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The publisher, Hunter House Publishers, , December 2, 1997
Menopause is a natural stage in a woman’s life, yet it is treated as a
disease, something to fear and medicate. This provocative book shows how myths about
menopause have been built on incomplete and misquoted research so the health-care industry
can sell products and services. Sandra Coney is a women’s health activist and
adviser. She is also the author of The Unfortunate Experiment. Excerpted from The
Menopause Industry by Sandra Coney (as appears in The WomanSource Catalog).
Copyright© 1994. Reprinted by permission, all rights reserved.
The drug-company-inspired campaign to remarket estrogen with a clean image has
been stunningly successful. In the 1990s the reorienting of osteoporosis as a woman’s
disease is complete. It is now mandatory to include osteoporosis as a major
"symptom" in any discussion of menopause. By convincing the public and the
medical profession that osteoporosis is a "crippling" and "killing"
disorder and estrogen the only cure, HRT has been imbued with a kind of saintliness. HRT
offers salvation where otherwise there would be none, rescuing women from an unthinkable
fate as deformed crones.
"Read this book and become enraged! . . . Coney’s balanced approach gives
information and therefore power to all midlife women." — Susan Love, M.D.,
author of Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book
Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews:
Coney (The Unfortunate Experiment, not reviewed) argues that although the medical
profession presents menopause as a disease, it is a natural life passage that many women
experience painlessly and some even welcome. Women’s value has historically been tied
to their ability to reproduce. Menopause, marking the end of a woman’s childbearing
years, is therefore more stigmatized than male midlife. Coney believes that doctors and
drug manufacturers have exploited this social prejudice, and middle-aged women’s
attendant insecurities, by exaggerating both the menopausal "symptoms" (hot
flashes, depression, etc.) and the curative powers of estrogen and by underselling the
dangers of hormone treatments. In particular, she argues that general practitioners and
pharmaceutical companies have blown the osteoporosis risk out of proportion while
minimizing proven links between estrogen treatments and endometrial cancer. Coney’s
depictions of the sexism surrounding the hormone craze are well supported; she provides
examples of ads with misogynist slogans, such as "Menrium treats the menopausal
symptoms that bother him the most," and doctors’ descriptions of the physical
unattractiveness of the postmenopausal female body. Unfortunately, though, Coney’s
prose is repetitive, often confusing, and polemical. She is so intent on exposing sexist
medical ideologies that she often fails to supply statistics or hard facts where they are
needed, sometimes assuming that if researchers are working from politically questionable
premises, they couldn’t possibly come to scientifically sound conclusions. She also
has an irritating tendency to assume that women are uncritical dupes of the medical
industry, declaring them "naive" and "oblivious to the deeply sexist
ideology underlying the options that are placed before [them]." The book has a
preface by Paula Doress-Worters, co-author of The New Our Bodies, Ourselves, and a
foreword by Barbara Seaman, cofounder of the National Women’s Health Network.
Seriously flawed, but adds a valuable perspective to a highly charged debate. (42 b/w
photos, not seen) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP.
From The WomanSource Catalog; review by Patricia Pettijohn , February 1, 1997
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT), mood elevators, vaginal suppositories, face lifts and
mammograms-menopause has become a growth industry in this country which needs you and I to
be the consumers. It’s not enough, after all, for us to be merely discomfited by hot
flashes or vaginal dryness; instead, we are terrorized by the medical establishment’s
warnings of brittle bones that will break and never mend, or mental confusion and
instability that will threaten our jobs and relationships. This book challenges the
accepted lore of modern medicine’s management of menopause, from its theoretical
foundation, which has created a pathology of midlife, to its manufactured therapies. And
in the process, it gives the reader the information she needs to make her own decisions.
Synopsis
Veteran health investigator Sandra Coney presents compelling evidence that how we
perceive menopause is shaped and, in large measure, distorted by those who have
transformed this natural process into a wildly lucrative enterprise. Coney examines the
true motivations behind the medical industry’s highly publicized depiction of the
hardships of menopause. National TV and radio tour.
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