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October 21, 2025
The Truth About Estrogen: What the Women's Health Initiative Got Wrong with Dr. Avrum Bluming & Dr. Carol Tavris
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What if the biggest health study in history got it wrong and millions of women paid the price? In this premiere episode of “unPAUSED," Dr. Mary Claire Haver sits down with Dr. Avrum Bluming, medical oncologist and former senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute, and Dr. Carol Tavris, social psychologist and co-authors of the life-changing book: Estrogen Matters. In this conversation, they dismantle the 2002 Women's Health Initiative study that terrified an entire generation of women away from hormone therapy and reveal why the fear was based on misinterpreted data, flawed conclusions, and a refusal to correct the record. You'll learn why estrogen actually decreases breast cancer risk, how heart disease kills seven times more women than breast cancer, and why the "lowest dose of estrogen for the shortest time" advice has no scientific backing. This conversation will inform you and empower you to demand better from your own healthcare provider.

If you've ever been told hormone therapy is too dangerous, that your symptoms are "just aging," or that you need to accept suffering in silence, this episode of “unPAUSED” is for you. Dr. Haver, Dr. Bluming, and Dr. Tavris give you the science, the tools, and the truth you need to hear including a free informed consent form and quality of life questionnaire you can bring to your doctor's office today.  

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About the guest

Dr. Avrum Bluming & Dr. Carol Tavris

Dr. Avrum Bluming, a Board Certified medical oncologist, coauthor with Dr. Carol Tavris of Estrogen Matters, is one of the best-known voices in the field of the benefits and safety of estrogen therapy. He is a former Senior Investigator of the National Cancer Institute, a Master of the American College of Physicians, and Emeritus Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Southern California. He organized the first study of lumpectomy for the treatment of breast cancer in Southern California in 1978; and, for the past 3 decades,  has been studying and publishing the benefits and risks of hormone replacement therapy administered to women both with and without a previous history of treated breast cancer.

Carol Tavris, Ph.D., is a social psychologist, writer, and lecturer. She is coauthor, with Dr. Avrum Bluming, of Estrogen Matters, a groundbreaking expose of the flawed study that scared millions of women off the hormones that protect their health, sexuality, and wellbeing and prolong their lives. She is also coauthor, with Elliot Aronson, of the best-selling Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), about the psychology of self-justification. Carol has written hundreds of articles, op-eds, and book reviews on topics of psychological science and given distinguished lectureships, workshops, and keynote addresses to students, clinicians, psychologists, lawyers, physicians, and general audiences around the world. A Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, she has received numerous awards for her efforts to promote science and gender equity.