A Book Review of HRT: Licensed To Kill and Maim by Martin J Walker

by Marjorie Tietjen

Martin Walker has been writing and publishing books examining various intrigues at the heart of orthodox medicine since 1993 when he published "Dirty Medicine", a book primarily about the war waged by science, big business and orthodox medicine against alternative treatments.

HRT: Licensed To Kill and Maim is Walker's third book in five years. His book "Skewed" looked at ME, CFS, GWS and MCS and last year "Brave New World of Zero Risk", originally issued for free on the internet, investigated the world of medicine and science lobby groups, paying particular attention to the controversies around ME and MMR.

Like Walker's other books, his latest stretches it's subject well beyond the very specific title. The book is not just of interest to those women who are considering Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) or to those who have been damaged by it. It is for anyone concerned about their health and who wants to learn more about how government agencies and corporations play a major role in creating and perpetuating disease. Unusually the book is also of interest to campaigners. The focus of Licensed to Kill and Maim is on iatrogenic illness, disease produced by the medical industrial complex.

As a Lyme disease patient and activist, the book holds special meaning for me. As I read through the heartrending accounts of the women damaged by HRT, I was struck by the parallels between how menopausal women and Lyme disease patients have been treated. I found the book full of valuable information about the dangers and corruption of our current medical system.

Maggie Tuttle is the power behind Walker's book and her photograph is displayed on the cover along with a photo of Walker. Maggie was adversely affected by HRT and the experience compelled her to become an activist. She set up The Menopausal Helpline (MHL) to give support to the many thousands of women who like her, suffered side effects of the drug. Maggie Tuttle funded much of the Helpline on her own, at some expense, but she decided not to turn the MHL into a professional organization, for very good reasons.

I was very pleased to see that Walker included this statement in his book. "I personally agree with her about not forming more of a "professional" representative organization. My experience of campaigning organizations since the late sixties is that their radicalism rarely survived the transitions and anyway, this is the door through which, in time, the drug companies enter."

I have found this to be very true with Lyme disease activism and politics. The majority consensus seems to be that small unified groups don't have enough power or pull and therefore cannot affect change. I have noticed the opposite to be true. Small groups, where people work together without worrying about who gets credit or if any official label is attached to them, seem to get better results in the long run.

Those in these groups know each other intimately and are aware of each member's integrity. When organizations become too large, this all gets lost. Many are volunteers and use mostly their own money to accomplish their goals. This prevents drug companies or other corporations, government agencies, etc, from infiltrating and blocking any progress trying to be achieved. Walker clearly puts into words, what many activists have been finding out through experience. "What was centuries ago, the first Hippocratic Principle to 'do no harm', has long been forgotten by the majority of medical professionals in an age of pharmaceuticals. It's modern equivalent, to 'do as little harm as possible to the majority', leaves thousands vulnerable."

Quoting directly from letters to the MHL and from interviews, Walker shares with us, in a number of extended case histories, how women have been adversely affected and changed by HRT. Not only have the women themselves been harmed but also whole families often suffer. Many of the women interviewed have a common thread running through their experience. Most have never had their hormone levels measured before being prescribed HRT.

I would think that measuring hormone levels would be an obvious requirement in order to determine whether or not a hormone was actually needed. Even more puzzling...when women begin to experience side effects and acquire severe symptoms, their hormone levels still were not measured. He relates how many women had hormone implants placed in their bodies during surgery, sometimes without their knowledge or consent.

Later when they became ill and had their estrogen levels measured, their levels were found to be many times over the normal limit. When asking to have their implants removed, they were told that this was impossible. Many women still suffer severe effects of excess estrogen after ten or more years since their last implant.

The use by practitioners of HRT, while hiding the main adverse reactions from patients, leads Walker to ask a question which echoes the title of Barbara Seaman's last book on HRT, "The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women. Walker introduces the idea of experimentation, not as some futuristic or diabolical plan but bringing the whole matter down to earth by suggesting that a major part of pharmaceutical prescription is, in fact, ongoing experimentation on patients.

Martin Walker is a very keen critical observer and has conveyed clearly the root causes of our failing medical system. It is very crucial for us to understand the history of medical experimentation on the public so we can better understand what is taking place today. In the United States it is legal to experiment on unwitting citizens. The U.S. CODE: Section 50 lists the circumstances where it is legal to experiment and test chemical or biological substances on the public. Walker does an excellent job of tying together the connections between the pharmaceutical companies, charity organizations and government agencies. He explains how profit is often the main goal, at the expense and harm to millions.

For some reason many people feel that modern man has outgrown much of its barbarism concerning human experimentation for science, profit and certain ideologies. However, Walker aptly shows us how this deception and experimentation is still occurring, creating much suffering, disability and death. On page 172 Walker describes one channel through which experimentation is taking place.

"The drug companies, in the guise of conducting research, now control almost all 'specific illness' charities. What better way to sell drugs could there be than drawing together all the patients with a particular illness or perceived illness, and then suggesting that they can help by joining drug trials?"

One thing I have found very odd, in relation to many medical charities, is that I am not aware of any cures having been developed. Isn't this supposed to be a charity's main goal - finding a cure? All I have noticed are hundreds upon hundreds of symptomatic treatments which only cover up or control the person's symptoms and does nothing for the underlying cause of the disease itself. It is much more profitable to treat many symptoms than it is to treat with a drug or natural remedy which cures. A cure would take away a charity's reason for existence and vastly lower the profits of the drug companies and other related industries.

The author goes right to the heart of the issue and explains how the drug companies reap profits from an entire segment of the population; every woman goes through menopause. They only need to be convinced that this is a medical condition and therefore they need extra assistance to get through it. A quote from page 133 sums up this misconception. "It could also be said that the great task of medical science is not to enhance and support being human but to transcend being human."

We are told that one would not be surprised or shocked to read the following slogan ' we'll make you feel better while you continue to make yourself sick’...and this is exactly what is happening.

Walker includes sources on where to obtain more detailed information on alternative approaches to the discomforts of menopause. He brings up the fact that diet forms the basis of our health and he summarizes the changes we need to make in our nutritional habits.

I want to share a quote from the book, which I feel is key to the issue. "With respect to foods and supplementation, which provide the body with estrogens, the objective is not to raise estrogen levels to the levels that existed prior to menopause, or to exceed these levels. Nor is it the objective, as so often appears with HRT, to live the rest of your life with a high estrogen count. The idea is to smooth out the curve of the change and make it seamless."

Licensed To Kill and Maim not only presents the dangers and sometimes the irreversibility of HRT but most critically it shares with us the underlying political and economic issues which are allowing this crime against women to occur. In four detailed chapters he traces hormone replacement therapy from it's early synthesis in the 1940s through to it's contemporary marketing. The crimes of the medical system are clearly not just confined to HRT and Walker's book gives us the tools to understand the medical system as a whole.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signatories to The Declaration of Independence, who was also George Washington's physician, predicted, "Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship."

It looks as if this time is upon us. But this does not mean the situation cannot be resisted or reversed. In the closing chapter of this book, Martin Walker asks some tough questions - ones that need asking but ones that many people do not want to confront. However, if we continue to stick our heads in the sand, the current problematic state of our "health" care system will only continue to expand until we are all too sick to do anything about it.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is considering HRT or who has been harmed by it. I also recommend this book to anyone who is sick and tired of being ignored, brushed off and or literally made sick by the medical establishment. In essence, everyone needs to read this book. As I mentioned before, HRT: Licensed To Kill and Maim, gives us the knowledge and tools to take back responsibility for our own healthcare. True knowledge is the source of action and power. .

HRT: Licensed To Kill and Maim: The unheard voices of women damaged by hormone replacement therapy. Slingshot Publications, London. 2006 Soft back, 365 pages, with case history chapters, full index and bibliography HRT: Licensed To Kill and maim can be ordered in the UK at WH Smiths nationwide or Foyles in London. Or can be ordered from The Menopausal Helpline, PO BOX 49060, London N11 1WW.

Please send checks with orders, single copies of the book $20.00. For buyer inquiries contact Maggie Tuttle at

Outside the UK, the book is available, on the internet from the Slingshot website: www.Slingshotpublications.com