Recently, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took action against several pharmacies that make bio-identical hormone replacement therapy drugs. At that time, FDA also said that the drug estriol should not be dispensed by pharmacies as a prescription product.
The FDA has never formally evaluated teh safety and effectiveness of estriol. As a result, your plan's prescription drug benefit will NO LONGER cover drugs containing estriol under your prescription benefit.
As of June 1, 2008, prescriptions containing estriol will no longer be covered by your prescription drug benefit.
FDA is NOT recalling estriol from the market. Some pharmacies may continue to make drugs using estriol. However, after this date, YOU would be responsible for the entire cost of the prescription.
So let's talk a little more about this and why I think this is happening. First a little lesson on Pemarin/Prempro:
In 2002, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), a study of more than 16,000 women using Prempro, was abruptly halted by the federal government after it concluded that HRT raises a woman’s risk of having a stroke by 41 percent, risk of suffering a heart attack by 29 percent, and risk of getting breast cancer by 26 percent. Dr. Claude Lenfant—director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which sponsored the study—said the cardiovascular and cancer risks were “too high a price to pay” and urged women who want to ward off heart disease to “focus on well-proven treatments” instead, such as controlling blood cholesterol and keeping their weight down.(8)
The WHI also found that Prempro has no meaningful effects on women’s physical or emotional health, pain levels, memory, sleeping patterns, or energy levels. The researchers concluded that Prempro is effective for short-term relief from hot flashes but nothing else. Many women find that they can control hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms by making easy lifestyle changes—like eating a low-fat vegetarian diet and getting regular exercise—rather than contributing to animal suffering.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjVuseclfxY Dr. Jennifer Hays from the Baylor College of Medicine commented, “The average woman will not experience an improvement in her quality of life by taking this pill.”(9)
Wyeth currently faces more than 5,000 personal-injury lawsuits filed by more than 8,000 women who took Prempro or Premarin.(10)
NaturalNews) The FDA has begun 2008 by forbidding compounding pharmacists to use estriol in their natural hormone formulations because the agency doesn’t have a specified approved use for it. They took this action because Wyeth complained about it. And yet, Wyeth-Pharma sells two types of estriol drugs in Europe, so we know this is not a safety and efficacy issue.In case you’ve forgotten, Wyeth is the giant pharmaceutical company that makes Premarin and PremPro, synthetic hormones found to cause heart disease, strokes and cancer.
If we do some rough calculations based on statistics from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), Wyeth’s hormone replacement drugs have killed tens of thousands of women over the past few decades. Sales of these dangerous drugs have plummeted since the WHI results were announced, and women who were injured by them and sued, are winning millions in damages in courtrooms around the U.S. (You go girls!) .
Money pure and simple.
When I first received this letter, I got angry, confused and scared. Now I am angry, but with purpose. I know that I will get my hormones, I cannot live without them. When I was on premarin, I was sick with leg pain, headaches, breast pain, chest pain, forgetfulness and so on. Once, I started bio identical hormone therapy, all of those symtoms evaporated. I am now angry that many many womyn will no longer have access to bio identical hormone therapy, and will have no choice but to go back on premarin. Which is exactly what Wyeth wants. Their bottom line is to increase sales, at any cost. Whether you get cancer, have a heart attack, stroke, is of no consequense to them, in fact, better yet, they have a drug for that to. Yeah! more money!
I would like to hear from womyn who are being affected by this decision.
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