Gendered Hormonal Binaries and the Development of the Category of "Hormone-Dependent Cancers," 1940-1980.

This article considers the establishment of the category of "hormone-dependent cancers," identified around the middle of the twentieth century as cancers sustained by particular hormones. A comparison of hormonal treatments for prostate cancer and those for breast cancer reveals that the genesis of "hormone-dependent cancer" as a biomedical category relied upon assumptions that cast androgens and estrogens as opposing ends of a gendered hormonal binary of health and disease. In the 1930s, cancer researchers claimed "female sex hormones" (estrogens) exacerbated breast cancer and "male sex hormones" (androgens) prevented it.

The molecular vista: current perspectives on molecules and life in the twentieth century.

This essay considers how scholarly approaches to the development of molecular biology have too often narrowed the historical aperture to genes, overlooking the ways in which other objects and processes contributed to the molecularization of life. From structural and dynamic studies of biomolecules to cellular membranes and organelles to metabolism and nutrition, new work by historians, philosophers, and STS scholars of the life sciences has revitalized older issues, such as the relationship of life to matter, or of physicochemical inquiries to biology. This scholarship points to a novel molecular vista that opens up a pluralist view of molecularizations in the twentieth century and considers their relevance to current science.

Effects of Deletion of ERα in Osteoblast-Lineage Cells on Bone Mass and Adaptation to Mechanical Loading Differ in Female and Male Mice.

Estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) has been implicated in bone's response to mechanical loading in both males and females. ERα in osteoblast lineage cells is important for determining bone mass, but results depend on animal sex and the cellular stage at which ERα is deleted. We demonstrated previously that when ERα is deleted from mature osteoblasts and osteocytes in mixed-background female mice, bone mass and strength are decreased.