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© 2003 Oxford University Press
EDITORIAL |
Playing the Old Piano: Another Tune for Endocrine Therapy?
Correspondence to: Daniel F. Hayes, MD, 6312 CCGC, University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, 1500 East Medical Center Dr., Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (e-mail: hayesdf@umich.edu).
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In 1896, George Thomas Beatson, a gentleman farmer and surgeon, reported his experience in treating three young women who had locally advanced breast cancer by removing their ovaries (1). All three of these women experienced a reduction in the size of their breast cancers; this result introduced the era of endocrine treatment for cancer. Beatson postulated that "there is some ovarian influence which works the change [growth of cancer]. It may be an altered secretion or it may be the migration of cells—it might even be a parasite in the ovarian cells, for it should be borne in mind in regard to the secretions of the reproductive glands ‘that unlike other secretions, their essential constituents are living cells’ (Stewart)" [author's note: Beatson did not provide a more specific reference to Stewart in his treatise].
After Beatson's observation, oophorectomy became the treatment of choice for premenopausal women with
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J Natl Cancer Inst 2004 96: 555-556.
J Natl Cancer Inst 2004 96: 556-557.
J Natl Cancer Inst 2004 96: 557.
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  D. Koeberle, L. Perey, and B. Thuerlimann Re: Playing the Old Piano: Another Tune for Endocrine Therapy J Natl Cancer Inst, April 7, 2004; 96(7): 555 - 556. [Full Text] [PDF]
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