1: THE PREGNANT MARE'S LESSONIn a former British colony, most healers believed the conventional wisdom that a distillation of fluids extracted from the urine of horses, if dried to a powder and fed to aging women, could act as a general tonic, preserve youth, and ward off a variety of diseases. The preparation became enormously popular throughout the culture, and was used widely by older women in all strata of society. Many years later modern scientific studies revealed that long-term ingestion of the horse-urine extract was useless for most of its intended purposes, and that it caused tumors, blood clots, heart disease, and perhaps brain damage.The former colony is the United States; the time is now; the drug is the family of hormone replacement products that include Prempro and Premarin (manufactured from pregnant mares' urine, hence its name). For decades, estrogen replacement in postmenopausal women was widely believed to have "cardio-protective" properties; other papers in respected medical journals reported that the drugs could treat depression and incontinence, as well as prevent Alzheimer's disease. The first large, well-conducted, controlled clin ... read full excerpt from Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs ebook
