on not learning the first time around

It pains me to write about this, but write about it I must:

Despite 5,000 Lawsuits, Wyeth Hopes For Hormone Replacement Therapy Comeback

By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet. Posted February 26, 2008.

Selling a product that causes cancer isn’t easy, but with help from a U.S. endocrinologist group, Wyeth is again obscuring the truth about HRT.

…Wyeth is not alone in hoping for an HRT comeback.

Since HRT was found by the Women’s Health Initiative in 2002 to cause a 26 percent increased risk of breast cancer, 29 percent increased risk of heart attack, 41 percent increased risk of stroke and 100 percent increased risk of blood clots, a study in the January issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention found the cancers also move quickly. Women who took combined estrogen/progestin hormone-replacement therapy for just three years had four times the usual risk of lobular breast cancer, which accounts for about 10 percent of invasive breast cancer.

The effect of millions of HRT users saying, “You want us to take WHAT?” after the WHI study — 75 percent quit — was also dramatic. There was an 8.6 percent reduction in overall breast cancer between 2001 and 2004 and 14.7 reduction for estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer.

But “studies” by doctors who don’t want to give up the HRT gravy train appear with increasing regularity, promoting results that seek to reverse or spin the WHI findings. HRT actually protects against heart disease and reduces calcification of the arteries — two original, disproved HRT selling points — say the authors of the new crop of “timing hypothesis/therapeutic window of opportunity” analyses, hoping the memory of the American public is as short as their practice’s funds without trumped up HRT profits….

…But others like the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) have jumped on the HRT bandwagon.

“This is an important and meaningful analysis for women who can benefit from Hormone Replacement Therapy,” said Richard Hellman, AACE President about a study which indicated HRT did not elevate cardiovascular disease risk in some women.

And a position paper on the AACE site says, “Given the powerful effects of estrogen therapy in relieving menopausal symptoms, we believe that physicians may safely counsel women to use estrogen for the relief of menopausal symptoms.”

Now, let me first say that the article is from a VERY liberal news site. I do not endorse or agree with many, if not most of their articles. However, I like a well-rounded approach to news, so I try to see what all the fuss is about from several angles, and this site is one of them.

Onwards. What relevance does this have for a blog about horses? Simple: The return of HRT means the return of PMU (not that it ever went away completely, but the numbers did lessen when women began to realize that perhaps they’d rather have hot flashes than cancer.) The return, or perhaps I should say revitalization of PMU means more unwanted horses basically bred for slaughter. Yes, I know, the slaughterhouses in the United States have closed, but the industry is humming right along with profitable shipments to Mexico and Canada. We can thank the racehorse industry for a large portion of that, as well as backyard breeders, but at its height, the PMU industry made a significant contribution as well. (Besides and beyond that, I personally find the conditions in which the mares are kept to be appalling.)

While the horse slaughter issue is too lengthy to cover here, I think we can all agree that we do not need any more unwanted horses in the United States than we already have. The idea that Wyeth would try to re-market drugs that have been shown to cause cancer and, as an added bonus, increase the horse slaughter market is reprehensible.

Menopause is not a life-threatening condition, folks. But for women and horses, hormone replacement therapy is.

More information about PMU can be found here.