Twenty Years of Fear, Undone: Trump's FDA Is Finally Telling Women the Truth About Menopause
On Friday, the FDA stripped scary boxed warnings from three more estrogen patches. It is the latest step in a campaign that Washington's old health establishment never had the courage to start, and millions of American women stand to benefit.
By Clara Hughes
For more than two decades, American women going through menopause were told to be afraid of the one treatment that helps many of them most. Every box of hormone therapy carried a black-box warning about heart disease, breast cancer and dementia. Doctors hesitated, women suffered in silence, and nobody in Washington did anything about it. That is changing, and it is changing because President Trump's team decided to look at the evidence again. On Friday, October 30, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Food and Drug Administration had approved labeling changes for three estradiol transdermal patches from two companies. The changes remove statements about cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and probable dementia from the products' boxed warnings, according to HHS. "Removing outdated statements from these boxed warnings marks a major victory for women's health," Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in the HHS announcement. It is hard to argue with him. The move builds on an executive order President Trump signed on October