Monday 14 October 2019

BREAST CANCER. Why is it that conventional medicine does not understand that HRT is a significant cause of this? Who protects patients from harmful drugs?

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) causes breast cancer!
  • Conventional medicine has known this for a long time, but they continue to prescribe these drugs to female patients.
Medical science has known this for a long time. In July 2002, research indicated that HRT can increase the risk of breast cancer (and heart disease too), and the test results were so alarming they were immediately halted. Many thousands of women came off the drug as a result, at least 50% of those who had been taken them.

Then, in 2003. the University of Texas recorded a 7% drop in breast cancer rates, and a 12% drop in women aged 50 to 69. This was reported in USA Today, 14 December 2006; and New York Times, 15 December 2006). And according to a BBC News report, 15th December 2006, UK researches also measured a drop in breast cancer cases. Professor Valerie Beral, director of Cancer Research UK's Cancer Epidemiology Unit, was reported as saying that there had also been a drop in breast cancer incidence in women aged 50-64 between 2003 and 2004.

So medical science discovers that HRT causes breast cancer. Then it discovers that rates of breast cancer reduces when less HRT is prescribed.

So why is it that the magazine 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' (WDDTY) had had to tell us that 'HRT causes 1 in 20 breast cancers'? (2nd October 2019). Why did the UK's drug regulator, MHRA, have to tell doctors to discuss 'new' (sic) information on HRT breast cancer risk with women at their next routine appointment?

 Surely our doctors should already know this! They should have known it since 2002, and even earlier. Apparently WDDTY was using a Lancet article as the source of this information (The Lancet, 2019; doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(19)31709-X).

               "HRT is twice as risky as doctors feared...."
Why?

               "The risk is greatest .....if it's taken for five years, say researchers from Oxford University. They estimate that one in 20 cases of breast cancer in the UK are caused by the drug..."
Why?

                "And women need to know the risks persist for 10 years afterwards... they don't disappear the moment they stop taking HRT, which has  been the common perception."
Why?

                "HRT prescribing  has been steadily rising over the last 10 years or so, with some studies downplaying health risks...."
Why?

               ".....but the Oxford researchers say it is vital to turn back the dial to the early 1990's when the dangers of the drug were first discovered".

The answer to all these "why's" is that medical science has little or no influence on the conventional medical establishment
  • on the pharmaceutical industry (which controls most medical science)
  • on the conventional medical establishment (which is supposed to be evidence led)
  • or on doctors (who are supposed to be 'science led').
I have recently blogged on the current crisis with Opiate drugs, which have caused serious disease, withdrawal symptoms, and death for many - yet doctors to prescribe more of these drugs, year on year.

It is clear that medical science has little or no influence over conventional medicine, or the drug prescribing practices of our doctors.

The MIMS article, dated 4th September 2019, tacitly confirms this when it states that MHRA, Britain's drug regulator has asked doctors to "discuss (this) new (sic) information on breast cancer risk with women at their next routine appointment. Is this really a sufficient or adequate response to a drug doctors have known to cause breast cancer for over 30 years? Drug regulation is supposed to protect patients from dangerous drugs. Is a chat, some time in the future, a sufficient response to women in danger of contracting breast cancer? There is, it is stated, "no need for urgent action".

Isn't there? Just how dangerous does a drug have to be to our health before doctors are obliged to take urgent action? How dangerous does a drug have to be now before it is banned?
But "women who use, or are planning to use, HRT, should be aware of these 'new' (sic) findings when considering their HRT."

These are NOT new findings. This is NOT news. It is history that is regurgitated every few years, a piece of information that will probably never acted upon, soon forgotten, and brought up again in a few years time. So if women don't know this by now it is because their doctors have not told them, or they have downplayed the information. I have written about this subject, many times, during the last 10 years.
The only possible conclusion is that both medical science and drug regulation are mere charades. Neither safeguard patients, you and me, from drug harm. Conventional medicine does not pay attention to its findings and directives - when they are negative - or when it has no alternative to the drugs that have been found to harm us.

 I suspect that I will be writing about this again, when conventional medicine discovers yet again that breast cancer is caused by HRT!
 
Postscript
Since writing this nothing has happened. HRT is still being prescribed, as before. Medical science might inform doctors that pharmaceutical drug treatment is dangerous - but it does not appear to change their medical practice!
 
WDDTY (February 2021)
"The most common type of HRT increases the risk of breast cancer by up to 80%, a new study has found". (My emphasis). BMJ, 2020; 371, m3873.
 
So here we are again, as I predicted, more 'new' medical science; and I wonder, this time, if it will have any impact on conventional medical practice?

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