[Garnet Anderson] wasn't really surprised that the women taking combination HRT in the form of Prempro were experiencing more breast cancer than those on a placebo. In fact, study participants had been told there might be increases in breast cancer.

Even more alarming was the data showing that the longer women had been on this HRT regimen before entering the study, the higher their risk. It suggested the curve for breast cancer "looks like it'll just go up and up and up," as WHI director [Jacques Rossouw] puts it.

The WHI study results have been attacked both by patients, emotionally addicted to their long-term HRT because they believe it will keep them younger, and by physicians, used to handing out prescriptions for long-term HRT and resistant to change- resistant to admitting they were wrong although acting on the best knowledge available at the time, resistant to making happy patients unhappy and dealing with the fall-out.