The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women

The facts are simple. As human females get older, they undergo menopause, a transition that marks the passage from being able to bear children to not. Key among the changes of this time is a drop in hormone levels, particularly estrogen. Research in the 1950s and 1960s popularized and made widespread the taking of estrogen supplements for birth control among fertile women (“The Pill,” a different grand experiment on women that is another topic for another day). Pharmaceutical companies had a vested interest in expanding the lucrative market for The Pill beyond young, fertile women; older, infertile women were the only untapped market segment available. As Dr. Wilson wrote in Feminine Forever, “Breasts and genital organs will not shrivel. Such women will be much more pleasant to live with and will not
become dull and unattractive.” Like a, er, herd of cows, older women stampeded and lined up to take The Pill. Thus was HRT, er, born.

What happened next was as much about money as medicine. By 1975 an estrogen-based drug called Premarin had become Wyeth’s premier product, the fifth most popular prescription drug in the US. In 1980 Weyth’s sales soared again after a major marketing push by the company to promote its hormone mix for the prevention of osteoporosis.
In 1990 Wyeth, by then the leading maker of estrogen, went before the FDA with a request
to label the drug as protective against heart disease.

Then the bubble burst. Studies began to pile up that heart attacks, stroke, breast cancer and even Altzheimer’s dementia were linked to HRT. The evidence against HRT became so damning that the National Institutes of Health even halted a major HRT study early last year. Premarin is now a hot topic among those with hot flashes.

So now we’re in the expose book-writing stage of the process as the release of Barbara Seaman’s new book, The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women, takes on the estrogen industry. As public sentiment about HRT shifts, can lawyers be far behind?


4 thoughts on “The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women”

  1. This reminds me of silicone breast implants…
    Marketing is a funny thing. We live in an age where we should be increasingly suspicious about business practices, corporations and the product the are selling (or pushing), and the government. Unfortunetly, it seems that most Americans are more comfortable with the above mentioned than ever before.

    Sure, it’s hard for the average person to imagine that a given pharmaceutical can cause unintended problems, and its quite possible that the companies making said pharmaceutical have no idea either, which for me is all the more reason to either stay away from it or have a healthy suspicion.

    A fine example of this would be the growing trend in the prescription of Psychiatric drugs, particularly the SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) for the treatment of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, aggression… the list goes on. Pharmacologists know very little about how drugs like Prozac work, and we have no data on long term use.

    In addition there are a variety of other drugs particularly the Benzodiazepines, mostly used to treat anxiety, which are also some of the most prescribed pharmaceuticals. Benzodiazepines are very physically addicting, the effects of withdrawal can be very serious (seizures, depression, suicidal feelings, increased anxiety and panid attacks, nausea, etc.,)

    Point being: How many people know this in the general public? Very few. How many people are being prescribed these medications? Very many. There is an increasing number of people who quickly assume there is a line between illict drugs and prescribed ones. There isn’t. Methylphendinate Hydrochloride (i.e. Ritalin, Concerta) is an amphetamine.

    So, my main point is, something like HRT-induced dementia, heart attacks, etc., should not be too surprising. When they (drug manufactorers) come out with the latest and greatest, be sure to find out what long-term studies they have on it, if any, and be careful.

    Oh, according to rxlist.com premarin is the 5th most prescribed drug as of 2002.

  2. Let us not forget thalidomide, a drug which enjoy a great deal of popularity in it’s day, yet causes massive serious birth defects.

  3. THE BREAST CANCER EPIDEMIC, RATHER THAN HRT, IS THE
    GREATEST
    DEADLY EXPERIMENT EVER PERFORMED ON WOMEN

    You seem mistaken by accepting and promulgating the author’s
    assertion about
    the hormone replacement therapy (HRT) as “The Greatest
    Experiment Ever
    Performed on Women” (July 5, 2003), by Barbara Seaman, 2003.

    The greatest, deadly and still undergoing experiment ever performed
    on women
    may well prove soon to be the indiscriminant condom promotion, by
    introducing the condition of absolute male sterility upon women in
    the
    general population on an unprecedented scale, conducive to and
    resulting in
    the rapid and unabated rise of the breast cancer epidemic in the
    country and
    worldwide.

    For the HRT fiasco the facts might be simple, as you claim, but for
    the
    devastating and carcinogenic side effects of the persistent condom
    use,
    promoted for its dual purpose, prevention of pregnancy and
    prophylaxis
    against HIV/AIDS transmission, the facts and figures along with the
    book on
    the matter have been buried and banned for more than two decades. The
    book,
    entitled, “BARRIER CONTRACEPTION AND BREAST CANCER,”
    published in the
    distant 1980, is a presentation of an hypothesis-testing study
    carried out
    jointly at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health,
    at
    Chapel hill, NC, and the University of Pennsylvania School of
    Medicine and
    Hospital, in Philadelphia, PA, during the mid-1970s. (In the study,
    the
    exogenous hormones, HRT in new terminology, were defined as major
    breast
    cancer risk factor, almost 30 years ago, and I am glad to emphasize
    the fact
    as a reflection of the predictive power of the study. Contrary to the
    exogenous hormones, the OC pills, consisting of the same hormones,
    were
    defined in the research study as protective factors against breast
    cancer.
    It seems that many authors, including B. Seaman, in her previous
    book, “The
    Doctors’ Case Against the Pill,” failed to see the reason for
    this presumed
    “contradiction,” as interpreted in my study.)

    For the significant condom-breast cancer link, and the great variety
    of
    diseases and suffering in reproductive-aged women and beyond, because
    of the
    absolutists condomization of the female sexuality, no professional
    debate
    has been tolerated, and the evidence of the life-saving information
    of the
    greatest and sole breast cancer risk, the marital exposure to
    condoms, is
    still effectively suppressed.

    Perhaps because of the prospect that the “lawyers (cannot) be
    far behind,”
    as you said, with the possible legal consequences. While waiting in
    false
    hopes, promises and ignorance, the women are dying of and are being
    tormented by the biological terror, breast cancer, on greatest rates
    of the
    disease ever experienced, anywhere.

    Even the National Women’s Health Network, the “modern women’s
    health
    movement,” according to your article, seems to behave in a
    politically
    correct manner, oblivious about and never having a “healthy
    suspicion” or
    precautions to the fatal misconceptions of the condom use for
    contraceptive
    purposes. It has never raised its voice for initiating a primary
    (non-chemical) breast cancer prevention study and protective action
    for
    women and their (married) partners and families. The Network is
    missing the
    chance to make the American women happy.

    It is no accident, in my view, that the President George W. Bush, in
    a shift
    of the condom policy, has begun a powerful anti-condom
    “war” at home and
    abroad, for the war against the condom usage in contraceptive and
    fertility-control purposes is the true war against the current breast
    cancer
    epidemic in the country and other advanced countries. No other man on
    the
    face of Earth could accomplish what President Bush has done so far in
    order
    to crack and break the polar permafrost of condom misconception: The
    funds
    to some major international and national agencies for condom
    promotion have
    been withdrawn; The sex education in the American schools has been
    ended,
    thus effectively terminating the very foundation of a universal and
    lethal
    condom culture; and The requirement of the great donation that the
    Services
    of the Campaign against the AIDS in under-developed Africa and
    Caribbean
    Islands (which services may dispense condoms as prophylactics,
    eventually)
    be entirely separated from the Family-Planning Services (where
    condoms are
    not to be used as contraceptive devices).

    Sincerely,

    Arne N. Gjorgov, M.D., Ph.D.
    Active Member of the New York Academy of Sciences
    E-mail: arne_gjorgov@hotmail.com

  4. How exactly does she propose we deal with AIDS then? If we are to look at this in a realistic manner we have to realize that unless there is some form of outstanding evidence that gets to to the right people, the use of condoms and hormone therapy is going to contine in increasing numbers thanks to agressive marketing. And furthermore, I would not be surprised if some of the companies involved in cancer and AIDS research are more or less taking their time in producing any sort of a cure/solution…. but I might be a tad cynical and paranoid.

    -Andy

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