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thetic hormones are now usually administered, which have also become sus- pect.) It has been found that some of the added hormones carry over to the meat that becomes food for people. Various studies of the effects of such carryover have been made. Of its ultimate effects on people, as yet very little is definitively known. However, reports on side effects of hormonal treatment of human dis- orders are suggestive. In women, it has been found that hormones admin- istered to their mothers at a critical stage of fetus development can produce birth defects in children, and also interfere with the mothers’ own immune systems. In men, experience has shown that side effects of estrogen-type hormonal treatment for prostate cancer can include, among other things, impotence, hot flashes / chills, enlarged breasts, weight gain or loss, con- stipation or diarrhea, and hair loss. Berkson comments that, “One of the consequences of adding DES to feed was that some exposed male workers suffered sterility, impotence, and breast growth.” Note that estrogen is not a single hormone, nor exclusively female; women and men have both estrogens and androgens (male hormones) in their systems. It’s just that women pro- duce more estrogens, men more androgens. The proportion and distribution of each determine in the womb, and to some degree later in life maintain, one’s maleness or femaleness. What this kind of data seems to indicate is that “outside” introduced hormones (often artificially synthesized) can interfere with the workings of one’s own hormones in unexpected ways, and that at the very least, great caution should be used in deciding whether and when to administer them. Very few synthetic hormones, or for that matter other widely used chemical medications, have been tested to see whether they can disrupt the human endocrine (hormone producing) system. Hormone disruption is a field that is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, telling hints of problems that can arise with unnatural hormonal manipulation are found, as just one example, in a professional medical encyclopedia article which refers to the “perturbation of closely re- lated feedback systems” in the body, and “unpredictable side effects through the neutralization of as yet poorly understood genes, proteins, enzymes or steroids.” And elsewhere in the same publication: “Now as ever, autoimmune diseases constitute one of the main unsolved problems in human and clinical medicine.” Another comment from a different source: “We’re finding that sex hormones - estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and prolactin - have pro- found effects on the immune system... These are real neurologic symptoms.” 178