The Rise and Fall of Estrogen Therapy: The History of HRT

by Carla J. Rothenberg
Harvard Law School, Class of 2005
April 25, 2005

“For more than 60 years, the estrogen industry has been using the techniques of public relations, including the placement of pseudoscientific articles in medical journals, to promote their sales. Recently, Carla Rothenberg documented a conspiracy of the estrogen industry in the 1940s to get medical and governmental approval of their products by shifting attention away from the clear evidence of estrogen’s toxicity. Her paper competently reviews the subsequent history of “Hormone Replacement Therapy.” -Ray Peat, PhD

“The earliest studies of estrogen and progesterone in the 1930s had the great advantage of a scientific culture that was relatively unpolluted by the pharmaceutical industry. As described by Carla Rothenberg, the massive manipulation of the medical, regulatory, and scientific culture by the estrogen industry began in 1941. After that, the role of metaphysics, word magic, and epicycle-like models increasingly replaced empirical science in endocrinology and cell physiology.” -Ray Peat, PhD

http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/711/Rothenberg05.pdf