Mary Hunter wrote the chapters titled “Mother’s Little Helpers and Opioids: Women, Addiction, and the Legacy of Arthur Sackler” and “Hot and Bothered by the Menopause Industry.” She was an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Nursing until July 2024. She continues to enjoy research and writing.
Before earning nursing degrees from UCSF and the University of Washington, Mary obtained a bachelor’s degree in history from Mills College in Oakland, California. She decided to become a nurse practitioner after savoring the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves and volunteering for over ten years in Planned Parenthood clinics. She worked as a women’s health and adult nurse practitioner in California, Montana, Washington, and Hawaii.
Mary’s most recent clinical position was in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District where she was privileged to provide gender-affirming hormone therapy and primary care to an underserved population that included people struggling with addiction. Having dealt with medical and social problems related to addiction both in and out of a clinical environment, she is motivated by the fact that drug dependence is everywhere, and finding appropriate treatment for victims is problematic.
Increasingly alarmed and fascinated by the extensive, ubiquitous, and deceptive promotion of estrogen, Mary returned to UCSF and centered her dissertation research on the meaning of “hormone replacement therapy (HRT)” to users and its promotion by the menopause industry. Her current research focuses on the promotion and prescription of potentially inappropriate medications associated with cognitive decline in women, including estrogen, benzodiazepines, and opioids.
Abstract
“Mother’s Little Helpers and Opioids: Women, Addiction, and the Legacy of Arthur Sackler” includes a brief history of drugs used for pain and anxiety, starting with the normalization of laudanum in colonial America, continuing through drug regulatory efforts in the early1900s, and the spectacular rise of the pharmaceutical industry in the mid-1900s. Using the example of Arthur Sackler’s innovative advertising career (the success of which effectively set up his brothers to acquire and control Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin), common dishonest pharmaceutical marketing tactics are examined. Sackler’s advertising campaigns for Librium and Valium included so-called “doctors’” endorsements and medical journal articles written by marketing staff impersonating research scientists. Sackler’s successful ad campaigns made bold assertions of unsubstantiated benefits, notably claims of low addiction propensity, and these strategies were imitated by his brothers. The chapter describes the strenuous marketing of OxyContin to prescribers by Purdue Pharma detail representatives, and it examines the broad social and health consequences of the over-prescription of both benzodiazepines and opioids. Various reasons why women bear the heaviest burden of drug dependence are outlined, as are strategies for treating victims of numerous manufacturers of commonly used addictive drugs who knowingly put profit ahead of patients’ lives.
Click Chapter 3 Resources for related resources.
Abstract
“Hot and Bothered by the Menopause Industry” describes how hormone manufacturers, the North American Menopause Society (the name was changed in 2023 to The Menopause Society), and other professional societies with links to pharmaceutical corporations have persisted in arguing that long-term menopausal hormone therapy (HT) prevents disease. Findings from the Women’s Health Initiative in the United States and the Million Women Study in the United Kingdom, as well as other studies confirming those results, showed that long-term use of HT causes excess disease. These landmark studies seriously threatened the bottom line of hormone manufacturers, particularly Wyeth (now Pfizer), and a strenuous marketing campaign to reverse the resulting reduction in sales continues today. Marketing strategies used to convince consumers and healthcare providers that studies showing harm from HT were flawed and that HT has anti-aging and disease prevention efficacy are presented in detail.
Click Chapter 6 Resources for related resources.