Sex hormones

“Sex hormones may best be portrayed as drugs looking for diseases. . . . I suggest that clinical trials function not merely as testing procedures for the selection of drug profiles but also as major devices in bringing the relevant groups of actors together. . . . clinical trials played an important role in establishing the relationships between laboratory scientists, pharmaceutical entrepreneurs, and clinicians, with laboratory scientists as intermediaries between the pharmaceutical company and medical profession (20). . . . a conceptualization of drugs in terms of ready-made laboratory products is not adequate to understand the process of drug development. Instead, a conceptualization of drugs in terms of artifacts created in networks of different groups of actors seems more adequate. . . drugs must be considered as the embodiment of interests that become mutually defined through social networks. The production and marketing of female sex hormones as ‘scientific drugs’ matched the needs of both gynecologists and pharmaceutical entrepreneurs to establish their scientific status . . . Moreover, the gynecological clinic provided the pharmaceutical industry with an available and established clientele, with diseases that could be subjected to hormonal treatment. The promotion of female sex hormones fitted seamlessly into already existing institutional structures formulated earlier in the century as part of the professionalization of medicine and the rationalized organization of service delivery (21).