The Kentucky Author Forum

With 20 million women of the baby boom generation currently on the verge of “going through the change,” menopause has become an important, if complex topic for American women.

Dr. Susan Love, M.D., one of America's leading experts on women's health, and breast cancer in particular, wants to make sure they are ready for it.

As the season's opening guest of the Kentucky Author Forum, Love will discuss her new bestseller, Dr. Susan Love's Hormone Book: Making Informed Choices about Menopause (Random House, $25), on Monday, October 6, 1997. The event is supported by the U of L's Kentucky Cancer Program.

Love claims that the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession have marketed menopause by turning this natural stage in a woman's life into a “disease” to be prescribed a “cure” for and thereby guaranteeing a profit.

While hormone replacement therapy has documented benefits and can help many women, Love argues that the decision must be based on proper information of its limitations and its possible side effects. Her book offers a balanced account that sorts through all of the information which bombards women and offers alternative approaches to symptom relief and prevention.

“What concerns me most is the message being put out that every woman needs to be on hormones for her whole life,” Love told The Boston Globe. “It's just not true. We need to look critically at what data we do have and don't have.”

Best known for Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book, Love's female “bible” has changed the way women and their doctors view mammography, mastectomy, chemotherapy, and other breast cancer treatments.

Love, who co-authored her hormone book with Karen Lindsey, is an adjunct associate professor of clinical surgery at UCLA and director of the Santa Barbara Cancer Institute. She left direct patient care in 1996 after 20 years to devote more time to her research; she is currently helping to guide the Women's Health Initiative, the largest study of post-menopausal women in the country.

Over the past two decades, Love has been a leader in women's health issues. She was the first woman surgeon on the staff of Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and in 1982 she joined the staff of the Dana Farber Breast Evaluation Clinic, the first comprehensive multidisciplinary center for breast care. She founded the Faulkner Breast Center in Boston, the first such facility with an all-female staff, in 1988. She helped to establish the National Breast Cancer Coalition, a network whose purpose is to involve breast cancer patients and their supporters to effect change.

During the evening portion of her visit, Love will be interviewed by Anne Taylor Fleming, a commentator on the The News Hour w ith J im Lehrer. U of L President John Shumaker will host a dinner to honor Love, beginning at 8 p.m. in the Mary Anderson Room of the Kentucky Center for the Arts. A $100 package ticket ($60 tax deductible) includes the above three events plus dinner and is available only through the Kentucky Center for the Arts.

All Kentucky Author Forum events are recorded by Public Radio Partnership (WFPL-89.3) and by Kentucky Educational Television for future airing. The events are, however, carried live at several public library branches in Louisville and throughout the state.

The Kentucky Author Forum is a non-profit cultural project sponsored by the University of Louisville in honor of its Bicentennial and in cooperation with the Kentucky Center for the Arts and Hawley-Cooke Booksellers. The series features major authors in an interview setting.

5 p.m.		Book sale and wine and cheese reception
6 p.m.		Author forum and question and answer session
7 p.m.		Book signing by Love