Martin Walker, the author of "Dirty Medicine", has recently published a book on Hormone Replacement Therapy, titled HRT - Licensed to Kill and Maim. The book was reviewed by Emma Holister in this article. My copy of the book was sitting on the shelf for some months before I finally got to crack it open, more out of a sense of guilt rather than genuine interest.

HRT Licensed to Kill and Maim.
(Slingshot Publications)

But I was mistaken. Walker hasn't written just another dry condemnation of a form of treatment that was widely promoted and then turned out to do more harm than good. He brings the suffering of the women on this therapy to life in a very real way, and he links the story of the failed hormone drugs to the larger reality of today's pharmaceutically controlled medical caste which has become the sales machine for rich pharma multinationals, rather than a source of comfort and healing for individual patients.

Imagine my surprise when I read the headline of a recent Daily Mail article: HRT scares 'have been a catastrophe for women's health'. The author Jenny Hope implies that Hormone replacement was unjustly criticised saying: "One million women are 'suffering unnecessarily' after turning their backs on HRT because of health scares, say doctors."After estimating that HRT prescriptions in the UK have fallen from two million to one million, the article quotes Dr John Stevenson of the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, who says: "A million women are suffering the consequences of not being on HRT. Women now coming into the menopause are too scared to go on to HRT. It is a disgrace."

Of course Dr Stevenson completely ignores scientific studies that have found HRT to be outright dangerous:

The Women's Health Initiative randomized controlled trial scheduled to run 8.5 years was abruptly halted at 5.2 years because women in the treatment group had a 26% increased risk of invasive breast cancer.

He also ignores the extreme plight of women suffering at times terrible and life-changing side effects of a hormone overdose prescribed by their doctor and even at times administered without consent by implant. So is the article merely an attempt by pharmaceutical PR departments to revive a dead therapy?

One might be tempted to think so, especially in view of another recently published study reported on in BBC News, that found HRT increased heart problems, instead of helping. There seems to be no shortage of studies with scary results implicating hormone replacement in serious and at times deadly side effects. But business is business - hey, if some women who take the drugs feel better, who cares about all the rest?