Second, exposure to a hormone during fetal life may elevate responsiveness to the hormone during later life. A threshold for DES adverse effects is needed. Even the lowest recorded dose has given rise to vaginal adenocarcinoma. Therefore, early detection methods are needed to determine if human reproductive capability is declining. This is important from an individual level, as well as at the population level, because infertility is a subject of great concern and has psychological and economic impacts.
Methods are now available to determine fertility rates in humans.
These should be accompanied by more and better biomarkers of social and behavioral development, the use of multigenerational histories of individuals and their progeny, and congener-specific chemical analyses of reproductive tissues and products, including breast milk. 1 Bern, H et al.