During its era of some 33 years, chemotherapy has greatly prolonged the lives of patients with Hodgkin's disease and may even cure it, but among its ravaging side effects, unbeknown to us until now, is the destruction of sexuality. It has been recognized that some alkylating agents administered year after year in chronic leukemia (busulfan, chlorambucil) may eventually cause sterility in men. But we were unaware that the pulses of drugs used in Hodgkin's disease destroyed libido, ruining personal relations and disrupting families—this in addition to causing sterility. An unbelievable amount of human misery has been silently borne by the patients of three decades.
Several years ago when Ramona M. Chapman, MD, had completed her fellowship at Scripps Clinic, she sought and was granted additional research experience at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. She hoped to continue her studies of breast cancer, intending to investigate, among other matters, the changes