Hey dahiagirl - thanks for that - I was going to post the same but you beat me to it!! It was in our hard copy of weekend Guardian. Even my husband said to me - there's an article about HRT in there! Now that really is something
![Grin ;D](https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/forum/Smileys/extended/grin.gif)
!
Do have a read of this too:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/853548As I pointed out at the time everyone (Press, women on here, everyone everywhere) was up in arms about the research and its failings without having read it - the study clearly was not designed to evaluate the safety of HRT (as if it would be with a sample size that small) but was a very detailed interesting study looking at something else of which a subsidiary finding was that no-one developed the cancers of concern. They were looking at body fat mass, lean body mass and BMI but looked at a number of other things along the way too.
I agree about the bad science. I don't really like meta-analyses which are often cited (eg the big one about ovarian cancer risk and HRT) because of the lumping together of totally dissimilar studies and drawing conclusions, not to mention the lumping together of outcomes using different HRT typoes.
It's like saying - let's study painkillers and lumping together every study that uses aspirin, and ibuprofen and applying the conclusions to paracetamol - because it's a painkiller - well that's how I see it anyway. Science is very specific and many of these statistical risk studies just confuse the issue and especially when reporting risk as you say Mary G. What really gets me is the correlation/causation thing - the most fundamental error in science. eg drinking ground coffee is associated with longer life expectancy therefore drinking ground coffee will extend your life. I made that one up but it's the argument used so often!
Hopefully the guidelines will be used sensibly!
Let's not forget the increasing life-expectancy of women who might spend 40 years or more in a post-menopausal state.
Hurdity x