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Top 2002 Story? Something that Failed!
Usually the biggest medical story of the year is a new ill or technique, a discovery that helps people live longer and better. But not in 2002. Just the opposite. Many agree the most significant medical landmark of the year was the realization that a practice steadfastly accepted by a generation of doctors does more harm than good. Millions of older women were told - and believed - that hormone replacement therapy would help them live longer and better by protecting their hearts and bones. It seemed obvious for a variety of scientific and common sense reasons. Until last summer. Then the Women's Health Initiative study showed that rather than slowing heart disease, the combination of estrogen and progestin actually increases the risk a bit. And as previously suspected, it slightly ups the chance of breast cancer too.
Although in hindsight earlier studies raised similar suspicions, this was inescapable evidence that for all those years, the doctors were wrong. The benefits of long-term hormone replacement therapy did not come close to outweighing its risks. In the months since, these results have echoed through the medical world: many women have stopped taking hormone pills, or refused to start. Experts have tried to figure out why they were so mistaken about hormones' effects on the heart. And in many areas of medicine, doctors are rethinking their assumptions about how much evidence is needed to recommend any new treatment or habit intended to help healthy people stay that way.
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