World's most fatal cancer made more deadly with HRT
If you know a woman who is undergoing hormone replacement therapy (still?), you're going to want to forward this to her right away. Because new research has revealed that HRT may make lung cancer significantly more deadly. Lung cancer is already the world's biggest cancer killer. So it certainly doesn't need any help. But, of course, here comes HRT, already harmful in so many other ways, to make it more than twice as deadly. These are the latest findings from the Women's Health Initiative, a study that was stopped in 2002 because researchers started seeing more breast cancers in women taking an estrogen-progestin pill. Though the study ended, researchers continue to follow the women who participated, and the lung cancer findings are the newest in the long list of the disturbing effects of HRT. Hormone users who developed lung cancer were 60% more likely to die from the disease than women who weren't taking hormones. Researchers looked at non-small-cell lung cancer, which is the most common form. They found that the cancer was fatal in 46% (yes, nearly half) of women taking estrogen- progestin pills, and in 27% of women given a placebo. Somewhat surprisingly (at least I think so), this lead researchers to say smokers should stop taking hormones. Now, you know study results are scary when the mainstream media is actually willing to print advice to stop taking a drug! Of course, the American Cancer Society and Big Pharma reps stepped right up for damage control. The ACS pointed out that the number of deaths (106) is too low to make any "sweeping conclusions." So, how many more deaths do they want to see before we can start drawing conclusions? And Wyeth (the company that made the pill that stopped the study in 2002) has reps saying that women use HRT differently now. Women start younger and take hormones for an average of 2 years instead of 5. Wyeth claims the same risks might not apply with this new pattern. Dr. Richard Schilsky, the president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, called this study another piece of evidence that HRT should be used with "great caution." I don't know, Dr. Schilsky...how about not at all? Subscribers to Dr. Wright's Nutrition & Healing newsletter can read about HRT (and a safe alternative) in the article "Hormone replacement therapy can be safe-when you put back the missing ingredient: Nature." Not a subscriber? Find out how to sign up here."
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