Natural Woman Institute
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April 23, 2007 “Wulf In Sheep’s Clothing” I have just come across two recent articles by Dr. Wulf Utian of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS), one in NAMS’s “Menopause Management,” the other in “Contemporary OB/ Have you no shame, sir? These articles surpass all your previous pronouncements against bio-identicals for their jaw-dropping hypocrisy and flat-out lies. In “Feminine Forever," Round 2: The Bioidentical Cult,” Dr. Wulf writes: "George Santayana’s admonition that 'those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it' is a warning and not a cliché. 'Feminine Forever' – the Amazing New Breakthrough in the Sex Life of Women,' by Robert A. Wilson, MD, was published in 1966. In that book he claimed that 'for the first time, a leading doctor in the field of menopause prevention explains why no woman—no matter what her age—need ever feel a day over forty.' ...He [Wilson] went on to state that 'Your body’s health and your soul’s contentment may hinge on just one decision: to have your estrogen level checked.' Then he promised that 'these (natural estrogen) preparations are entirely free of side effects.' The book caused a sensation. Women worldwide demanded hormones and physicians took sides for and against the concept. The euphoria was jolted in December 1975 when two papers were published in The New England Journal of Medicine linking continuous unopposed estrogen with an increase in uterine cancer...The addition of progestogen to the mix rescued hormone treatment, and it was off to the races again. Hormone sales boomed as women anticipated the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and osteoporosis, as well as longer lives and other potential benefits." Dr. Wulf begins the above fiction by putting on the hat of a great sage and going on further in the article to point out the ironic link between Suzanne Somers’s "Ageless" and "Feminine Forever." There is certainly good reason to indict "Ageless" for being reckless in its promises and for forgetting the terrible legacy of "Feminine Forever," but astoundingly Dr. Wulf leaves out the fact that Dr. Wilson’s book was funded by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, his long-time employer and the primary funder of NAMS. And the drug Dr. Wilson was discussing as free of side-effects is Premarin. Dr. Wulf actually tries to slip in the lie that Wilson was promoting “natural estrogen.” Notice, by the way, the use of the word “cult” in the article’s title. This is one of Dr.Wulf’s favorite demonizing tactics relating to bio-identicals -- using words like snake-oil, cocktails, substances concocted in back rooms, etc. But the extraordinary understory of these paragraphs is that women brought hormone catastrophe on themselves: Women world-wide began demanding Premarin after reading Dr. Wilson’s book, and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals was apparently just a compliant provider. Perhaps women were advertising Premarin on TV to themselves? And Dr. Wulf presents himself as a disinterested commentator, when in fact he picked up the mantle from Dr. Wilson for Wyeth after Wilson’s death with articles such as “The fate of the untreated menopause”(1987), wherein Dr. Wulf predicted epidemics of heart attacks and bone fractures that would overwhelm the medical system if something wasn’t done. Putting women on Prempro for life was the solution. But it is in the article “Sign Out: Our 40 year ride on the hormone therapy rollercoaster,” that Dr. Wulf truly surpasses himself in his over-the-top hypocrisy by intoning: “It is one thing to bring scientific clarification to all issues about menopause, or to deliver state-of-the science, high-quality, preventive, and therapeutic health care to all women going through (and beyond) the menopause transition. It is quite another to use menopausal women as a 'market,' to knowingly attempt to industrialize, commercialize, and sell inappropriate 'remedies' purely for the sake of gathering the almighty dollar. The obscene haste with which some health-care professionals have jumped onto this bandwagon is troublesome. Remember—ultimately, when you sign the 'compounding' prescription, you accept the liability.” It is Wyeth Pharmaceuticals that is culpable for turning menopausal women into a “market,” not the other way around. It was Premarin that in 1965 was sold to women with "obscene haste" and without adequate testing –which ultimately came to roost with the 2002 NIH studies. Bioidenticals came into being as a way to counter the tyranny of the Premarin/ Since the 2002 NIH studies repudiating Premarin and Prempro, it has been Dr. Wulf’s task on behalf of Wyeth to demonize bio-identicals in any way he can. According to Dr. Wulf, Wyeth, the Goliath in this story with its mega-billion dollar profits, is now being threatened by David, the compounding pharmacies providing bio-identicals, who haven’t even remotely the financial resources of Wyeth. We can only hope the ultimate outcome is true to the bible. I really don’t know how Dr. Wulf can sleep at night…I have thought this for many years. But maybe now, as he is reaching retirement, he is twisting and turning in his bed trying mightily to spin his legacy and wipe out his personal culpability. Perhaps he has been so used to controlling the dialogue as Wyeth’s official obfuscator – wrapping himself in the length of his curriculum vitae, heretofore always being taken seriously by the media as the pre-eminent menopause expert – and now doesn’t realize just how ludicrous these articles are. **** For more information, read Dr. Erika Schwartz's recent excellent blog calling for Dr. Utian to resign. http:/ **** How Do the Recent NIH Study Results Relate to Natural/ "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." Ever since the cancellation in July of 2002 of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study relating to HRT, I have been asked repeatedly by women how the study findings relate to natural/ News that this large study had been cancelled unleashed a firestorm in the media and throughout the medical profession. The results of the study demonstrated that, contrary to the claims of the manufacturer, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, women using Prempro did not receive the benefits relating to heart disease and osteoporosis that justified long-term use. Even more alarmingly, these women were in fact more at risk for heart disease and more at risk for breast cancer, blood clots, and stroke. The leaders of the study made the difficult decision to halt the trials three years early for fear of harming more women needlessly. Shortly thereafter, a study of women using Premarin alone was also cancelled. There had been other studies in the preceding ten years that gave results linking Prempro and Premarin, the only hormone drugs used in this study, to accelerated risk of diseases, principally breast cancer. But the results of this particular study, because of its size and its government auspices, could not be downplayed and would prove a "tipping point" that would put a brake to prescribing Premarin and Prempro to women for lifetime use. What was gospel in the medical profession for over thirty years suddenly became heresy. The good news was that the prevailing medical standard of care of prescribing the predominant HRT drugs, Prempro and Premarin, for the prevention of disease was discredited. The not-so-good news was that all hormone therapies were tarred with the same brush. Even as it reported the results of the study, the media didn’t give the whole story. The New York Times, in its lead article on the NIH study, quoted a spokesperson from Wyeth as saying the results relating to Prempro were dismaying but "it was the only product available for hormone replacement." The reporter let the statement stand without qualification, despite the fact that it was false. Proponents of natural/ Needless to say, it will be impossible to untangle all the causes of this debacle, but one point is clear: The NIH studies were not a repudiation of natural/ (read the complete chapter in A Woman's Guide to Natural Hormones, 2005 edition.) |
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