Kicking Wyeth Habit Saves Women's Lives--Study

[Guest guest]

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1217-25.htm

Published on Sunday, December 17, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

Kicking Wyeth Habit Saves Women's Lives--Study

by Martha Rosenberg

An editorial cartoon from the summer of 2002 shows a TV announcer

leading a newscast with: " A major US drug maker is warning women if

they stop hormone therapy abruptly, its stock price will fall. "

Wyeth, maker of Prempro and Premarin, has indeed seen its stock price

fall since the news from a study presented at a breast cancer

conference in San in December broke that breast cancer fell

7% from 2002 to 2003 and estrogen positive breast cancer, 15%,

presumably because women went off HRT.

And just as the initial Women's Health Initiative HRT findings drew a

chorus of " yes buts " from those financially linked to HRT--the women

in the study were " too old " , took HRT too long, should have taken

only one hormone, shouldn't have had heart disease--already spins and

denials are coming out.

Maybe the number of breast cancers hasn't dropped at all, opined

experts quoted by ABC News Medical Unit, but mammograms have dropped.

(Or the population dropped 15%--did they think of that?)

Withdrawing hormones couldn't produce a decrease in breast cancer

that quickly, say other sources though estrogen-fueled cancers can

indeed regress, not form at all or not become mammogram detectable in

three years, says New York Times science reporter Kolata.

Others are ranting that news like this could scare women away from

legitimate HRT uses. Many have just returned from the FDA hearings on

antidepressant warnings where they said the same thing.

Unfortunately, HRT loyalists have more than the M.D. Cancer

Center study which broke the news to refute. A November study in the

Journal of Clinical Oncology found an even larger drop in breast

cancer rates in California where there was also a larger drop in HRT

use.

And epidemiologists at the Northern California Cancer Center found

breast cancer down 11% in 2004 using data from a National Cancer

Institute program and from Kaiser Permanente.

Despite the fact that HRT was found in 2002 to cause a 26% increased

risk of breast cancer, 29% increased risk of heart attack, 41%

increased risk of stroke, and 100% increased risk of blood clots,

Wyeth continues to market Prempro and Premarin. Especially because it

faces 3600 legal cases and withdrawing or discontinuing the drugs

would be an admission of guilt.

Not that they don't already look complicit.

Testimony in an Arkansas breast cancer trial this year revealed that

a Wyeth salesman wrote company executives in 2000, " The desire for

increased sales has overruled our company's ethical responsibility to

promote our products safely. " He also testified that Wyeth Chairman

and CEO Essner told his reps at a Prempro launch party the

company was creating an " HRT revolution " that would keep women on the

drug from menopause to death and that there should be " no boundaries,

no limits to your selling effort. "

But the latest news makes it even tougher for Wyeth to plead

ignorance. With 14,000 women who were expected to get breast cancer

NOT GETTING IT as analysts now claim, quitting HRT practically looks

like the cure.

And what possible warning label could you put on a drug that is

apparently so deadly and works so fast, anyway? That if you go off

it, the manufacturer's stock price will fall?