How Many Women Were Lost?

Yesterday my Mother called asking me to pick up some medicine her doctor called into the pharmacy. Knowing she had been ill I glady went and got it. Moms 76 years old so I don't mind doing things for her when she calls.

After standing in line for about 30 minutes (mom uses Wal Mart) finally my turn came. The young man says 28 bucks. Excuse me Mom has insurance it shouldn't be more than 5 dollars for both perscriptions. Her doctor was going on vaction till after the first of the year so he had called in her syntheriod along with the antibiotic. Turns out it was 5 days too soon. Medicare part D does not allow a person to pick up an on going prescription until 5 days before your last one runs out. We were 5 days to soon. Thats right folks they limit people to when they can pick up their medication. Doesn't matter if their going to out of town or picking up early because the weather may turn bad. So I told the phamacist to keep it and we would pick it up later when the insurance would pay for it, but give me the antibiotic.

This is where I begin thinking. Getting to Moms house I told her what happened. And indeed early pick up is prohibited. I asked her about the syntheriod she had been taking, it is a hormone replacement she takes since doctors removed half her thyriod several years ago. I asked her if the doctor had told her about any side effects. Yes he had and she explained to me it was safe. I said good because I had read a recent article in the New York Times that hormone replacement had caused breast cancer, heart attackes, strokes and blood clots.

Oh I know all about that Mom says. I was given premerin in 1978 or 79. Remember when I was in the hospital? The blood clot that went though my heart and caused a stroke? Yes I did remember. Premerin had caused the blood clot. I was STUNED! Premerin had almost killed my Mother 28 years ago! How could that be? Women were only warned about premerin in 2002.

How could it take 24 years for the warnings to come out. How can big pharma and doctors claim they didn't know till 2002 when they did a study and saw that a combination of hormone replacement drugs caused breast cancer, heart attackes, stroke and blood clots.

In my Mothers case she only took premerin not a combination of hormone replacements.
How many women have died? And how many years before Mom had her blood clot were women prescribed premerin and died? For that matter how many women have died from breast cancer, heart attackes, strokes and blood clots over the decades from these drugs. How many other families like mine stood vigil over a loved one lying the intensive care unit because they had been prescribed premerin?

I've lost several friends to breast cancer over the last 10 years and have several who beat it. I wonder how many of them had taken hormone replacement? I want answers. I want to see the 2002 study and I want to see the original studies done decades ago on these drugs that allowed the FDA to ok them for women to take.

I WANT ANSWERS! HOW MANY WOMEN ARE DEAD BECAUSE SOMEONE AT THE FDA LET THE DRUG COMPANIES MARKET A DRUG THAT COULD KILL! Not just a few deaths like vioxx which was pulled just a few years after it's release but THOUSANDS killed over DECADES!

But hey it's just women, it's just our Mothers and sisters, wives and daughters. Who cares. Not even the media cares, the New York Times article was ignored while three men on a mountain became the media sensation of the weekend.
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Editorial in the New York Times
December 16, 2006

A Big Drop in Breast Cancer
The sharp drop in breast cancer rates reported this week is astonishingly good news. It is the first major reduction in the incidence of a malignancy that strikes more than 200,000 American women every year — and kills some 40,000 annually.

Researchers from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and other institutions reported that the incidence of all types of breast cancer fell a stunning 7 percent in 2003 — the latest year for which statistics are available — from the year before. This was the first such decline after persistent rises for several decades and a leveling off from 1998 to 2002. The researchers estimate that 14,000 fewer women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003 than in the year before.

The most plausible explanation is that women by the millions abandoned or sharply cut back their use of hormone therapy. For many years hormones — which have been widely used to treat the symptoms of menopause — had also been hyped by the pharmaceutical industry as an elixir to ward off the ravages of aging. Overly enthusiastic doctors also championed hormone therapy as a way to prevent or mitigate heart disease, Alzheimer’s, severe depression and urinary incontinence — none of which turned out to be true.

But in mid-2002, a study of the effects of hormones on thousands of women had to be halted after it became clear that prolonged use of a popular hormone combination caused an increase in breast cancer, heart attacks, strokes and blood clots.

Women abandoned the hormone pills in droves, and almost immediately, the incidence of breast cancer began to fall. As Gina Kolata reported in yesterday’s Times, rates of the most common form of breast cancer — tumors that are fueled by estrogen — dropped a startling 15 percent from August 2002 to December 2003.

The researchers hypothesize that tiny tumors in the breast, when deprived of the hormones that fueled them, stopped growing or at least grew more slowly, leaving them too small to be detected on mammograms. It is also possible that, with their hormones cut off, some tumors shrank or even disappeared. Other factors, like a slight dip in mammography screening to detect tumors and use of drugs that are known or thought to slow breast cancer, might have played a small role in reducing the numbers, but they were deemed too inconsequential to explain the results.

The great unknown is what will happen in the future. If tumor growth was simply slowed, not stopped, the tumors may become detectable as time goes on. But hormone therapy has continued to decline, so the drop in breast cancer is apt to continue. A study in California found that a sharp decrease in breast cancer incidence in 2003 was followed by a slower but continued drop in 2004, a harbinger, perhaps. of what national statistics will show next year.

Further analyses will be needed to identify all possible reasons for the decline of breast cancer incidences. If the hypothesis holds up that the drop in hormone use is the main cause, as seems likely, it should persuade even more women to curb their use except when absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, breast cancer incidence will remain high, underscoring the need for more ways to prevent this dreaded disease.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/opinion/16sat1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin