The big news in healthcare this week was the end of the six-week government shutdown with Democrats winning none of their demands. Millions of people with Obamacare plans face an immediate, huge increase in their premiums in 2026. Millions more will drop coverage. Every state in the country faces huge reductions in federal support for their Medicaid programs, all because Republicans refuse to reverse the cuts in their one big ugly bill passed last July.
But that’s not what we’re going to talk about on the GoozNews podcast today.
The media’s focus on that larger story overshadowed what is certain to be one of the more consequential decisions by the Food and Drug Administration in recent years, one that could affect millions of women now and for years into the future. I’m talking about the FDA’s decision to remove the black box warning on hormone replacement therapy for menopausal and postmenopausal women.
There’s a lot to unpack in that decision. The science the FDA used to make it; the process it used to make it; the wild claims being made about the benefits of hormone replacement therapies’ use by the new leadership at FDA; and who will be harmed as the FDA encourages wider use of a product whose safety has been hotly debated for more than two decades.
To discuss these issues, I invited onto the podcast someone who has been actively engaged in the debate over hormone replacement therapy or HRT as it’s commonly known. Diana Zuckerman is president of the National Center for Health Research. She has a PhD from Ohio State and did a post-doctoral fellowship in epidemiology and public health at Yale Medical School. Diana served in the Clinton White House working for First Lady Hillary Clinton, and in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. And in 1999, she founded NCHR, seeing the need in Washington for a nonprofit non-partisan think tank focused exclusively on improving the health of adults and children.
I headlined this story with her final words. If you listen, I think you’ll understand why the FDA under Dr. Marty Makary is losing credibility with the general public.
As a service to paid subscribers, I’m posting below a paywall the transcript of my interview with Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research. It’s been lightly edited for clarity.
