Becoming Hybrids

Nancy Langston's Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES examines the histories of endocrine-disrupting chemicals that have "permeated bodies and ecosystems throughout the United States, often with profound health and ecological effects." Langston asks why the US government has failed to regulate these chemicals, given that for over half a century the substances have been known to harm humans and the environment. She also questions how we came "to accept the increasingly toxic saturation of our bodies and our environments." Trained as both a scientist and a historian, having written two previous books on environmental subjects, and having considered that her own medical problems may be due to DES, Langston is perfectly poised to examine the scientific and social history of endocrine disruptors. Langston provides a compelling case study of DES, flanked by a history of chemical regulation before World War II and a summary of the current state of affairs, in which we are awash in endocrine disruptors, such as the hormones fed to cattle and the BPA in food and drink containers. Toxic Bodies provides a brief but compelling examination of the many forces that have somehow managed to make it acceptable to flood the world with these dangerous substances. Langston's prose is precise and elegant. Moreover, her explanations of scientific frameworks, data, and debates are quite accessible. The book includes many striking advertisements, such as one for estrogen, which shows a defeated woman, her face collapsed into her hand, above the caption, "When the Ovary Goes into Retirement." Another ad features a picture of a cheery dog, apple, housewife, cow, potato, and chicken singing together, "DDT is good for me-e-e!"

The two chapters focusing on the prescription of DES for menopause and pregnancy are stunning. Langston not only points out that the drug companies and the FDA knew the dangers of DES but that women who were prescribed the drug were not provided with the warning circular because the FDA "did not trust female patients to evaluate medical information." Langston frames this disturbing moment in medical history by sorting through the cultural assumptions about menopause that somehow render the risk of death from cancer acceptable. Both journalists and physicians, she notes, "viewed menopause as a crisis and a tragedy, a time of potential madness when women lost what was most essentially female about themselves: their reproductive potential."

Langston reveals other astonishing episodes in the history of DES, such as botched studies of the drug's safety and efficacy for pregnancy, in which one baby's premature birth was deemed to be caused not by the DES but by the fact that the mother had gone shopping. Current critiques of the pharmaceutical industry find antecedents in the story of Karl John Karnaky, a Houston physician who—wined and dined by the drug companies—became such an avid promoter of DES that he offered to pay for the funeral expenses of anyone who died from the drug. Langston carefully unravels the scientific, economic, cultural, political, and legal factors running through these and other striking incidents. Not surprisingly, the history of DES leads Langston to conclude by advocating the "precautionary principle," which means that in the face of scientific uncertainty, the burden of proof should fall on those responsible for introducing new substances into bodies and environments. She notes that the history of DES demonstrates that "science alone cannot solve our chemical problems"; thus, in the wake of "anti-regulatory fervor between 2000 and 2008," there is a need for "intelligent regulation to protect public health and the environment."

Although Langston includes wildlife and the environment within her horizon of concern, live-stock and laboratory animals are excluded. This is especially troubling given that the interdisciplinary field of "animal studies" is no longer a fledgling or marginal movement, and moreover given that Toxic Bodies itself gives glimpses into the horrors of industrial farming—such as the feeding of cement dust to cattle. (For more on this and other disturbing but standard practices in the production...