Buy this book! It will change your life! Extend your youthful years Invigorate your sex life End hot flashes and other discomforts of menopause Cut your risk of osteo-porosis, heart disease and cancer Decrease your risk of Alzheimer's Disease and senility Locate a pharmacy that prepares natural hormones Find a physician who prescribes them

Buy the book here and receive a FREE subscription to Smart Publications Health & Wellness Update (a $36.00 value.)

In addition, all book purchasers will receive a voucher for a
FREE sex-enhancing herbal supplement ($19.95 value) from
Health Freedom Nutrition! (USA Orders only) Place your order today!

Chapter 1 from the book

Don't Let Your Doctor Give You Horse Urine!

Cancer researchers tend to be quite conservative by nature, typically careful not to use their study results to overstate people’s hopes or exaggerate their fears. So it was that in November 2006, something amazing happened at a medical conference in San Antonio, Texas. It was there that medical scientists from Houston’s prestigious MD Anderson Cancer Center presented recent study results that left jaws dropping, not only in San Antonio, but all the world over.

The study’s senior investigator, Dr. Donald Berry, characterized their results as “astounding.” Others called them “fascinating,” “provocative,” and having “no obvious flaws.” Acclaimed another prominent cancer researcher, “This could well be the study of the year in cancer.”

What was this amazing, astounding, provocative finding that shocked the world of cancer medicine? It was quite simple, really, and not a bit surprising to those of us who have been practicing natural medicine, beyond the bounds of the conventional medical wisdom that is strongly biased by the “patent medicine” industry (also known as the “drug” and “pharmaceutical”) industry. (See page 435)

What Dr. Berry and his colleagues did was to simply calculate the number of cases of breast cancer that have occurred annually in the United States for about the last 25 years. They then compared those numbers with the number of prescriptions of patented “hormone replacement” therapy (HRT) – daily oral doses of the patent medicines (aka “pharmaceuticals” or “drugs”) Premarin® (conjugated equine estrogens, CEEs) and Provera® (medroxyprogesterone, MPA) or the combination of the two, Prempro™. What they found is summarized in Figure 1‑1.

Then in 2003 something strange happened that snapped the whole puzzling picture into focus. Compared to the previous year, the rate of estrogen-positive breast cancer (About 70% of breast cancer tumors are fueled by the hormone estrogen. As estrogen levels rise, tumor growth increases and vice versa. Such tumors are termed “estrogen-receptor positive,” or “ER+.”) the most common form of the disease, fell an astonishing 18%. For the first time since 1945, and for no obvious reason (at the time), the annual incidence of breast cancer had actually declined significantly over the course of a year.

The Smoking Gun

What happened to spark such a sharp rise and fall in breast cancer incidence? The key event occurred in mid-2002, noted Dr. Berry and colleagues. It was the unscheduled, premature termination (after about 5 years) of a huge, placebo-controlled, federally funded clinical trial called the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI). The WHI had been designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of conventional HRT in women after menopause. ( If you can believe it, despite the fact that Premarin® had been process-patented and approved for use in the 1940s and had been heavily marketed since the ‘60s, and the combination of Premarin® + Provera® had been in widespread use since the 1970s, no such “gold standard” trial had ever been conducted to evaluate its safety and efficacy. Thus, what doctors thought they knew about conventional HRT was based largely on inadequate research, rumor, and myth, topped off with heavy doses of wishful thinking and marketing hype.)

We’ll discuss the pivotal WHI trial in detail in subsequent chapters. Suffice it to say, its results pulled the rug out from under the long-time practice of conventional patented HRT, showing definitively that it was far less useful and far more dangerous than the vast majority of doctors and their menopausal patients had been led to believe.

But the decline in breast cancer was only half the story. Remember that the MD Anderson researchers correlated the rise and fall of breast cancer with the prescribing of HRT. As you can easily see in Figure 1-1, in the 2 decades during which the incidence of breast cancer was “spiking,” women were using conventional HRT at an increasing and unprecedented rate, so much so that during that period, Premarin® and Provera® (Prempro™) became among the best-selling patent medicines in the world.

But beginning in July 2002, with the publication of the first of several papers detailing the WHI results, the sales of patentable HRT plummeted. In the 6 months after the WHI results were published, Prempro™ prescriptions fell by more than half, from 61 million prescriptions annually in 2001 to 27 million in 2003 to 18 million in 2005. Justifiably frightened by the WHI findings, women were abandoning HRT in droves.

Although the WHI had made it clear that patentable HRT was dangerous, hardly anyone expected that abruptly ceasing use of these pseudohormones would bring about such an immediate and profound benefit for so many women. Yet, the correlation was unmistakable. As many women stopped taking their HRT, their risk of developing breast cancer quickly diminished.1,2 The researchers were surprised by both the magnitude and the rapidity of the decline at first. As Dr. Berry later explained, “It makes perfect sense” if you consider that the use of HRT may be an important contributing factor to cancer development.3

Now, just because two events are correlated does not automatically mean that one causes the other; the new data do not prove that patented HRT causes breast cancer. There could be a third factor – eg, more mammograms – responsible for the increase in breast cancer. Nevertheless, as medical oncologist Peter Ravdin, MD, the lead author on the MD Anderson paper, stated, the somewhat misnamed “hormone hypothesis” seemed to explain the cancer data perfectly, and they could find no other explanation.2, 4) “Of course, we’re not sure. We never are,” said Dr. Berry, “but it fits. It’s a smoking gun.”5

Any doubt about a third factor, like fewer mammograms, as a possible cause for the decrease in breast cancer was recently erased in a major article in the New England Journal of Medicine by the WHI researchers themselves. Re-examining their own data, they concluded that “…the recent reduction in the incidence of breast cancer … is predominantly related to a decrease in the use of combined “estrogen” plus progestin.”6 (Emphasis and quotes added.)

The Bio-Identical Hormone Option

Why Are Human Bio-identical Hormones Superior?

As you’ve probably heard, conventional patented HRT employs estrogens derived from horse urine (more about this later). Nature designed these estrogens to work very well in pregnant female horses, but not so well in female humans (or even in nonpregnant mares!). By contrast, bio-identical human hormones are precisely identical biochemically to those the female human body produces on a daily basis; the body cannot distinguish them from those it produces itself.

What a radical idea! Human hormones for human beings!

Not surprisingly, when tested in scientific study after scientific study, bio-identical human hormones virtually always turn out to be safer, more tolerable, and more effective than conventional, FDA-“approved” horse hormone-based HRT regimens. (A very recent review of 196 studies (Holtorf K. The Bio-identical Hormone Debate: Are Bio-identical Hormones (Estradiol, Estriol, and Progesterone) Safer or More Efficacious than Commonly Used Synthetic Versions in Hormone Replacement Therapy?Postgraduate Medicine 2009;129:1-13) makes this point abundantly clear.)

How could anyone who knows anything about the human female reproductive system presume that horse hormones and pseudohormone patent medicines (like Provera®) could possibly be better and safer for the human body than hormones that are exactly the same as the ones the body produces naturally? It defies reason!

Imagine you’re a researcher back at the dawn of the menopausal hormone replacement era and a benevolent company picks you to develop the best hormone replacement product(s) possible. You’re given two things: 1) the benefit of all the research and equipment available to any scientist today, and 2) a choice between working with bio-identical human hormones or not bio-identical (for humans) horse hormones. Which type of hormones would you pick?

It’s a safe bet that the average person using common sense, whose sole experience with hormones was limited to secreting them (and perhaps admiring their effects in the opposite sex), would choose human hormones every time. But then, people running patent medicine companies don’t use common sense. On the contrary, they choose business sense over common sense almost every time; and for reasons too complex to explain here, the vast majority of practicing physicians tend to go along with the patent medicine approach.

Regrettably, bio-identical hormones step up to the patent medicine (drug) company plate with three strikes already against them. Like air, water, vitamins, blood, mucus, as well as countless other substances, bio-identical hormones occur in the world naturally. Consequently, according to law, they are not readily patentable. In the world of Big Pharma and conventional medicine, this means that manufacturing and marketing bio-identical hormones would not be sufficiently profitable. Like generic drugs that have gone “off patent,” anybody can sell them, increasing the competition and forcing down the selling price.  

This legal fact of life in the marketing of therapeutic materials, which limits the profits a patent medicine company can make on unpatentable products, has unfortunately paved the way for patentable but inferior substances, like Premarin® and Provera®, to become the standard in conventional menopausal hormone replacement therapy. Meanwhile, bio-identical hormones, despite their inherently superior efficacy and safety in the human body, are widely ignored, routinely denigrated, and most recently, illegally suppressed.

You’ve probably heard lots of things about BHRT in the media or from your doctor in recent years – some good, some bad. If you’re confused, we can certainly understand why. Keep in mind that much of the information we encounter about BHRT on TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, and the internet, whether negative or positive, is quite often wrong, or at best, biased. Fortunately, the ever-increasing popularity of books about BHRT— most recently Breakthrough — by Suzanne Somers, and earlier this year, two hour-long Oprah Winfrey programs about BHRT, has exposed many more of us to a more balanced view of BHRT.

When it comes to digging up the actual facts about BHRT, media reporters almost always take the easy way out, relying for their information on patent medicine company press releases and/or interviews with company-paid “expert” sources. When an “authoritative” source claims – falsely – that there is no valid scientific support for the safety or efficacy of bio-identical hormones, it is typical for reporters to take such statements at face value and make no serious attempts to verify their accuracy. In fact, if a reporter were to take the trouble to look, he/she could easily find thousands of pro-BHRT papers published in mainstream medical journals. But, who’s going to pay for a comparable PR operation for BHRT? And reporters have other stories to write.

BHRT: Doing It the Right Way

Unfortunately, a similar casual relationship with the facts also applies to many who claim to be advocates of BHRT. They may know a good thing when they see it, but they may fail to dig deeply enough into the research and long experience of clinicians educated in BHRT to understand it’s true and how best to apply its principles. As a result, the advice they give may be misleading or even dangerous and in some cases might wind up doing as much harm as good. Proper application of BHRT means much more than simply substituting estradiol pills for Premarin® pills and progesterone pills for Provera® pills, as some BHRT “experts” advocate.

In this book, we review decades of scientific research and clinical experience related to hormone replacement therapy, using bio-identical hormones as well as patent medicine products. We believe there is no question that the sum total of this research and clinical experience leads to only one conclusion: the practice of medicine is always better served by following Nature, rather than by seeking to maximize patent medicine company profits. If you think this sounds like hyperbole, stay tuned. We know that once you’ve reviewed this evidence and come to understand how today’s patent-based, conventional medicine system actually works, you’ll readily agree.

In discussing menopausal hormone replacement, strange as it may seem, we sometimes like to compare doctors with auto mechanics to make a simple but very telling point. Consider this: No auto mechanic in his right mind would substitute crucial parts in a Mercedes with replacement parts made for a Chevy. You don’t have to know a whole lot about cars to imagine the consequences of trying to put, say, a Chevy transmission into a Mercedes. It’s just common sense.

Yet, many otherwise knowledgeable physicians, who’ve been prescribing horse estrogens and pseudohormone patent medicines for women going through menopause, seem to have less common sense than the average auto mechanic.

By the time you’ve finished reading this book, we have no doubt you’ll agree that using bio-identical hormones, the ones Mother Nature “designed” for the human body, instead of “the standard” – alien-to-the-human body, but highly profitable substitutes dreamed up in a patent medicine company’s labs – offers women a more natural, and hence, safer, healthier, and more worry-free passage through the years of menopause and beyond.

A Little Background on Menopause

From the time she first enters puberty until the end of her last menstrual period, every woman is keenly aware of the monthly cycle of hormonal changes going on inside her body. Except during those months when she might be pregnant, she experiences the complex interplay of her reproductive steroid hormones – estrogens, progesterone, and many others – ebbing and flowing on a regular 26- to 30-day cycle. However, by the time she reaches her late 40s or early 50s, the regularity of her hormonal cycling starts breaking down. This is the beginning of menopause. Just as puberty marked the beginning of her reproductive life, menopause marks the end of it.

In nearly 40 years of medical practice, I (JVW) have helped thousands of women make this transition. Each woman deals with the changes in her body in her own way, with reactions ranging from joy and fulfillment (“It’s finally over!”) to acceptance, resignation, depression (“I’m not young any more.”), to discomfort, and perhaps to chronic illness. There is no “typical” reaction.

Yes, That Equine!

If menopausal symptoms are related to a decline in certain hormones, the logical, most commonsense way to relieve those symptoms would be simply to restore the missing hormones. Low on estrogen? Take some estrogen. Low on progesterone? Add some progesterone. Same for testosterone. While it’s usually best to replace all three hormones (at least), in the interests of keeping our story simple, let’s just focus only on estrogens for now. We’ll get back to progesterone, testosterone, and the others a little later.

The “estrogen replacement” most doctors have been prescribing for decades is a formerly patented medicine known generically as conjugated equine estrogens (CEEs). The best known brand of CEEs is Premarin®, which has been available since 1942, but only widely marketed since the 1960s.

So what’s the matter with conjugated equine estrogens? Take a close look at the name. Notice the word “equine?” Yes, that equine! Premarin® is a form of horse estrogens. In fact, it is derived from pregnant mare’s urine, hence the brand name.

But, is that so bad, really? Estrogen is estrogen, isn’t it? What difference does it make where it comes from? For the most part, that’s what most conventional doctors and their patients have been taught to think.

Although much of the willfully blind conventional medical establishment proclaims to see no essential difference between Premarin® and “estrogen” (or between Provera® and progesterone), the critical differences have been spelled out and diagrammed in standard textbooks, scientific journals, and patent applications for over half a century. Other than the obvious differences in spelling, as we’ll soon show, the dissimilarities are many, varied, and profoundly important.

Redefining Reality

Part of the confusion has to do with language. People (ie, doctors, drug companies, government regulators, media, and the “average person”) all generally refer to the primary female hormone as “estrogen.” In fact, though, this is a misleading oversimplification. In fact, there is no single hormone called “estrogen,” but rather many different hormones that share a similar molecular structure that places them in the “estrogen class.” These hormones, with names like estriol, estradiol, estrone, and equilin, are correctly referred to en masse as estrogens, and each can be considered as an estrogen. This may seem like a subtle distinction, but it is vital, because it helps explain (along with US patent laws) how horse estrogens have come to be the standard “hormone replacement” therapy for human females during menopause.

This confusion has not come about by accident. By carefully manipulating the language, the drug companies have convinced the vast majority of doctors, medical researchers, government regulators, media, and women themselves of an outright falsehood: that CEEs are “estrogen” and that “estrogen” is CEEs. Having had the wool (or perhaps the horse hair) pulled over everyone’s eyes in this way, when doctors think “estrogen” and reflexively write “Premarin” on their little blue prescription pads, it becomes a whole lot easier for everyone involved to rationalize that a woman substituting daily doses of estrogens from pregnant horses for her declining ovarian estrogens might not be such a bad idea.

Re-defining terms like “estrogen,” “progesterone,” “testosterone,” and “hormone” has been a cornerstone of patent medicine marketing for the better part of a century, allowing them to sell billions and billions of dollars worth of highly profitable patent medicines to women (and men) who think that what they are taking are actually human hormones. To the enormous financial benefit of the industry, their strategy has worked brilliantly. However, for the millions of women (and men) who have taken their so-called “hormones” according to doctors’ orders, the consequences have often been less than ideal and sometimes deadly serious.

How Do Women Differ from Horses?

(Yes, we must admit, it’s a rather odd question to be asking in a “medical” book, but please stay with us, there might be doctors reading.)

Over the last several million years, the reproductive system of female humans (Homo sapiens)has evolved to run quite smoothly on at least 15 or more different estrogens and estrogen metabolites.7,8 Of these, estradiol (E2) is the most potent and most responsible for “secondary sexual development” (eg, breasts, hips) as well as for much of the “female point of view.” As shown in Figure 1-2, the other major human estrogens include estrone (E1), estriol (E3), and the major estrogen metabolites 2-methoxyestrone (2-MeOE1), and 2-methoxyestradiol (2-MeOE2, which is “major” in terms of importance, but not quantity like the others). Table 1-1 lists the best known human estrogens and their metabolites.

As noted above, significantly missing from horse estrogens is the estrogen estriol, which comprises as much as 10% of human estrogen. In addition to its large proportion, estriol is a very “gentle” or low-potency estrogen, only about one-quarter as potent as estradiol and only one-eighth as potent as equilin. Research indicates that, due in part to its low potency, estriol may provide invaluable built-in protection against the carcinogenic (cancer-causing) potential of other more potent estrogens. Of course, female horses are built to tolerate all those potent estrogens, but not so female humans.

Looking at Figure 1-2 and Table 1-1, it doesn’t take an advanced degree in medicine to conclude that human estrogens and equine estrogens are distant cousins at best. The only estrogens human females and pregnant horses have in common are estrone and estradiol, but in very different proportions.

This difference in reproductive hormones is just one of many differences between horses and humans. You may have also noticed that horses have four hooves, a long tail, a mane, and they’re also larger, and can run much faster. We’d never think of transfusing horse blood into a human (or vice versa), or transplanting horse organs into humans, and it doesn’t make any more sense for humans to be using horse hormones either.

It should come as no surprise then, that the presence of an alien species of estrogens (CEEs) in the human body induces a hormonal imbalance that can cause a woman not only to “feel funny,” but also to have significant problems. To most doctors who prescribe Premarin®, this hormonal imbalance has never seemed to carry much weight, at least not until the last couple of years. After all, Premarin® does squelch hot flushes pretty well, doesn’t it? And it’s FDA-“approved,” isn’t it? So it must be safe, right?

Well, not so fast. One of the primary effects of estrogens is to promote the growth of tissue in the uterine lining and breasts. Normal tissue growth in response to natural ovarian estrogen stimulation is essential for preparing the body for possible pregnancy. However, according to one well-accepted theory, if for some reason, a few cells in the uterus or breast should by chance or genetic predisposition turn precancerous or cancerous, the extra estrogenic boost provided by potent estrogens, like those found in CEEs, could shift that microscopic cancer growth into overdrive.

Using the potent estrogens in Premarin® to treat hot flushes is something like putting out a candle with a fire hose. True, it’ll get the job done, but how much power do we really need? As two leading reproductive physiologists pointed out over 20 years ago, “[When women take Premarin®], …levels [of equilin] can remain elevated for 13 weeks or more post-treatment due to storage and slow release from adipose [fat] tissue. In addition, metabolism of equilin to equilenin and 17b‑hydroxyequilenin may contribute to the estrogen stimulatory effect of therapy.”9 Another metabolite of equilin, 17b‑dihydroequilin, has been found to be 8 times more potent than natural endogenous human estrogens for inducing excess growth of the uterine lining.13 Of course, none of this can happen with natural or bio-identical human hormones, because they do not contain equilin or any of its metabolites (Table 1-1).

Translated into English, this means that Premarin® has tissue-building “estrogenic” activity that is much stronger and longer lasting than that produced by natural, built-in, or bio-identical human estrogens. Under certain conditions, one of these estrogenic overreactions from Premarin® is far more likely to wind up promoting tumor growth in the uterus or breast than human ovarian or bio-identical hormones.

In addition to their secretion, another way to look at hormones is to focus on the antenna-like receptors located on cells throughout the body that receive their stimulation. During the first 50 or so years of her life, the cells in a woman’s body bearing estrogen receptors “learn to expect” a regular and relatively muted pattern of estrogenic activity caused by the normal activity of human estrogens. From this perspective, it’s not hard to see why exposing human estrogen-sensitive tissue to superpotent horse estrogens would be so disruptive and so dangerous.

Strangers in a Strange Land

While CEEs may be quite at home in a pregnant female horse, in a female human they might as well be aliens from another planet, “strangers in a strange land.” The female human body has all the enzymes and other chemicals it needs to process (metabolize) estriol, estrone, estradiol and all the other human estrogen metabolites when these hormones occur in their natural human amounts and proportions (Figure 1-2). As a result, the hormones nearly always remain at safe levels and typically do not promote tissue overgrowth or other undesirable effects. On the other hand, humans lack the enzymes they would need to properly metabolize equilin, excess estrone, and the other CEE metabolites.

Is it any wonder, then, why so many women feel “unnatural” on Premarin® and why Premarin® causes so many unpleasant side effects and discomforts (see box below ), many of which are a direct result of estrogen overload? Should it come as any surprise that Premarin® use at the recommended doses (especially in combination with the dangerous progesterone-imposter drug Provera®) has been associated with a significantly increased risk of breast and endometrial cancer14 – in women, but not in horses?

The patent medicine industry, which has been making billions of dollars selling horse estrogens to women for more than 40 years, has tried to rationalize away the risks and discomforts their products cause by arguing that “estrogen replacement” with Premarin® also cuts the risks of heart disease, strokes, osteoporosis, and perhaps even senility and Alzheimer’s disease that often follow menopause: a potentially powerful argument, if only it were true. Unfortunately, the vast majority of unbiased scientific evidence, “topped off” by the devastating WHI report in 2002, tells a very different story.

Yet, despite all the well-known shortcomings of Premarin®, purveyors of patent medicine, even in the light of recent findings, remain more than willing to prescribe it without ever asking a ridiculously obvious question: Why use alien species horse hormones in human females? If we have the choice – which we do – wouldn’t user-friendly human estrogens make a lot more “horse sense?”

The Promise of Bio-Identical Hormones

The rise and fall of patented HRT is a vitally important story, but even more important is the promise offered by bio-identical human hormones. We helped introduce the concept of bio-identical hormone replacement in 1997 with the book Natural Hormone Replacement for Women Over 4515, at a time when only a handful of progressive, knowledgeable doctors had ever heard about BHRT. In that book, we summarized much of the evidence then available that demonstrated the promise of BHRT:

• Reducing hot flushes, night sweats, and vaginal dryness and thinning
• Preventing osteoporosis and restoring bone strength
• Maintaining greater muscle mass and strength
• Protecting against heart attacks and strokes
• Maintaining the health and integrity of the urinary system
• Improving blood lipid (cholesterol) levels
• Reducing the risks of uterine and breast cancer
• Reducing the risk of depression
• Improving sleep, mood, concentration, and memory
• Preventing senility and Alzheimer's disease
• Enhancing libido (sex drive)

In the intervening years, much has happened in the world of menopausal hormone replacement. In particular, the evidence supporting the benefits and safety of BHRT has only grown stronger, while the evidence supporting the utility and safety of conventional HRT has been substantially − and unquestionably − diminished. Back in 1997, the risks of conventional patented HRT were becoming increasingly apparent to those who were willing to see them. In 2009, recent research confirms conclusively that patent medicine HRT is both less effective and more risky than previously believed.  Yet conventional patented HRT remains available by prescription in every pharmacy in the country, while BHRT struggles for its very existence against the combined behemoths of Big Pharma, the FDA, the mainstream media, the US Congress, and the “uneducated” physicians who comprise conventional medicine.

Although it rarely penetrates the world of conventional medicine, the basic principle of bio-identical hormone replacement, copying Nature as closely as possible by replacing declining hormones with identical-to-human hormone molecules in identical proportions, with identical timing, and by a route into and around the human body as close to Nature’s route as possible, should seem like common sense. However, the sad saga of patented HRT demonstrates what little role common sense plays in the strange world of conventional mainstream medicine, where Big Pharma marketing almost always trumps science, and where safety and efficacy usually get trumped by profits.

Patent Medicine and Patented Medicine: What’s the Difference, Really?

In this book, we refer to “patent medicine” quite a bit, and this no doubt makes some people – particularly those associated with the patent medicine industry – uncomfortable, maybe even a little angry. Most people associate the term “patent medicine” with 19th century (and earlier) traveling medicine shows and “snake oil salesmen” selling an endless variety of “nostrums,” most of which were probably useless at best and sometimes toxic at worst. They prefer to distinguish this early form of “patent medicine” from today’s science-based pharmaceutical industry employing thousands of brilliant and creative scientists using the highest technology to find treatments for our worst diseases.

Perhaps the best known of the early patent medicines was “Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.” Beginning around 1875, Pinkham’s – a therapeutic precursor to today’s HRT – was marketed as “a positive cure for all those painful complaints and weaknesses so common to our best female population,” including “ovarian troubles” and even uterine tumors, which it was supposedly able to “dissolve and expel…in an early stage of development.”

Like most other patent medicines of its day, Lydia Pinkham’s was actually not patented (as we use the term today). As used then, the term “patent” referred to a centuries-old carryover that once indicated that a product had a royal endorsement. By the 19th century, “patent” had lost all real meaning; the only distinguishing feature of a “patent” medicine at that time was its trademark. Anyone could make and sell an identical concoction; they just couldn’t call it “Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.”

To protect a product from competitors selling cheaper “generic” versions, old patent medicine companies relied on widespread advertising that emphasized its brand name, while asserting that generic substitutes were inferior. In fact, today’s advertising industry got its start largely as a vehicle for selling patent medicines.

The old patent medicine industry gave way to the modern patent medicine industry around the turn of the 20th century. As muckraking journalists and government regulators began to expose the wild claims and dangerous and poorly labeled products of the old patent medicine companies, newer companies, working under increasingly tighter regulation, began taking a more scientific approach to drug development.

As the industry matured, and as laws evolved that allowed companies a period of exclusive marketing rights – ie, a patent – to their new, unnatural drugs − except under extraordinary circumstances, natural substances cannot be patented − the modern patent medicine industry came into being.Today’s more science-based “pharmaceutical/drug” industry may not like the association, but the description “patent medicine” companies actually fits them better than it did their ancestors, because their products actually are patented.

References

1. Ravdin PM, Cronin KA, Howlader N, et al. The decrease in breast-cancer Incidence in 2003 in the United States. N Engl J Med. 2007;356:1670-1674.
   Abstract
   
   
2. Glass AG, Lacey JV, Jr., Carreon JD, Hoover RN. Breast cancer incidence, 1980-2006: Combined roles of menopausal hormone therapy, screening mammography, and estrogen receptor status. J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 2007;99:1152-1161.
   Abstract
   
   
3. Decline in breast cancer cases likely linked to reduced use of hormone replacement. M.D. Anderson News Release. December 14, 2006; http://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/
   news-releases/2006/12-14-06-decline-in-breast-cancer-cases-likely-linked-to-
   reduced-use-of-hormone-replacement.html
   Accessed August 14, 2007.
   
   
4. Kolata G. Reversing trend, big drop is seen in breast cancer. The New York Times. December 14, 2006; http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=
   9F04E5DA1231F936A25751C1A9609C8B63:
   Accessed August 8, 2007.  
   
   
5. Kolata G. Sharp drop in rates of breast cancer holds. The New York Times. April 19, 2007; http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9A03E6D91E3F
   F93AA25757C0A9619C8B63:
   Accessed August 8, 2007.  
   
   
6. Chlebowski RT, Kuller LH, Prentice RL, et al. Breast cancer after use of estrogen plus progestin in postmenopausal women. N Engl J Med. 2009;360:573-587.
   Abstract 
   
   
7. Xu X, Duncan AM, Merz-Demlow BE, Phipps WR, Kurzer MS. Menstrual cycle effects on urinary estrogen metabolites. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1999;84:3914-3918.
   Abstract 
   
   
8. Xu X, Roman JM, Issaq HJ, Keefer LK, Veenstra TD, Ziegler RG. Quantitative measurement of endogenous estrogens and estrogen metabolites in human serum by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Anal Chem. 2007;79:7813-7821.
   Abstract 
   
   
9. Premarin® (conjugated estrogen tablets). Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Inc. 2004;Philadelphia, PA 19101:Full Prescribing Information.  
   
   
10. Evans J. Horse Breeding and Management: Elsevier; 1992.
    
    
11. Woodcock J. "Bridging what is known and what is not known": FDA perspective and response. FDA. http://www.fda.gov/cder/present/NIHWHI102302/sld018.htm:Slide 18.
    
    
12. Asthana S. Alzheimer’s Disease: Efficacy of Transdermal 17-ß Estradiol.
    http://www.nia.nih.gov/NR /rdonlyres/7DB43991-C46B-40F8-9199-6C282424000F/1982/Asthana.pdf. University of Wisconsin Medical School.
    
    
13. Barnes R, Lobo R. Pharmacology of Estrogens. In: Mishell D, Jr, ed. Menopause: Physiology and Pharmacology. Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, Inc.; 1987.  
    
    
14. Heiss G, Wallace R, Anderson GL, et al. Health risks and benefits 3 years after stopping randomized treatment with estrogen and progestin. JAMA. 2008;299:1036-1045.
    Abstract 
    
    
15. Wright J, Morgenthaler J. Natural Hormone Replacement for Women Over 45. Petaluma, CA: Smart Publications; 1997.
    
    

			Buy this book! It will change your life! Extend your youthful years Invigorate your sex life End hot flashes and other discomforts of menopause Cut your risk of osteo-porosis, heart disease and cancer Decrease your risk of Alzheimer's Disease and senility Locate a pharmacy that prepares natural hormones Find a physician who prescribes them

Buy the book here and receive a FREE subscription to Smart Publications Health & Wellness Update (a $36.00 value.)

In addition, all book purchasers will receive a voucher for a
FREE sex-enhancing herbal supplement ($19.95 value) from
Health Freedom Nutrition! (USA Orders only) Place your order today!