ArticleMedical history2025
'At least our pituitaries will see the world': Pituitary gland export from communist Bulgaria.
Article in Medical history, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The article focuses on the export of cadaveric pituitary glands from communist Bulgaria in the 1980s, used for the production of human growth hormone. The case is explored in the broader context of practices and transnational networks for the supply of pituitaries. Special attention is paid to the changes resulting from the turn to the production of recombinant growth hormone in the mid-1980s, which put an end to the international 'market' of pituitary glands. In the last sections, different perspectives are explored to make sense of the case under scrutiny: those of bioethics and biolaw, on the one hand, and of bioeconomy in a globalising world, on the other.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.