An impassioned but unconvincing argument for a medical treatment.
A urologist proposes a new approach to treating aging in women.
In this follow-up to Ageless Man (2017), Debled theorizes that many of the negative symptoms that are associated with aging and menopause in women can be attributed to a decline in testosterone production. The book reviews clinical evidence for such a decrease in testosterone and other hormones, and it goes on to draw connections between lower hormone levels and symptoms generally associated with menopause and aging, including muscle loss, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Debled discusses each symptom in detail and talks about how it may be the result of androgen deficiency. As the book addresses existing research, it also makes suggestions for new areas of study with a focus on androgenic hormones in women. Debled concludes that the aforementioned physical conditions, which he calls the “androgenic diseases of menopause,” can be best treated with mesterolone supplements, though he acknowledges that mesterolone is not approved for use in the United States. He also discusses ways in which standard hormone replacement therapy, with its focus on estrogen and progesterone, is harmful. Over the course of this book, Debled presents a thought-provoking interpretation of clinical evidence that runs counter to accepted scientific practice. However, he doesn’t make a convincing case for his fundamental upending of conventional wisdom. Readers who are inclined to treat women’s aging as a natural process are sure to find the author’s perspective challenging. Throughout, Debled treats the symptoms of aging as extremely negative (“If you are over forty, don’t you believe yourself to be sick?”). In particular, he presents them as distasteful from an aesthetic perspective; his descriptions of older women (“Old, frustrated obese women often deploy ingenuity and diet-program calculations, generally without result”) are extremely unflattering. In addition, the book’s description of women’s sex organs as their “male genitalia,” because they respond to androgens, isn’t linguistically or conceptually standard.
The goal of the author’s method of treatment is the elimination of aging (“mature human beings will no longer know the inexorable decrepitude that leads to death at around age eighty”). To that end, Debled generally does a good job of explaining physiology in chapters detailing conditions associated with getting older and how they may be connected to decreases in hormone production. In the book’s conclusion, he links his advocacy of mesterolone treatment to an episode in his past, when his approach to treating impotence resulted in the end of his teaching career and his establishment of a private clinic. The observations and recommendations in this book are based on the author’s work there, which includes the use of mesterolone. The book does include research citations, although readers should be advised that many of the papers are in French and refer to Debled’s own work. The book is enthusiastic about reevaluating the aging process, but it does not provide enough evidence to persuade readers to try the treatment that it endorses, which isn’t approved by U.S. government regulators.
An impassioned but unconvincing argument for a medical treatment.Pub Date: June 29, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Here's a fascinating look at cutting-edge scientific research—the identification of cancer's origins—from a man who has been near its center for nearly three decades. Weinberg (Biomedical Research/MIT) has the advantage of having actually worked with or competed against many of the scientists who are the stars of his story. Beginning in the 1950s, the search for the causes of cancer began to focus on two areas: the body of evidence implicating various possible carcinogens (tobacco smoke, asbestos, etc.) and the equally strong evidence that many cancers could be caused by viruses. The discrepancy was not resolved until it became clear how certain normally harmless genes (known as oncogenes) can become active and send the cells of which they are a part into cancerous growth. Weinberg gives this discovery full attention, as he does the linked discovery of a tumor-suppressing gene that can be damaged by carcinogens. But his account is most notable for its memorable portraits of the scientists themselves, among them Ernst Wynder, who first established a link between smoking and lung cancer; Howard Temin and David Baltimore, who discovered the mechanism by which retroviruses reproduce; and the brilliant but erratic Sol Spiegelman, himself a cancer victim. Weinberg's knowledge of the key players is matched by his ability to tell their collective story, doing justice to the scientific facts and making their significance clear to the lay reader. He is also eloquent on the politics of science, where the competition for grants and for Nobels is cutthroat. Nor does he ignore the scandals and disasters: Premature announcements of shaky results, grudges nursed for years, careers ruined by botched experiments. As the result of this research, our understanding of cancer has dramatically increased, and new techniques for fighting it may be expected to follow. Scientific history at its most compelling—strongly recommended.
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-517-59118-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
Articulate feminists of diverse backgrounds share their similar thoughts about menopause as a transforming spiritual experience. Horrigan, publisher of the journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, sought out eight women whose work she admires- -a healer, an English professor who is also a shaman, an anthropologist, a Jungian psychoanalyst and performance artist, an Apache medicine woman, a college dean, a part-Cherokee, part-Seneca songwriter, and a feminist writer—and interviewed them for their views on menopause. Every interview is accompanied by a glowing tribute from the author, who presents her interviewees as remarkable, wise, and deeply spiritual and insightful women, and herself as the novice who gains in wisdom as she listens to them. The women explore the female psyche through visions, parables, ancient myths and legends, and tales of goddesses, archetypes, and matriarchies. The book's title has a mythic ring, but it is a phrase Horrigan devised to evoke a positive image of menopause as a transforming journey out of a time of monthly bleeding into a time of creativity not based on reproduction. Menopause, the reader is reminded often, is to be viewed not as an ending but as a beginning. For women in touch with their spirits, as the author and her interviewees presumably are, menopause is a time not simply of biological change, but of spiritual transformation marking the beginning of the most powerful years of a woman's life. Devotees of Joseph Campbell will find much that is familiar here, and the author's advice to follow one's heart echoes Campbell's counsel to follow one's bliss. Inspirational reading for New Age feminists, especially comforting to those approaching menopause.
Pub Date: July 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-517-70386-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
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