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How hormone usage was suppressed
(Excerpted from Hormone Secrets.)
Cui Bono, the Latin phrase meaning “who benefits,” suggests that the motive for an act or crime lies with the person who stands to gain.
Only twenty percent of our senior women and even fewer men take hormones. Outside Europe and the US, usage is rare. How is this possible? These drugs' “bio-identical” or “human” forms are not promoted because they can rarely be patented to make big money. But they work better and are safer than other medications such as statins, antidepressants, many cancer treatments, and the proprietary imitation hormones made by big Pharma. These industry cash cows are supported and protected, while natural hormones are defamed and restricted. Chasing profits has ruined science.
How the Women's Health Initiative study (WHI) was hijacked and sabotaged patient care.
This enormous National Institutes of Health trial (published in 2002) examined 160,000 women aged 59 to 79. It found an increase in breast cancer for patients taking both Premarin, the horse urine estrogen, and Provera, the patented synthetic progesterone. But those who took only Premarin had a decrease in breast cancer. This proved Provera was responsible, and other trials confirmed it. The WHI should have ended this medication’s use for long-term applications, but it did not.
The WHI took 11 years, and by the time it was complete, the two drugs it examined were obsolete. However, the study statisticians claimed they uncovered critical dangers, and the authors sensationalized and embellished their threadbare findings. Medical academics buffed their reputations by declaring they could also see the emperor’s clothes. The media joined the parade—baloney sells advertising—and the public soon believed that all female hormones were killers. This “man bites dog” story still terrifies everyone. Once a bell is rung, it cannot be unrung.
In the public and medical eye, hormones were branded with cancer, dementia, and other problems. One reviewer wrote that the study authors were “overselling hysteria.” In Medscape, John Goldman, MD, wrote, “[The study] has undermined the credibility of the research and the medical community as a whole.” Abraham Morgentaler, MD, and others (Harvard) explained how the panic was generated:
The (WHI)… reported an increased risk of adverse events of only 19 events per 10,000 person-years of exposure for the estrogen-progesterone arm [Premarin-Provera] compared with the placebo. This means that if one woman in every generation of a family used estrogen-progesterone for 10 years, it would take 50 generations, or about 1,000 years, to see one extra adverse event in that family. The results may have been statistically significant, but they were clinically meaningless.
In Estrogen Matters (2018), a superb book about science and politics, Abraham Morgentaler, MD, and Carol Tavris described the study’s statistical trickery and atrocious sensationalism. One of the WHI’s principal investigators, Rossouw, had an agenda to “change the thinking about hormones.” Six years before the WHI was published, he wrote it was time to put “the brakes on that bandwagon,” referring to the growing support for estrogen replacement. And so, the WHI authors ignored their colleagues’ advice and rushed to publication before completing the study. This spawned thousands of meritless lawsuits.
Bluming and Tavris cited follow-up trials showing that estrogen decreases the chance of breast cancer, heart disease, colon cancer, osteoporosis, and ovarian cancer. Women taking it live longer on average, even the ones with breast cancer. A few studies suggested increased risks when estrogens were started ten years or more after menopause, but these numbers were insignificant compared with the enormous benefits of therapy.
The WHI, including the diet trials, cost about $1 billion—likely the most expensive research in history. Money like this buys a lot of puffery, and their deceptions still circulate. For example, the WHI ended the estrogen-only arm of the study early because the drug raised nonfatal strokes by 12 per 10,000 women per year. However, the WHI investigators included inconsequential neurologic deficits that resolved within a day or two in their stroke definition. Another claim was that patients taking both Premarin and Provera had a 30 percent increase in breast cancer cases and that this decreased after the women stopped the drugs. This was true, but it was entirely because of Provera, the outdated synthetic progesterone. And the difference in fatalities—the best measure of disease—was minuscule.
At one time, Premarin and Provera were the best we had. Using these decreases menopause symptoms and improves overall health. For example, forty (40) observational trials, mostly studying Premarin, show that estrogens reduce heart attacks by 50 percent. These are still useful in the short term to control uterine bleeding, but they should never be prescribed now as long-term hormone replacement.
The WHI did not evaluate estradiol or true progesterone, which have few side effects and are profoundly beneficial.
Sophisticated doctors now use them almost exclusively. Soon after the WHI was published, other studies showed that these natural substances decreased cancer (2012 Danish trial), heart disease, and dementia (Oxford Academic), and likely even extended lifespan. Despite the availability of these alternatives, the “legal climate” created by the WHI cowed most physicians. Many refuse to take even trivial risks to help their patients. Some are afraid to prescribe hormones at all.
The WHI media frenzy lasted decades. Premarin had been the most prescribed medicine in America for many years and was still number four in 2002. However, sales dropped by 50 percent in the first month after the WHI was released. The most unthinkable part of the saga was that doctors instantly forgot their 100 years of clinical experience proving that hormones were safe and effective.
As the WHI lunacy infected medical thought, hormones were further maligned:
✪ Estrogen and progesterone: In 2003, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) smeared these with an ominous “black box” warning label. It said these increased the chances of stroke, blood clots, breast cancer, and heart disease. They based their claims on the hazards of the industry’s patented chemicals rather than the bio-identicals.
✪ Testosterone: The FDA put a black box on this as well, claiming it caused heart attacks and strokes. However, reviewers refuted this, saying it enhanced heart function and lowered heart disease risks. An international consensus conference sponsored by the Mayo Clinic concluded that testosterone improved health, including heart disease. Other physicians debunked the flawed testosterone studies that were cited to contrive the warning. Yoho note: This black box was finally removed in February 2025. However, they added a warning about hypertension.
The FDA requires labels saying testosterone is contraindicated for men who have had prostate cancer. This is not true either, as articles in sciencedirect.com and the Journal of Urology attest.
✪ Thyroid: Inexpensive pork thyroid extract has been prescribed safely since the late 1800s. But the drug industry claims their synthetic T4 is superior. Pharma gives the Endocrine Society millions annually, so they recite this party line. Since T4 is missing a critical ingredient, many patients experience inferior results when using it compared to those who take thyroid medication that includes both T3 and T4.
✪ Growth hormone (HGH) was rumored to cause cancer by the FDA (2020) and others. A study of 6840 patients refuted this. Regulations made the medication hard to prescribe or possibly even illegal, and proprietary manufacturing made it phenomenally expensive. The same sports doping issues as testosterone have tarred it as well. Although the economic free-for-all impedes genuine science, our fifty years of experience suggest it could be the safest and most effective hormone for overall health.
✪ True progesterone has many virtues, including relieving anxiety, promoting sleep, and suppressing cancer. But its use has been thwarted by an absurd narrative. Since progesterone protects against uterine (womb) cancer, gynecologists and others had the clever insight that it is not needed for women who have had a hysterectomy. They would deny progesterone benefits to the entire third of US women over 50 who have had their uteri removed. This fatuous story somehow persuades many doctors.
✪ Insulin: No one could ever pretend the most indispensable medication in history was harmful. But a proprietary manufacturing process was invented, and the prices were jacked up stratospherically. Big Pharma then gifted us several generations of progressively more expensive products with little difference besides marketing. While this happened, affordable pork and beef insulin were removed from the market. These are inferior but should stay available because some needy patients cannot afford the latest concoctions and are rationing their medicine. A few are dying.
✪ Even vitamin D, another hormone and not a vitamin, had its units changed from milligrams to “international units” (IU). This made ordinary doses seem frighteningly large.
Who cares about the patients?
✪ The drug manufacturers? Remember, with few exceptions, bio-identical substances cannot be patented. This makes them economic competitors for industry’s profitable chemicals made from dyes, coal tar, or animals.
✪ The doctors? Big Pharma writes their studies and standards (see The Journals’ Sins chapter).
✪ The FDA? The Agency is now nearly a wholly-owned subsidiary of the drugmakers because they feed it the vast majority of its budget through “user fees.” (See the FDA chapter in Butchered by Healthcare.)
✪ The media? The press says: “If a story bleeds, it leads.” Translated: their mission is to use sensationalism to sell advertising. Little integrity remains. Most of their stories are extreme, negative, poorly researched, and even hysterical. An estrogen tale without a breast cancer “hook” gets buried. They deride testosterone as nearly an evil twin of street methamphetamine, and their news about sports usage is malevolent.
The scientific evidence backing hormone replacement is robust.
Our century-long study of the human glandular (endocrine) system taught us how hormones function; our experience using them is enormous. Thyroid has been supplemented since the late 1800s, insulin since 1922, and testosterone since 1935. Estrogen was developed in the 1930s, and HGH in the late 1950s. Our background with these medications is as comprehensive as any used in healthcare, and we have thousands of observational studies confirming their efficacy.
What is happening now:
Most “mainstream doctors,” including endocrinologists and the rest of the internists, continue to say these benefits are modest or even unproven. They parrot the industry, and the FDA claims that hormones increase cancer, blood clots, and heart disease. They use inadequate doses or refuse to prescribe these medications except for insulin and thyroid. Many say that hot flashes, depression, muscle wasting, and declining sexuality in older people are “healthy aging.” They believe the average hormone blood levels seen in seniors are appropriate.
“Hormone doctors” have broken away from this thinking. They specialize in treating age-related hormone decline and mainly prescribe bio-identicals. Although replacing hormone deficiencies is a state-of-the-art approach, it is not a novel principle. It is an established, venerable idea pioneered in the 1800s with porcine thyroid. Later, insulin was used, followed by estrogen, testosterone, and others.
Like most doctors, patients were fooled by the WHI and the subsequent furor. Many women stopped their hormones. Some decided not to start and missed the critical time in early menopause when these have the most beneficial effects. This created millions more medical problems, including Alzheimer’s.
Doctors have a nearly religious belief that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the “gold standard” of medical proof.
Few exist for these medications, so how can these claims be valid?
Follow the money. Drugmakers seldom study natural substances because they can rarely be patented for the monopoly advantages. In contrast, profits are colossal for proprietary drugs, expensive trials are bargains, and there are overwhelming incentives to game the system. So “science” is designed to make the patented ones look good and discredit the bio-identicals.
Here is how RCTs are supposed to work: During a study, neither doctors nor patients are told which drug and which sugar pill are used. Ultimately, the results are “unblinded” and the patients taking the active substance are compared with the other group. Statistics are used to examine the results. If a medication works better and has fewer side effects, it is judged a success. The drugmaker then presents the information to the Food and Drug Administration for approval. If they grant the company a patent, the drugmaker starts “printing money” with their new medication.
For decades, with the cooperation of the FDA, the drug industry has spoiled the validity of these studies. The hoaxes they employed included biased patient selection, fraud during the studies, deceptive data interpretation, a rubber-stamp approval process, and universal ghostwriting by drugmakers for medical journals. They also conceal studies with results that do not support their marketing efforts. This has rendered the current RCTs a “garbage-in-garbage-out” approach. By now, doctors cannot decipher what works and what is bogus. Surprisingly, only a few physicians and scientists are prosecuted out of the multitude who commit these blatant, public misdeeds. See Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma (2012) for proof of all this.
Controlled trials are designed to determine “statistically significant” differences between placebos and active medications. Even if studies were performed without cheating—a rare event now—these differences are almost always minute. This means that—despite any claims of “statistical significance,”—the examined medications are useless or nearly useless. But so much money is changing hands that profitable “therapeutic breakthroughs” are always publicized.
For example, statin anti-cholesterol medications were FDA-approved based on tiny numbers that suggested benefits. However, statisticians on company payrolls cooked the figures, claiming that statins were justified for nearly everyone, and they became phenomenal best-sellers. The reality is that they are marginally useful for a single-digit percent of those who take them now and a net harm for the rest. For the story of how the drugmakers trumped up statins into today’s financial colossus. See Butchered by “Healthcare.”
Even a half-blind mathematician in a drug company’s dimly lit basement understands that an RCT is unnecessary to determine whether putting a dislocated shoulder back in place works. Even a raise or a larger salary cannot motivate most researchers to deny such an obvious truth. I am wrong about some of them because they are part of the chorus denying the efficacy of hormone therapy despite the staggering evidence that proves it is beneficial.
This is (somewhat) exaggerated.
Should we throw out everything we learned over the past century and trust the WHI media storm? I think not. Should we believe the FDA? Most of their funding comes from Pharma. Do doctors protect their turf? As the night follows the day. Should we trust the internet information scrum? That was rhetorical.
When corporations do studies, they look under the money tree rather than the tree of science. Patients are far from their top priority. As you go further into this story, ask yourself, “Who benefits?” Industrialized healthcare is always the winner. Their entitlement has become more apparent, and their crimes have become more flagrant during the COVID era.
Resources
Click this link to get your free e-book copy of Hormone Secrets.
Worldlinkmedical.com is where you can find hormone doctors trained by Dr. Rouzier, as I was.
For practical hormone advice that you can use today, see the following links from the Apocalypse Almanac:
2025 Comment
Bioidentical hormones surpass all other supplements for efficacy and safety. Some people under 50 and all seniors should be considered for them. For example, using testosterone for appropriate men or women often produces a more profound subjective improvement than even iodine or magnesium replacement, despite our nearly universal deficiency. The stories about hormones causing cancer and heart disease were, with narrow exceptions, lies. They were fabricated to cheat us out of routine hormone usage and substitute profitable and less effective patent drugs.
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