PMS were told to, 'Just get over it,' or were asked, 'Why can't you handle this?'" said David Silbersweig, one of the study's authors. Silbersweig, a physician and researcher at Cornell University's Weill Medical College, added, "We now hope that our research will help the public to understand that PMS can involve changes in the brain, and that the condition is not just psychological, but that biological systems are involved that help to control emotions and behavior." © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

PMS Brain

There comes a time when parents pass the birds and bees tale on to their daughters. But that sensitive discussion can require a good advice book. One, The Mother's Book, applauded mom's cautionary tale to a "girl of about ten" — "She has taught her how to care for herself during the menstrual period; not to get her feet wet; not to allow the bowels to become constipated; not to over-exercise; not to read too much, nor dance or play tennis." Of course, that sage advice, written in 1927, makes us chuckle today. But it illustrates something not so funny — experts say we still don't know enough about the biological storms that hormones whip up at various times of a woman's ovarian cycle. Now, neurologists may be closer to cracking the brain chemistry that drives troublesome behavioral changes associated with premenstrual syndrome, or PMS, and its cousin premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD, by looking at mice. Female mice have ovarian cycles that mirror ours. Researchers tracked a protein, called GABA, that is part of a specific brain receptor on nerve cells that seems to contribute to the cells' firing activity. "The business end of the nerve cells is… they transmit information to other nerve cells," by sending signals, something scientists call firing action potential, says Istvan Mody, a neurologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. If firing action potential goes awry, there can be trouble for brain cells. "They fire a lot more and they can produce all kinds of damaging effects such as seizures or anxiety, or any other hyper-excitable events in the brain," Mody says. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 4: The Chemical Bases of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 7975 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Chemical Trust: An Oxytocin Oxymoron

Writing in the journal Nature, Michael Kosfeld and colleagues reported that intranasal administration of oxytocin, a human neuropeptide involved in maternal bonding, “causes a substantial increase in trusting behavior, thereby greatly increasing the benefits from social interactions.”1 The double-blind study involved a trust game with real monetary stakes, in which the subjects played the role of either an investor or a trustee. Investors could choose whether and how much money to invest with an anonymous trustee, and the trustees could choose whether to honor or violate the investors’ trust. The investors who had inhaled the oxytocin invested 17% more money than those who received the placebo. In what is becoming an increasingly tantalizing form of neuroscience, researchers in this study obtained consent not to study the phenomenon about which they were interested, trust, but rather the effect of a hormone more generally. The seemingly subtle shift in language, with its attendant deception, was obviously necessary for the researchers to conduct their study. But did they, and do researchers who would study phenomena of character more generally, have a special responsibility to inform subjects about the risks of “shifts in subject consciousness?” It is more than a question of informed consent that is at hand. For just as there is an obvious irony in manipulating subjects’ inclination to trust in order to study the biochemical basis of that trust, there is a broader safety—and indeed human—concern about whether trust should be scientifically manipulated in clinical studies in this way at all.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 7647 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Human Growth Hormone and the Measure of Man

Dov Fox In July 2003, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized pharmaceutical companies to promote human Growth Hormone (hGH) for use in children who are very short but not suffering from any specific illness or medical condition. Parents are now using hGH in record numbers, hoping that hormone treatment will give their kids happier childhoods and more prosperous adulthoods. No one should doubt these parental good intentions. But the normalization of height enhancement reflects a troubling disposition, familiar in our time, to redefine disadvantageous traits as “illnesses” and look to medical techniques for a “cure.” Of course, there are often real benefits to using medical technologies for self-improvement: straighter teeth, clearer complexions, firmer figures. But our technological enhancements to body and psyche may also undermine those human goods that are less obvious but more fundamental—especially parental love for the abnormal child and civic love for the abnormal neighbor. We can hardly expect the FDA as an institution to worry about such matters; its concern is the safety of products not the health of the culture. But when it approved height enhancement for healthy kids, the FDA made a mistake on our behalf. Exploring the nature of this error may help us deal more wisely with the biotechnical enhancements of the future, or at least see more clearly the full meaning of our “improvements.” One can understand the hGH seduction. Short Americans—especially males—often face difficulties ranging from fitting in at school to finding a job or spouse. Studies show that shortness in childhood is correlated with juvenilization, teasing, bullying, and social exclusion, while studies in adults have linked short stature to social isolation, reduced marriage rates, and problems in employment. In one study, several hundred university students rated the qualities of men of varying heights. Short men were regarded as less mature, less positive, less secure, less masculine, less successful, less capable, less confident, and less outgoing.

Jagged Little Pill

Since its introduction four decades ago, the birth control pill has not entirely lived up to its original hype: While it may have offered women sexual freedom, the pill has also introduced a number of hormone-related side effects and health issues—everything from intense mood swings to a possible risk of cancer. Though we're of course much better off than in the precarious days of the "rhythm" and "withdrawal" methods, birth control remains a stressful business: Should I stay with condoms, even though they're uncomfortable and fail 10 percent of the time? Should I risk the side effects and go on the pill? Should I resort to something as clumsy and dated as a diaphragm? But even with so many issues still on the table, one seems to have been long ago put to bed: Birth control is unquestionably a woman's responsibility. Or is it? A remarkable new product is on its way that may make it possible to shift the burden of reproductive responsibility—gasp!— to men. Earlier this year, Dutch pharmaceutical giant Organon, along with Germany's Schering, announced that they expect their hormone-based contraceptive for men to hit the European market in as few as five years. Once that happens, it may only be another year or so before a U.S. debut. So, it will soon be possible for a man to avoid impregnating his partner by drastically lowering his sperm count. Unlike a vasectomy, the effect is temporary, completely reversible. And of course, the very notion is incredible: For over 30 years a "male pill" has been in various stages of development, but this is the first time serious drug money has backed it up. As a woman, I can't help but ask: What took so long? ©2004 Microsoft Corporation.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 6203 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Genetically Altered Athletes

As the U.S. anti-doping agency continues to call Olympic athletes into question regarding use of steroids, this ScienCentral News video reports that scientists are raising concerns about what they call the future of performance enhancement—genetic doping. Wrestler Kerry McCoy had a lot to be proud of even before winning a spot on the U.S. Olympic team that will compete in Athens this August: a silver medal in the 2003 world championships; winner of two NCAA wrestling championships at Penn State University; and a fifth place finish in the 2000 Olympic games in Sydney. McCoy says he earned his accolades with hard work in the gym, and the mounting charges against athletes accused of using performance-enhancing drugs are disappointing. "You think that once you get in any kind of competitive arena—you know, it's you and another person just trying to see who's the best, because of what time and energy and training you put in," he says. "And if someone wants to take a shortcut by doing something that's not legal or not moral, that's unfortunate. It's a disadvantage to the sport and disadvantage to the athlete, because their experience is really cheapened by not getting the full amount out of themselves." © ScienCentral, 2000-2004.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 5664 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Previous Page | Next Page

Links By Chapter:

Links for Keyword: Hormones & Behavior