At the 2009 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Orlando, researchers announced that women who take hormone therapy (HT) are 60 percent more likely to die from lung cancer if they develop it.
But Wyeth's Joseph Camardo, MD didn't let the report curb his enthusiasm for the Prempro franchise. Or the report at a medical conference the previous year that HT doubles risk for breast cancer in five years and increases it in two.
Younger women between aged 51 to 54 are starting to use HT he told reporters and "the same risks may not apply with the new patterns of use!"
For over eight years, hormone makers have tried to revive HT sales which sank in 2002 with a "timing theory." Women shouldn't take less hormones says pharma, they should take more and they should start taking them earlier, goes the theory.
(In Chicago, the timing theory is called voting early and often.)
The women in the Women's Health Initiative who got 29 percent more breast cancer, 26 percent more heart disease, 41 percent more stroke and double the amount of blood clots on Prempro wouldn't have gotten the lethal quartet if they weren't so old, went the theory. Their average age was 63! If women start HT around 50, it well might well prevent heart disease and cognitive decline says the timing theory.
Of course you have to admire pharma's audacity. Despite the HT-caused endometrial cancer epidemic in the 1970s which fell when women quit Premarin , despite the HT-caused breast cancer epidemic which fell when women quit Prempro in 2002, they're sticking to their story gosh darnit. See R.J. Reynolds.
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