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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: October 2006

One-legged Sweet Nothing
stays ahead of killer buyers

 

Sweet Nothing, kept by Cindy Wasney & Dick Jackson of Victoria, British Columbia, is an emissary for Premarin foals, Big Julie's Rescue Ranch in Fort McLeod, Alberta, and horses who learn to live with prosthetic legs.

 

"I bought her at a feed lot auction," Big Julie's Rescue Ranch founder Roger Brinker told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "She was a $200 horse," going for little more than the minimum bid.

 

Conventional belief is that horses who suffer severe leg injuries must be euthanized, but some especially valuable stud horses have been saved with prosthetic limbs, typically costing $6,000 to $8,000.

 

After Sweet Nothing convinced Brinker's veterinarian that she had the right personality to accept a prosthetic limb, Ron Handkamer of Colman Prosthetics in Calgary improvised one to fit her, Brinker said--and refused any payment.

 

Premarin, an estrogen supplement derived from pregnant mares' urine, was the top-selling prescription drug worldwide as recently as 2001, with annual sales of $732 million. Producing Premarin requires keeping mares pregnant, breeding a constant surplus of foals, many of whom are sold to slaughter.

 

Premarin sales have plummeted since the Women's Health Initiative study funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in July 2002 notified 16,000 participants who took Prempro, a drug combining Premarin with progestin, that the supplements are associated with increased risk from heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots forming in the lungs.

 

However, Wyeth-Ayerst, the Prempro and Premarin manufacturer, on September 15, 2006 won the first of about 4,500 pending lawsuits from former estrogen supplement uses.

 

"A federal jury ruled against Linda Reeves, 67," reported Andrew DeMillo of Associated Press. "During the four-week trial, Reeves acknowledged not reading information supplied with the drug and said she left it up to her doctor to decide whether it was appropriate to treat symptoms of menopause.

 

"Reeves, diagnosed in 2000 with a cancerous tumor in her right breast, initially took Premarin, a form of estrogen, and her doctor soon added progestin to her daily regimen. She switched to Prempro in 1996, which for the first time combined Premarin and progestin in one pill. After her cancer diagnosis, Reeves had a mastectomy and chemotherapy. She has been cancer-free since," DeMillo summarized.

 

The verdict went the opposite way for former University of Vermont professor Eric Poehlman, 50, of Montreal, who between 1992 and 2002 produced several of the most influential studies promoting and defending the use of Premarin.. Poehlman on June 28, 2006 became the first academic researcher in the U.S. to receive prison time --a year and a day--for fabricating scientific data.

 

"In spring 2005 Poehlman pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements in a successful 1999 application to the National Institutes of Health for a $542,000 grant. He also admitted faking results in numerous studies and proposals for a decade beginning in 1992," reported Adam Silverman of the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press.