The Biggest Disservice To Women’s Health

Name: The Biggest Disservice To Women’s Health
Uploaded: 2025-06-25T21:30:15+00:00
Duration: 48 s
Channel: Dr. Charles Mok
Description: Short commentary by Dr. Charles Mok on the interpretation of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) trials (circa 2002–2004). The speaker notes the WHI…

25 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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Short commentary by Dr. Charles Mok on the interpretation of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) trials (circa 2002–2004). The speaker notes the WHI reported a small absolute increase in breast cancer risk for women on PremPro (about 0.8–1%), no increase in deaths, and a possible increased risk of heart disease. He contrasts that with later/retrospective observations that women on Premarin had lower breast cancer rates and that estrogen begun within 10 years of menopause was associated with roughly 40% fewer heart attacks. The speaker argues that trial framing (who was studied and the question asked) led to widespread stopping of hormone treatments, which may have cost lives.

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The Women's Health Initiative trial when it came out in 20022004 suggested there was a slight increased risk of breast cancer now the absolute increase of risk of breast cancer on women on something called PremPro was 8100 to 1% no increased risk of deaths they also suggested possibly increase of risk of heart disease and now in retrospect we know that women on Premarin had less breast cancer and women on any form of estrogen had less heart attacks probably 40% less if they started them within 10 years of menopause how it was interpreted based on the question they were answering should we take people who are in menopause 20 years who've never been on anything and put them on the most aggressive synthetic drug that's a hormone based known and the answer was maybe not there's not really a significant benefit minimal harm but minimal benefit but the flip side if we had discontinued treating women with the same drugs even these drugs that we might malign a little bit more women would have lived.