By 1966 , HRT was already well established . Since 1941 , women had been routinely prescribed “ conjugated equine estrogens ” — pregnant mare urine — for menopause in drugs such as Premarin , made by Wyeth , a pharmaceutical company that was purchased by Pfizer in 2009 .
But in 1975 , The New England Journal of Medicine ( NEJM ) published disturbing research titled “ Association of exogenous estrogen and endometrial carcinoma .” Of the studied women , those on menopausal estrogen had 4.5 times the risk of endometrial cancer of those not on the hormone .
In 1979 , NEJM put another nail in HRT ’ s coffin .
“ There was a sharp downward trend in the incidence of endometrial cancer that paralleled a substantial reduction in prescriptions for replacement estrogens ,” it reported .
Not wanting to lose a dependable franchise , hormone drug makers added progestin to the estrogen-only HRT , which reduced the risk of endometrial cancer . Drugs such as Prempro then debuted , which combined the two hormones . In 2001 , more than 126 million prescriptions for HRT were written in the United States , according to The New York Times . In 2002 , 13 percent of Canadian women aged 50 to 69 were on HRT .
A Drug Empire Unravels
How were drugmakers able to convince so many doctors and women that HRT was necessary ? HRT was presented as a fountain of youth — an anti-aging therapy and pushed by beautiful people such as top model Lauren Hutton In addition to the youthful skin and hair benefits implied in HRT ads , scientific papers claimed that HRT therapy “ may decrease the risk for or delay the onset of AD [ Alzheimer ’ s Disease ] in postmenopausal women ” and “ may even reduce the risk of atherosclerosis .” Look pretty and not get “ old person ” diseases ? What ’ s not to like ? But , like the 1970s debacle , the newer HRT soon began to be linked to cancer and defensive , scientific papers such as , “ Is there an association between hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer ?” and “ Sex Hormone-Binding Globulin and Breast Cancer Risk ,” emerged . At least 26 scientific papers defending or promoting the therapy were commissioned by Wyeth — not written by doctors , but by a marketing company . And it soon became apparent that HRT needed defending . The results from the federal Women ’ s Health Initiative ( WHI ) in 2002 , which investigated HRT , made it look less like a “ fountain of
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