Dear WDDTY

I have just read your letters page in vol 5 no 4. I am not surprised the reader has had trouble

with drug based HRT, especially Premarin. I have been writing to my doctor to beg her not to prescribe it, as it is derived from the urine of pregnant mares, who are being kept in the most atrocious conditions. The information comes from an article by Bonnie Stoehn for Redwings Horse Sanctuary Magazine, facts supplied by PETA and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. R A Doey, Newbury, Berkshire......

Thank you for sending on the article by Ms Stoehn which describes the practices of Canadian horse factory farms. In 1993, approximately 75,000 pregnant mares were crammed into three by eight foot stalls, with no ability to exercise other than to sway back and forth. Their foals were killed soon after birth, sold to be fattened and then sent to slaughter or impregnated as soon as possible, for the same purpose as their mothers. That purpose is to collect their urine for Ayerst

Organics, the world's only producer of pregnant mare urine, from which estrogen replacement drug Premarin is derived. The article notes that if you disagree with this practice, you should write to Robert Essner, President, Wyeth Ayerst Laboratories, PO Box 8299, Philadelphia, PA 19101.