I’m writing this post with a preamble that these are my opinions, and I cannot prove any of them, nor am I trying to prove them. So, please read these conclusions with this information in mind.
I believe that information about tE2 is difficult to uncover because in the US, the medical industrial complex (MIC) wants the information about tE2 to be difficult to find and sourcing of tE2 to be equally restricted.
Following its initial discovery by American scientists in 1923, a partial synthesis of estradiol from cholesterol was developed by Inhoffen and Hohlweg in 1940, and a total synthesis was developed by Anner and Miescher in 1948. Transdermal estradiol gel was developed and marketed beginning in the early 1980s. For a complete discussion of this development history, read the Wikipedia entries.
In 1941, Charles Huggins and Clarence Hodges at the University of Chicago found estradiol benzoate and DES to be the first effective drugs for the treatment of metastic prostate cancer. DES was the first cancer drug. These were the standard drugs for treatment of advanced prostate cancer for over forty years until the GnRH agonist leuprorelin (Lupron) replaced them in 1985.
In 1980, Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories, 26 Cal. 3d 588 was a landmark products liability decision of the Supreme Court of California which pioneered the doctrine of market share liability. A lawsuit was filed in Boston Federal Court by 53 DES daughters who claimed their breast cancers were the result of DES being prescribed to their mothers while pregnant with them.
Their cases survived a Daubert hearing. In 2013, the Fecho sisters who initiated the breast cancer/DES link litigation agreed to an undisclosed settlement amount on the second day of trail. The remaining litigants have received various settlements. The advocacy group DES Action USA helped provide information and support for DES-exposed persons engaged in lawsuits.
In the US, The Centers of Excellence (COE) hospitals employ the physicians and their support staff. These COE are corporations, and these corporations are commercial for-profit businesses. The administrators of the COE are businesspeople, and they are trained to minimize risk and avoid litigation. Litigation is unpredictable and costly for businesses. The malpractice insurers of physicians and of the COE where those physicians are employed seek to avoid litigation whenever possible. Lawsuits are normally settled and seldom reach a jury verdict. Jury verdicts are unpredictable while monetary settlements can be contained and negotiated.
Following the outcome of the 53 DES daughters lawsuit in Boston, the use of E2 drugs for ADT treatment of prostate cancer in the US virtually disappeared. Now, forty years later, it should be easy to understand why the majority of the medical oncologists treating PCa today know nothing about tE2. Their employers in the COE have eliminated tE2 from the basket of ADT drugs that their employees can prescribe for their PCa patients ADT.
It may be possible to obtain a prescription for tE2 from an independent urologist or primary care physician who is not affiliated with a large MIC organization. But those independent physicians’ medical malpractice insurers may not offer them coverage if they provide a tE2 prescription to their patient. It is a risk for the physicians to do so because there are medical malpractice attorneys lurking everywhere seeking lawsuit clients who are the dissatisfied heirs whose loved ones died with prostate cancer.
Additionally, I believe that Big Pharma does not want tE2 reinstated as an ADT drug for use in the US. tE2 is inexpensive to manufacture and in other countries around the world, tE2 is available for sale inexpensively over-the-counter. I’ve seen tE2 in Mexico, the EU countries and in Canada.
For those enterprising members of the PCa brotherhood who wish to explore the use of tE2 for their ADT treatment, it has become a do-it-yourself (DIY) endeavor. Probably the best information about sourcing tE2, its practical usage and dosage and its continued monitoring using blood testing can be found on this forum or on other online prostate cancer websites.
My conclusions about tE2 and its history may be completely wrong. I’m not using tE2 yet because fortunately, my uPSA remains undetectable a year and a half after having had a RARP. So, in my case, BCR has not yet occurred. Eventually, I expect that BCR will occur. When BCR does occurs, I plan to get a PSMA-PET scan someplace and then seek SRT using PBT to try and eliminate any micro tumors that may be causing the uPSA to rise. Then, I expect to use tE2 for ADT thereafter. I expect that my ongoing tE2 ADT treatment will be a DIY adventure.
I hope you find this little essay helpful. Good luck.
PATCH Study Results
Estrogens and Castrate/Treatment Resistance?
