LETTERS: ESTROGEN FOR MARES

For more than 50 years, the estrogen-replacement drug, Premarin, has been a part of daily life for millions of menopausal women. As its name implies, Premarin is extracted from the urine of pregnant mares. With an estimated 8 million women currently taking the drug, and some 43 million women entering menopause, the pregnant mare urine industry is booming. While this growth means increased profits for the world's only producer, it also means confinement, suffering and death for increasing numbers of horses and foals.

To produce Premarin, mares are impregnated by natural or artificial means, fitted with a rubber urine collection device attached to a hose and tethered in stalls barely longer and wider than they are for much of their 11-month pregnancies. Lameness often develops. The mares are re-impregnated just seven to nine days after giving birth, and within a few months they are separated from their foals and put back in the stalls. Fertile mares go through this same grueling process year after year, some for more than 20 years. In 1993, an estimated 75,000 mares on 485 farms in Canada and North Dakota were confined for urine collection. The foals, as many as 90,000 in 1993 alone, are considered nothing more than a byproduct. Most go to slaughter immediately. Others are kept as replacements for worn-out mares or as studs.

Since synthetic estrogens can now be manufactured inexpensively, collecting urine from mares is an antiquated method. Premarin is the only menopause drug still made with animal-derived estrogen. "The notion that a substance derived from horse urine is natural to the human females is simply a tribute to 50 years of successful advertising. Most of the compounds found in Premarin are foreign to the human female and not made by the human ovary," said Phillip O. Warner, M.D., director of the Menopause Institute of Northern California. Products which are identical to human ovarian products provide more natural methods of treating the symptoms of menopause.

Many physicians, gynecologists and patients claim that the production of Premarin is cruel and completely unnecessary. Many have turned to use of alternative therapies and claim equal or improved results with fewer side effects.

ANDREA BAUCH

Makanda, Ill.

RESPONSE: Wyeth-Ayerst provided this statement: "Women have come to rely on Premarin to take them into the postmenopausal years feeling and functioning better. We are enormously proud of the contribution this product has been able tmake in improving women's lives. We tatke the integrity of our products and their manufacturing very seriously. The welfare of animals involved in the pregnant mare urine industry is extremely important to Wyeth-Ayerst and ranchers, who maintain the highest standards of nutrition and health for their horses. Wyeth-Ayerst is committed to investigating all allegations of abuse to horses involved and to take action where necessary."