Alternet: Women Are Dying From Hormone Therapy; Why Is Pharma Still Allowed to Push It?

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.alternet.org/health/148572/women_are_dying_from_hormone_therapy_why_is_pharma_still_allowed_to_push_it


Want to increase your chances of getting, and possibly dying from, node-positive breast cancer? Take hormone therapy.

Pharma's lucrative estrogen plus progestin combo is already known to increase the chance of getting breast cancer by 26 percent. But an article in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows hormone therapy also increases the chance of dying from breast cancer, as followups are conducted on women who took it.

In fact hormone therapy, already indicted for causing delays in breast cancer diagnosis by increasing breast density (and increasing lung cancer deaths) is now so dangerous that Peter B. Bach of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, who wrote an accompanying JAMA editorial, told the New York Times that even the recommendation to take "the lowest possible doses for the shortest possible time" is now questionable. Perhaps like prescribing the fewest and lowest tar cigarettes as possible.

It is hard to image men putting up with a therapy for "outliving their testes" that kills and maims them decade after decade. Women given Premarin for their "estrogen deficiency" in the 1980s developed so much endometrial cancer, the cancer rate dropped when they quit taking the drug. Five years ago, the same thing happened with breast cancer when women quit Prempro. Who can say "iatrodemic" physician-caused epidemic? Who can say fool me twice?

Both Prempro and Premarin are made by Wyeth, now part of Pfizer.

And just as hormone therapy is repackaged for a new generation of women, so are pharma-friendly press stories that push it, such as Parade's fabled piece with Lauren Hutton extolling hormone therapy did some years ago.


More at the link ---

[BrklynLiberal]

1. $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$

[MedicalAdmin]

8. Ya know I posted about this on another thread

both here and on alternet and huffpo and the usual suspects from the skeptics forums and blogs showed up howling "woo" like a dog with their tails stepped on.

Our medical director briefed our staff on this about 6 months ago and we have never recommended HRT because of these problems. I wonder how long until DU's woo chanting skeptics show up.

[BrklynLiberal]

10. Guess your medical director is one of the few who have not been so wined and dined by big pharma

that they lost track of the principles behind what they do...

[MedicalAdmin]

11. Big Pharma is very slick about what they do.

They get big names to present for them and offer reduced cost accomodations and travel (now called the group discount price where Pharma pays ALMOST all of the cost now that is can't be "free" - ahem).

But the marketing to Doctors is insidious. Doctors are very busy and the Pharma companies make it easy for them to get CE credits (needed for relicensing) and purposely supress or hold back on publishing full information regarding the effects of their drugs.

Keep in mind as well that most docs never question the dogma that the only way to treat disease is to supress symptoms. Functional medicine and Naturopathic Docs have a different paradigm and look at underlying causes in addition to their symptoms that are expressed by that underlying cause.

So yes, our medical director is really special. She tend to get patients that have been told several times that there is no hope. We currently have a few patients who were told to just go home and die (3 months left to live) and they have been with us for about 3 years. She tells me daily that there is always hope. There have been some patients who ARE going to die and they just want to feel good and have energy until it is almost the end and we have been able to help. I honestly love working here. It's not all beer and skittles. A very sick patient just died this morning and I just now got off the phone with her son and daughter. Sigh.

[BrklynLiberal]

14. Wow. You work at a truly exceptional place with exceptional people!!!

You are very lucky!!!

[HereSince1628]

2. It is hard to image men putting up with a therapy for "outliving their testes" that kills and maims

Well, no it's not very hard to imagine, and we could be on the doorstep of just that sort of problem.

Prostate cancer is very common in men, but it generally initiates in middle age and advances slowly. So it is more often an underlying condition than a primary cause of death. Prostate tissue and prostate cancer depend on androgens such as testosterone for growth. Testosterone production decreases in many men as they age and the pharmaceutical industry has a campaign on to 'revitalize' men's lives by 'fixing' "Low T."

It actually doesn't take much imagination to think that giving younger men more testosterone is going to result in earlier onset and more aggressive prostate cancer.

[Donnachaidh]

3. Haven't you seen the repulsive "Low T" advertisements?

Pharma is going to do to older men what they've done to older women. Too bad the equality is killer. :sarcasm:

[HereSince1628]

6. I do believe that was my point.

:hi:

[Doctor_J]

5. Not necessarily

There are a lot of side effects of Viagra et. al. they sell like Tic Tacs.

[jancantor]

13. Please present studies

that men who want to take exogenous T to get their levels up (but still within reference range) has ANY effect on increasing the incidence of prostate cancer. There is a societal bias against testosterone therapy (vs. estrogen therapy for women) largely due to media myths about roid rage, and the false equivalency drawn between supplemental hormones for men as part of valid therapy vs. massively supraphysiological doses taken by bodybuilders, track athletes, etc and often the latter use more hepatatoxic version such as methylated orals etc. vs. liver friendly testosterone.

There is actually substantial evidence, that raising T does NOT increase prostate cancer, but a primary aggravating factor is excess estrogen/T ratio. Any male on hormone therapy has that ratio monitored (unlike average men) and if there is aromatization resulting in skewed ratios, there are plenty of ways to fix that.

Exogenous T has also been used (not yet FDA approved) as a great version of male birth control. Otoh, spermatogenesis can be maintained by men on T therapy by using low dose chorionic gonadotropin.

There is a substantial amount of uneducated bias against men taking supplemental T as they age (or if they have hypogonadism when younger) and it's sad that women and men can choose very much more dangerous cosmetic surgeries w/o any problem whatsoever but god forbid a man wants to take low dose T and all of a sudden the biologically ignorant naysayers attack

[Doctor_J]

4. Because they give a large chunk of their profits to Boner and the like

duh.

[newfie11]

7. This was known in Europe at least 15 years ago

As a mammographer I attended a seminar by the pioneer of mammography Dr. Tabar. He flatly stated that HRT caused breast cancer, does no good for heart disease, and does not improve bones.
Of course the docs here in America did not want their patients told this. This was 15 years ago!

[MedicalAdmin]

9. Yup - it's been common knowledge for a LONG time.

But hey - the USA has the BEST DAMN HEALTH CARE IN THE WORLD. DAMMIT. AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT YOU HIPPY COMMIE FASCIST KENYANS SONS A BITCHES. USA! USA! USA!.

[K8-EEE]

12. My mom went on HRT when it was "routine" & developed breast cancer

I mean maybe a coincidence but I don't want to touch that stuff!