janekane (imported) wrote: Tue Jan 24, 2012 8:52 pm I am only one of quite a few folks here who have extensive education and work experience in clinical medicine and medical research settings and who have undergraduate and graduate degrees in one or another form of biology.

That having been said, my decision, in 1986, to get my bilateral orchiectomy was motivated by my noting a number of relatives who died comparatively young (including during their fourth decade of life), and recognizing my most likely having the particular genetic condition which "caused" such cancer. 25 years later, it has become incontrovertible that I have a form of the genome for familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP); and the medical information I had in 1986 strongly suggested to me that testosterone was a contributing factor, in my particular family, to the development of terminal cancer.

The State of California includes testosterone on its list of known carcinogens. However, FAP does not develop because of carcinogens alone; the FAP gene produces a tumor suppressor protein which, in the presence of a tumor cell, apparently activates apoptosis to prevent cancer development.

While the common view as I have found it in the medical literature is that FAP is of dominant inheritance, I find it to be a recessive gene at a fragile locus, such that inheriting a non-functional tumor protein gene from one parent does not result in failure of tumor suppression until the functional allele in a cell mutates somatically into a non-functional form, such that, in a cell having two non-functional tumor suppressor protein genes, tumor suppresson (apoptosis) will cease.

Because tumor cells form frequently, everyone would plausibly die in utero from cancer absent effective apoptosis resulting from functionally effective tumor suppresor genes.

Apoptosis? Programmed cell death. Apoptosis is why people are not usually born with webbed fingers and toes. In ducks, apoptosis not working in feet results in ducks having webbed feet. Programmed cell death, with different programming, is why ducks ordinarily have webbed feet and people do not. Ducks do not usually have a functional apoptosis program for the inter-toe web; people usually do.

Or, to use the classic Eunuch Archive phrase, "your mileage may vary."

After 25 years as a "no testosterone" eunuch, it is my observation (I am rather good at making biological measurements) that I have not experienced any penis shrinkage as a result of testosterone avoidance.

Unlike many folks, or so it seems to me, my being autistic may have given me an advantage in expecting the results of my orchiectomy to be mostly what I could not otherwise expect; in expecting to find results which I was unable to expect, I was never disappointed. I expected shrinkage. Had I wanted that, surely I would be very disappointed by now.

However, I seem to have an inner way of living which is, as I experience it, profoundly and gently affirming of my life and life experiences. I anticipate being unable to accurately anticipate the details of very nearly every event in my life, and my way of adapting to life experiences is, consequently, awfully simple.

Something happens (i.e., some life event which I have not accurately anticipated) and I adapt to it (or learn from it) as I am able to adapt (or learn), and the way I am able to adapt and learn is always, in my life experience, both necessary and sufficient; and whether I adapt to an event by remaining alive or by becoming dead (adapting by becoming truly dead seems to not have really happened yet); and if I remain alive, I will experience more events to which my adaptation and learning will always, in my view, be both necessary and sufficient.

Thus, I have never learned to actually hate any aspect of my life or any aspect of any aspect of life.

Had avoiding testosterone for more than 25 years resulted in my penis shrinking, I would have adapted to that. Observing that my penis did not notably shrink resulted in my adapting to that.

However, my adaptation to life events has never become passive. I actively work away at the effort I make to adapt to my life experiences, doing so with all the effort I can muster, doing so unrelentingly.

Did my scrotum shrink? Not that I can tell. Do I want it removed? No, because I avoid surgery whenever possible because I can see no benefit to me commensurate with the very small risk a "scrotectomy" would convey.

Not autistic? The way I adapt to life experiences may not be appropriate for you. But that is not for me to say for sure, not one way nor another.