that the menopause caused a sudden worsening of womens heart health as oestrogen levels dropped.Indeed, evidence from several large but not terribly rigorous studies led the manufacturers to claim HRT halves a womans risk of having a michael kors shoes heart attack after the menopause. They demanded that HRT be licensed as preventative cardiac medication, in a similar way to statins are today. HRT was on the brink of becoming a blockbuster drug, a must-have for 50-plus women.Yet the American cheap michael kors Food and Drug Agency (FDA) was rightly cautious. After all, research on the drugs cardiac benefits was relatively weak. As an epidemiologist, then at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, I had collaborated with Finnish scientist Professor Elina michael kors handbags Hemminki in assessing the impact on the heart of taking HRT from the time of the menopause for an average of seven years based on the findings of 200 randomised (and therefore rigorous) studies. In a paper published michael kors bags in 1997 in the British Medical Journal, we reported there was no evidence whatsoever of a beneficial effect. But we wanted to go further and so looked at the 17 studies that had been funded by the pharmaceutical industry, michael kors outlet but not published.In 2000, after Professor Hemminki went to the High Court in Helsinki to force the companies to release these data, we were finally able to review this previously unpublished evidence in a paper in the Lancet. We reported michael kors outlet that rather than protecting womens hearts, taking HRT almost doubles a womans risk of a heart attack. In view of this, the FDA insisted the drug would be granted a licence for heart disease only once a properly organised double-blind cheap michael kors placebo controlled study had been carried out. First, the researchers had to find a way to eliminate a well-known bias that occurs when patients in a trial are aware of whether they are taking the active ingredient or the placebo