Well, we really should care, says Martin Walker, and he explains why in his book:

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HRT Licensed to Kill and Maim
(Slingshot Publications)

Martin Walker's book is a 'must read' for any woman who must decide whether to start hormone replacement therapy or find other ways to cope with the coming changes. We must learn from past mistakes and Walker's book does a good job bringing into view the mistakes of women who have put their trust in medical doctors and public health officials to guide them in their choices:

Almost all the problems with HRT are created in the space between scientific theory and human practice. The claims of manufacturers, distributors, marketing men and physicians for HRT, in thousands of instances, take no account of the reality of doctor-patient relationships, medical practice and the non-conforming diversity of women's physical and psychological make-up. It is this last aspect that turns HRT from what seemed like 'a good idea at the time' into the most dangerous of therapies.

The supplementation of the female body with hormones to avoid or ameliorate a natural life change is fraught with moral, ethical and technical dilemmas. The moral and ethical questions loom over the production and consumption of HRT, casting doubt on the very motive and direction of medical science in respect of women. Unfortunately science and medicine have slipped the hawsers of ethical debate in this area, turning the issue into a medical question in which the only criterion is a slight and putative improvement in health.

Dr Stevenson, as quoted in Jenny Hope's article, is not alone in his defense of Hormone replacement. Even as the news of damaging effects in the studies about hormone replacement broke, pharma supported patient groups and prescribers of HRT raced to put out the fires:

In calling off the Million Women study and urging more care in the prescription of HRT, the British Government contrived to give the impression that, while doctors had hitherto been circumspect in their prescribing, they would now be positively stringent.

The reality, however, was quite different. At a later date, Dr Maureen Baker, honorary secretary of the Royal College of General Practitioners and a supporter of HRT, speaking of the number of women using HRT over lengthy periods, said "I understand that about 20 per cent of women have stopped taking HRT, but that is likely to include many who have been on it for years and did not really know why they were still taking it." This statement, perhaps more than any other made during 'the HRT crisis' at the start of the new millennium, speaks volumes about the attitude of physicians towards their patients and towards pharmaceuticals.

Dr Philip Sarrel, Emeritus Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, reacting to findings of the Women's Health Initiative, was similarly relaxed about the dangers of hormone replacement therapy, taking the view that new study results did not mean that women should give up on HRT. "The paper does help guide women and their physicians in being selective in a choice of hormone therapy", he said.

Pharmaceutical companies have been accused of "disease mongering", a term for the promotion of quite normal life conditions as somehow in need of pharmaceutical intervention. "HRT is used to combat symptoms of the menopause, including hot flushes and night sweats, with a range of drugs including tablets, implants and patches", writes Jenny Hope in the Daily Mail. Notice the term "symptoms of the menopause", as if the menopause were an illness rather than a period of transformation in every woman's life. Perhaps HRT was one of the earliest examples of pharmaceutical disease mongering.

There is an almost unbridgeable gulf between the theories of medical science and the practice of corporate drug pushing, between human communities and pharmaceutical corporations. Rather than researching, treating and curing long-established illnesses, pharmaceutical companies - 'inadvertently' aided by the processed food industry's manufacture of junk foods, and by other environmentally toxic industries, together with their own manufacture of adverse reactions - now create new illnesses and markets, which their drug development divisions can research.