Randi Hutter Epstein > Quotes

“He wrote that if great sex were necessary to make babies, humans would be fossils by now.”
― Randi Hutter Epstein, Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank

“Whose interest does egg freezing serve? The woman's or that of an ambitious, still pretty unforgiving culture that doesn't really ever see childbearing for female employees as convenient?”
― Randi Hutter Epstein, Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank

“Beginning in the 1920s, and for nearly twenty years, Steinach pioneered one of the most popular and controversial rejuvenation treatments. He claimed that vasectomies boosted sex drive, intellect, energy, and just about anything else that withered with age. Steinach believed that blocking the exit of manly juices (which is what a vasectomy does) prompted a congestion of them, much the way a traffic jam causes a pile-up of cars.”
― Randi Hutter Epstein, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything

“Anne Fausto-Sterling, a Brown University anthropologist—who had written about gender and prompted Bo Laurent to start the Intersex Society—rekindled the testosterone conversation in her 2000 book Sexing the Body. She suggested that the term “sex hormones” be changed to “growth hormones,” because that’s what they do. Testosterone and estrogen affect the development not only of the ovaries, testicles, vagina, and penis, but also of the liver, muscles, and bones. Indeed, they influence nearly every cell in the body. “So to think of them as growth hormones,” Fausto-Sterling once told the New York Times, “which they are, is to stop worrying that men have a lot of testosterone and women, estrogen.”
― Randi Hutter Epstein, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything

“Men lined up for vasectomies, believing that they would become stronger, wiser and sexier. Yeats said it “revived my creative power, it revived my sexual desire, and in all likelihood will last me until I die.” A sixty-one-year-old man (one of many testimonials in Steinach’s memoir), who had been tired and sad and had lost all interest in sex claimed that after the operation “my memory is better, I understand things quicker. I live now like a man about 40 or 50 years old, and am in such good spirits that I find myself going about singing.” The rise and fall of the revitalizing vasectomy is a demonstration of the powers of placebo and publicity—how, even in medicine, being in the right place at the right time can make all the difference between flop and phenomenon.”
― Randi Hutter Epstein, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything

“One day when her coursework was nearly completed, the department chairman called her into his office. She had gotten nearly all As. He pointed to her sole A-minus and told her, “This confirms that women don’t do well in laboratory work.”
― Randi Hutter Epstein, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything

“Anne Fausto-Sterling, a Brown University anthropologist—who had written about gender and prompted Bo Laurent to start the Intersex Society—rekindled the testosterone conversation in her 2000 book Sexing the Body. She suggested that the term “sex hormones” be changed to “growth hormones,” because that’s what they do. Testosterone and estrogen affect the development not only of the ovaries, testicles, vagina, and penis, but also of the liver, muscles, and bones. Indeed, they influence nearly every cell in the body. “So to think of them as growth hormones,” Fausto-Sterling once told the New York Times, “which they are, is to stop worrying that men have a lot of testosterone and women, estrogen.” Back in 1935, the same year testosterone was named, two scientists working independently figured out how to make the hormone from scratch—the key to mass production. Butenandt, the testosterone-from-pee researcher, was funded by the German company Schering. His competitor Leopold Ruzicka was sponsored by Swiss company Ciba. They both accomplished in the laboratory what the body does on its own: they tweaked a few molecules of cholesterol and turned it into testosterone. Cholesterol (in addition to its notorious reputation as an artery-clogger) also serves as the raw material from which the body makes a variety of hormones. The”
― Randi Hutter Epstein, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything

“Hormones control growth, metabolism, behavior, sleep, lactation, stress, mood swings, sleep–wake cycles, the immune system, mating, fighting, fleeing, puberty, parenting, and sex.”
― Randi Hutter Epstein, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything

“Much to the chagrin of physicians, testosterone didn’t make gay men straight. Steinach—who castrated homosexuals and implanted them with a new set of testicles from heterosexual men—had also failed in that enterprise.”
― Randi Hutter Epstein, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything

“It’s been said that from the moment of the Stockholm awards ceremony, she wore a Nobel Prize charm around her neck (given to her by her husband) and signed every piece of correspondence “Rosalyn Yalow, PhD, Nobel Laureate.” It’s also been said that Yalow tacked a sign on the bulletin board in her laboratory saying, “To be considered half as good as a man, a woman must work twice as hard and be twice as good.” That’s a common feminist maxim. But Yalow added the punch line: “Fortunately, that is not difficult.” Her children dismissed the jewelry/signature talk as the typical bluster of male colleagues. But they remember the sign well.”
― Randi Hutter Epstein, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything