So, last night I was watching T.V. with the husband, and a commercial for the prescription drug Premarin comes on.  He says, “Hey, that’s made with PREgnant MARe urINe.  PRE-MAR-IN.”  He heard it on the radio.  So, after rolling my eyes, I tell him it’s an urban myth.  How would the company keep enough prego horses in order to harvest urine.  HOW DO YOU HARVEST URINE.

I just can’t think that it’s real. 

I found this:
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2003/23.html
http://www.friendsofanimals.org/programs/horses/pmu.html <-possible pics, but it just looks like tubing stretched around some horses.  It does ACTUALLY show collection.

Just search “Pregnant Mare Urine” in a google search, and you get lots of relevant hits.  Although, they seem real enough, I just can’t think how it’s probable.  I can’t see how they’d be able to gather enough urine from horses to make thousands or millions of pills.  If this is the # 3 menopausal drug, I’d think you’d need a lot of it.

Well pregnant women DO pee ALOT, because of all the pressure on their bladders…maybe it’s the same for horses!

It’s quite real. For many years, urine from pregnant mares was the only commercial source of estrogen. My father did some contracting work for a guy in Nebraska who made an absolute fortune collecting it.

It’s just, something about the name and the collection, that just doesn’t seem like it would work.

I mean, lipstick is made from fishscales, but it’s not called lipscales.  Some perfumes are made with whale baleen, but we don’t refer to the as parfume de whale.  So…PRE MAR IN…

Is it Premarin in particular that is actually using it, or is that just a coincidence?

Here’s a site that has a bit about the production of Premarin:  http://www.premarin.org/.

my friend wrote a paper about premarin. i guess its kind of sad. they lock as many mares as possible in a barn and limit the amount of water they drink so as much estrogen as possible is in the urine.

>=( That’s disgusting, I will never ever buy those things even if my life depended on it. That’s just too cruel, locking them up and doing things like that to them? Just terrible, and shameful.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/premarin.htm
huh… how about that.  Maybe the name of the drug is just an unfortunate coincidence?  Doesn’t seem like it, though.

I think the name then, is just coincidence.

#1 - Have you ever seen a horse urinate? There’s plenty there when they do!!!

#2 - The horses’ gestation period is even longer than ours (11 months) so from each animal there’s lots of time to collect.

#3 - I would seriously hold in doubt any “rumors” about the mistreatment of animals in the process. Any company in todays’ world would be wary of practices considered unethical due to the possible economic backlash, at least here in the US. PETA and other groups like them do have lots of influence here in this country and I would bet that any “horror stories” you hear about this medicene and the collection of it’s contents are merely embellishments made by “activists” for the cause.

Something I read also said that all these horses end up being shipped to Europe and Asia for food.  I mean, I know people DO eat horsemeat, but is it SO popular that someone is making a market out of this?? 

Any Europeans and Asians wanna comment?

Yushi - 29 August 2005 09:44 PM

>=( That’s disgusting, I will never ever buy those things even if my life depended on it. That’s just too cruel, locking them up and doing things like that to them? Just terrible, and shameful.

Its kinda like battery hens. they keep the chickens in horrible conditions (I buy free range instead), so as to save space and money buying fields and stuff for the animals

heres a really biased link to battery farming http://www.animal-lib.org.au/lists/hens/hens.shtml but i dont think it’s really as bad as that. Of course, im not a chicken…