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James M. Gilchrist, MD
Brown University Providence, RI

JAMA. 1991;265(11):1390.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

I read Dr Grossman's¹ editorial with extreme consternation. The medical aspects of bovine growth hormone (bST) are an appropriate topic for consideration in a medical journal, but your editorial far exceeded that issue in its attempt to justify the use of bST in the American dairy industry.

One must ask who is to benefit from the use of this bioengineering at a time when dairy farmers are disappearing in record numbers due to falling demand, increasing costs, and rising pressure for land development. The use of bST will certainly not benefit the farmer, as your editorial so blithely notes, nor will it benefit the consumer, whose potential savings from increased production (which would come from the profits of the failing farmers) will probably never appear because of the increased costs of caring for dairy cattle receiving bST and the cost of the hormone itself. The cattle . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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