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Chad A. Mirkin, Northwestern University, George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Photo by Bill Arsenault. 

DNA Blueprints Guide The Construction Of Specific Human Structures

Chad Mirkin discusses using DNA to build a three-dimensional structure out of gold, likening the process to building a house. Starting with basic materials such as bricks, wood, siding, stone and shingles, a construction team can build many different types of houses out of the same building blocks.
 
The article includes an audio recording of the full interview. Photo courtesy of the UCSD School of Medicine.
Common Sense On Hormone Treatments For HBS Women Print E-mail
Opinion - Editorials
TS-Si   
Saturday, 11 August 2007 22:00
HBS belongs in the scientific and medical mainstream
 
TS-Si Editorial: Common Sense On Hormone Treatments For HBS Women
TS-Si Op-Ed
Fairfax, VA, USA. Whenever someone at TS-Si makes a distinction between men and women born with Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS or True Transsexuality) and the transgendered, we always anticipate that a male transgender or a mal...
Texas, USA. Forty years ago in the early morning hours of December 31 I took the first step in the process of coming out. 1968 was a year of turmoil, police beatings, and random arrests on trumped up charges, a jailhouse rape...
Fairfax, VA, USA. One of the problems with growing older is that everyone you have ever known is growing older with you. Eventually, some of them die and a piece of your life that has been there birth is gone forever.  ...
Sydney, NSW, AUS. Of the thousands of decisions that a couple must make before a wedding, one of the more political ones is what to do about surnames. For my brother and his fiancée, the issue is more loaded than for most. T...
Springfield, VA. USA. The time has come for the scientific and medical community to take up the study of the long term effects of hormone treatment on HBS women. There could be considerable benefits to all women, without regard to their birth condition.
 
When it comes to Hormone Treatment (HT), the medical establishment ignores women with a history of Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS – a.k.a. transsexuality).
 
The past few decades have seen a systematic interest in the effects of HT that omit the valuable experiences of HBS women.
 
Existing research is off the mark. For example, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), launched in 1991, was a major 15-year research program funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). It focused on post-menopausal women.
 
Using these and similar studies as source documents, doctors extended the resulting hormone recommendations to post-op HBS women. Even though HBS women — post-op or not — have never been through menopause, endocrinologists and other medical practitioners still use the WHI as their reference when prescribing hormone types and dosages. When HBS women objected, the medical communities response was — and is — that those studies are the best available data.
 
Continued use of outdated data is based on uninformed presumptions that such patients seek the pretense of womanhood and can not be considered as females. Much of the confusion derives from a failure by practitioners to distinguish between Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS) and paraphilia.
 
Moreover, the hormone regimens were of questionable safety in the first place. WHI studies focused on the use of conjugated estrogens and/or progestin synthetics. Even though the WHI utilized then current methodologies, results from the prescribed hormone regimens have opened the entire effort to scrutiny and criticism. 
 
Many of the HBS women who departed from established treatment plans now report that safer and more effective hormones are available. These kinds of reports should be taken seriously and used as the basis for a rigorous professional investigation.
 
The medical benefits and scientific merits should be obvious to an unbiased observer: a rigorous long term study will not only provide the first hard HT data for post-op HBS women but it will also provide a distinct control group against which the effect of HRT on post-menopausal women can be compared.
 
Long term study of HRT on HBS women avoids many of the variables that make the study of post-menopausal women difficult. With the HBS women, you are looking strictly at the effect of the hormones themselves.
 
Scientists and doctors need to start collecting unbiased case studies of HBS women, then see where the data leads us. What are the pros and cons of HT for women with HBS? What is the proper dosage level and mix of hormones?
 
Although most HBS women disappear back into society after transition, they should be enlisted to give back to community. Post-op HBS women, in particular, must be willing to discuss their hormone regimes and submit to the appropriate protocols to determine actual safety and related effects.
 
The results of the long term study of HRT on HBS women could significantly improve hormone treatment for all women — post-op, those in transition, and post-menopausal women — by capturing the true effect of hormone therapies.
 
TS-Si Editorial
TS-Si.org Editorials convey the official positions of our organization, TS-Si. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TS-Si authors, partners, or affiliates. Signed articles by our contributing authors or referenced news sources do not constitute official policy.
 
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Last Updated on Sunday, 11 November 2007 19:00