From Harvard Medicine:

In the mid-1990s, up to 40 percent of menopausal women in America were prescribed hormone replacement therapy (HRT), many of them indefinitely. Doctors urged even asymptomatic women to take HRT, telling them it would decrease their risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia, prevent osteoporosis, and improve their overall sense of well-being. Then, in 2002, the Women’s Health Initiative study showed that prolonged use of HRT increases women’s risk of heart disease, stroke, and breast cancer. Prescriptions for HRT plummeted. Though the study has widely been considered flawed, today under 5 percent of menopausal American women take HRT. Of those who do take it, most do so for less than five years, even if they feel it benefits them and wish to continue taking it.

The rise and fall of HRT might be viewed as a simple case of medical knowledge advancing — we did better when we knew better, to paraphrase Maya Angelou. But Elizabeth Comen, MD ’04, a breast oncologist at NYU Langone Health, sees a darker, parallel story in which sexism and misogyny have negatively affected the medical care women receive, the extent to which women’s autonomy regarding their own bodies is respected, and the quality of research on women’s health.