So, how did I get interested in writing a screenplay about long-term menopausal hormone therapy?
Increasingly alarmed and fascinated by the extensive, ubiquitous, and deceptive promotion of estrogen, my wife returned to UCSF and centered her PhD 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.
She contributed a chapter of a book she recently edited entitled Women’s Health and Corporate Marketing. The chapter “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.
After hearing my wife make presentations about the findings of her research, I began developing a screenplay about the practice of long-term hormone therapy.
Screenplay Development Documents
The following are links to documents that illustrate the development/evolution of this story. They are presented in chronological order, oldest to newest:
Draft versions of this screenplay entitled Golden Harvest are presented (in reverse chronological order) at the link under the heading Screenplays (in a column to the left on the desktop version of this website).
Resources
The following are links to the resources I relied on in developing this story: