BMJ  2003;327 (16 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7411.0-g

Editor's choice

Showing discrimination

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A best selling treatment proves not to be so wonderful after all—and the recriminations start. The Lancet has just published a study showing that use of combined hormone replacement therapy doubles the risk of breast cancer (p 359), while the New England Journal of Medicine reports more results of the Women's Health Initiative trial that was stopped last year (p 359): it shows that HRT does not, as once thought, protect against heart disease.

On p 400 Jocalyn Clark describes how, when the Women's Health Initiative study was halted last year, one pharmaceutical company's public relations operation went into overdrive to reduce the effect of such adverse news. But the "spin" had started much earlier. Clark describes how Forever Feminine, an influential book extolling the virtues of HRT as a fountain of youth and published in the 1960s, had been secretly funded by the manufacturer . . . [Full text of this article]

(jsmith@bmj.com)

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