The climacteric kaleidoscope: questions and speculations

This call for a review of climacteric research, its present trends and methodologies, is not prompted so much by mounting criticism from many quarters as by personal disappointment. Despite increasing research we have not achieved the understanding which, not long ago, seemed so near: we have sadly failed in convincing women (and their medical advisers) we can help them and, worse, we have 'departmentalized' ourselves from the concurrent scourge of cancer of the breast. It is here suggested that some of these aims, indeed a greater understanding of the place of fertility in female life, may be achieved by a reexamination of biological baselines. It is proposed we look again at the evolutionary strategems protecting the young, enquire into ethological/sexual hominoid relationships and reevaluate the biorhythm of repeated pregnancies. It is especially the latter, culturally so unacceptable in societies in which women limit their families and menstruate, that offers new venues for research. For, once seriously considered, without bias, it may help in devising means by which we can retain our way of life, free of the dangers inseparable from avoidance of pregnancy and loss of the benefits of its hormones.