The fate of the thousands of foals born on PMU farms each year is
equally disturbing. Some are used to replace their exhausted mothers.
Some are offered for adoption (although Wyeth-funded farms are not
permitted to work directly with rescue organizations), but the remaining
foals—along with worn-out mares—are sold at auction by farmers to make extra money, where most are
purchased by middlemen working for slaughterhouses.
One PMU industry insider says, “See, the foals—and the mares which [sic]
can’t get pregnant any more—they are the byproduct of the PMU industry.
… We crush ’em and recycle ’em, just like [aluminum] cans.”
In 2002, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) 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.
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.
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.”
At the time of this writing, Wyeth (now a division of Pfizer) faces more than 5,000 personal injury lawsuits filed by more than 8,000 women who took Prempro or Premarin.
