Martin Walker's book revolves around the story of one woman, Maggie Tuttle, who suffered immensely from Hormone medication but who, being a campaigner, immediately went to initiate a patient self-help group she called the Menopausal Helpline. Over ten years, she had over ten thousand contacts from women who suffered similarly, and she attempted to work with pharmaceutical manufacturers and medical societies to bring about changes. Her communications were blocked at every turn, her group denied all support and eventually, the effort became too great so the help line folded.

Other groups that agreed to listen to the hormone 'experts' and accept money from pharmaceutical manufacturers fared much better by comparison:

The British Menopause Society is just one of a global network of societies that all advocate HRT to a great swath of the world's female population. All of the societies and their activities are funded by a variety of pharmaceutical companies. None of the societies discusses, in any serious way, either alternative remedies or a natural, non-medicated path through menopause.

All the societies, despite any debate about the details, are heavily committed to selling HRT to the menopausal population. The consultants who speak for the societies propose that women try HRT as a first option. More disturbingly than any of this, the clutch of male consultants who direct the policy of the societies, all defend HRT and consistently write against studies that appear to suggest that the drug regime might damage women.

The most prominent consultants based as council members within the British Menopause Society, whose writings are used for many other foreign societies are: David H. Barlow, Timothy Hillard, David W. Purdie, Anthony Seeley, John Stevenson, Professor John Studd and David W. Sturdee.

As soon as the 2003 study results became available, the British Menopause Society quickly set up meetings with other societies, with the intention of making a series of statements that would stabilise the consensus view of HRT.

In the last chapter of his book, Walker attempts to flesh out his view of an ideal society, something to compare today's damaging medical treatments to, so as to start our with an ideal to work towards, not only a bad situation we want to get away from:

My 'other' starting place is one where we accept into our bodies none - or the absolute minimum - of the chemical toxins prescribed for us. It is one where we enjoy nutritious and, as far as is possible, organic fruit and vegetables...

This other place is one where we try to control our immediate environment as best we are able, so as to exclude environmental toxins...

My ideal place is one where, from an early age, we gain as much information as possible about our bodies and how they work; a place where we try to understand how to respect our bodies and treat them with the various healing arts. It is a place where we take what is best from our collective culture and history, and repudiate the violence and emptiness of commercial culture.

Martin Walker wonders why medical culture has so far escaped censure for its actions, despite clear evidence linking treatments and pharmaceutical drugs to damaged health outcomes. A point that struck my mind is that we do have a profession that really is charged with finding out where illnesses come from, but the members of that fraternity are strangely silent on physician-induced illness:

It is to link illnesses with their causal agents that we have epidemiologists. For some obscure reason, however, while epidemiologists help in moving heaven and earth against the butcher, fishmonger or sandwich bar owner who gives even a couple of individuals a salmonella stomach upset, they seem not to operate in the area of drug damage. While the greatest of them will work assiduously for years on behalf of corporations, proving that their products could not possibly damage anyone, few, if any of them, will work on behalf of local communities, and next to none of them, apparently, in community epidemiology.