Statin Alert

StatinAlert.org
Warning: Your cholesterol-lowering drug may be destroying your health!

Discover the Uncensored Truth about Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs!

StatinAlert.org is a non-profit website.

If you take cholesterol-lowering drugs, or are being urged by your doctor to start taking them, you should be aware that:

*statins can cause severe muscle weakness and pain, even at low doses;
*statins can cause cognitive impairment and memory loss;
*cholesterol-lowering drugs routinely cause cancer in laboratory animals, and there is valid concern that they may do the same in humans;
*statins have been linked to increased risk of heart failure;
*a large percentage of doctors remain astonishingly ignorant of the adverse effects of statins!

Visit the site: statinalert.org

Cholesterol and the Pharmaceutical Industry's Biggest Secret

By Shane Ellison M.Sc.

A commonly held myth is that high cholesterol, especially LDL cholesterol, is a major risk factor for heart disease (known as atherosclerosis). Thus, in a panicked attempt to prevent this pandemic killer millions of people are using cholesterol-lowering drugs. However, when we consider the scientific evidence it appears that the aforementioned myth is the antithesis...

1. With respect to women, researchers at the University San Diego School of Medicine show that no study has shown that cholesterol-lowering drugs lower overall mortality in women.

2. Researchers at the University San Diego School of Medicine UCSD also point out that high cholesterol in those over 75 years of age is protective, rather than harmful and that low cholesterol is a risk factor for heart arrhythmias (leading cause of death if heart attack occurs).

3. The European Heart Journal has published the results of a 3-year study involving 11,500 patients. Researcher Behar and associates found that in the low cholesterol group (total cholesterol below 160mg/dl) the relative risk of death was 2.27 times higher relative to those with high cholesterol. The most common cause of death in the low cholesterol group was cancer while the risk of cardiac death was the same in both groups.

In support of their findings these researchers point out that previous studies found a higher increase in lung cancer when total cholesterol levels were maintained below 170 mg/dl.

This has not stopped Pfizer from implicating that total cholesterol levels should be at 150 mg/dl (see http://www.lipitor.com/)

4. The most widely respected medical journal, The Journal of the American Medical Association, published a study entitled: Cholesterol and Mortality. 30 Years of Follow-up from the Framingham study. Shocking to most, this in-depth study showed that after the age of 50 there is no increased overall death associated with high cholesterol! There was however a direct association between low levels (or dropping levels) of cholesterol and increased death. Specifically, medical researchers reported that CVD death rates increased by 14% for every 1mg/dl drop in total cholesterol levels per year.

5. The Journal of Cardiac Failure published the findings of Tamara and colleagues in a paper entitled Low Serum Total Cholesterol is Associated with Marked Increase in Mortality in Advanced Heart Failure. In their analysis of 1,134 patients with heart disease they found that low cholesterol was associated with worse outcomes in heart failure patients and impaired survival while high cholesterol improved survival rates. Additionally, their findings showed that elevated cholesterol among patients was not associated with hypertension, diabetes, or coronary heart disease.

6. And finally, despite the successful attempts to lower cholesterol with pharmaceutical drugs, the death rate from heart disease has not changed over the last 75 years and mortality from heart failure is more than double what it was in 1996. Hence, those who think they are safe from heart disease due to lowering total cholesterol levels may want to seriously rethink their preventative efforts.

Sadly though, some of the most well-respected health practitioners, medical doctors, and herbalists in the world have fallen victim to pharmaceutical propaganda. This can be seen by their often regurgitated, ill-thought out hypothesis that lowering cholesterol prevents heart disease.

Meanwhile, people continue to die (2700 people die every day from heart disease) while pharmaceutical companies enrich themselves with the sales of cholesterol-lowering drugs. The CEO of Pfizer, makers of the popular cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, was compensated 33.9 million dollars last year (does not include the ten’s of millions in stock options). This equates to 2.8 million per month, which is about $94,000 per day.

So, how does one successfully convince the entire U.S that each and every person should have the same cholesterol levels? Easy, pharmaceutical companies work tirelessly to promulgate the cholesterol-lowering myth by conveniently citing supportive studies while burying the unsupportive. As reported in the British Medical Journal, Uffe Ravnskov MD, PhD shows his results of a meta-analysis of 22 published controlled cholesterol-lowering trials. He found that studies which showed to be supportive of low cholesterol were cited six times more often than those that were unsupportive and that unsupportive trials had not been reported since 1970! Further, his research showed that those studies that were supportive of low cholesterol were due to bias on part of the researchers.

With 12 billion dollars worth of cholesterol-lowering drugs sold annually, the average American has become a cholesterol-lowering drug addict without giving any thought to the potential negative side effects. For instance, evidence from the cholesterol-lowering trial known as PROSPER showed that while Pravachol may have prevented 22 deaths from cardiovascular disease the benefit was negated by 24 deaths caused by cancer among those taking Pravachol. Numerous medical journals have shown that cholesterol-lowering drugs significantly increase ones risk of suffering from not only cancer but also CoQ10 deficiency (paradoxically leads to heart disease), rhabdomyolysis, erectile dysfunction and loss of memory and mental focus.

Combined, these facts render America’s best selling drug useless and in some cases deadly (make you wonder about the other less popular drugs). As such, they are among the pharmaceutical industries biggest secrets. You won’t hear about them from your doctor, the media, or a pharmaceutical sales rep.

To circumvent blind addiction to cholesterol-lowering drugs, their deadly side-effects, wasted money, and finally, heart disease itself, Americans must understand the importance of cholesterol in the human body. Moreover, they must learn about natural medicine which rivals synthetic drugs and lifestyle habits that have been proven to prevent and treat heart disease.

References

Patrick, Lyn. Et al. Cardiovascular Disease: C-Reactive Protein and the Inflammatory Disease Paradigm: HMG-CoA Reductase Inhibitors, alpha-Tocopherol, Red Yeast Rice, and Olive Oil Polyphenols. A review of the Literature. Alternative Medicine Review. Volume 6, Number 3. 2001.

Uri Goldbourt. Et al. Choleserol and Coronary Heart Disease in Mortality. A 23 year follow-up Study of 9902 Men in Israel. Arteriosclerosis. Vol 10, No. 4, July/August 1990

Behar, S. Et al. Low total cholesterol is associated with high total mortality in patients with coronary heart disease. European Heart Journal (1997) 18, 52-59.

Horwich TB. Et al. Low Serum Total Cholesterol is Associated with Marked Increase in Mortality in Advanced Heart Failure. J Card Fail. 2002 Aug;8(4):216-214.

Ravnskov. U. Cholesterol-Lowering Trials in Coronary Heart Disease: “Frequency and Citation of Outcome”. BMJ. 305;6852. July 4, 1992. PP 15-9

Anderson KM. Cholesterol and Mortality. 30 Years of Follow-up from the Framingham Study. JAMA 1987 Apr 24;257(16):2176-80

Uffe Ravnskov, et al. Letter to Archives of Internal Medicine, submitted on July 20,2002

Disclosure at the Medical Journals

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company -- September 30, 2003

A troubling case of hidden financial conflicts has forced the publisher of some of the world's most influential scientific journals to expand its editorial disclosure policies. Last week the Nature Publishing Group, part of Macmillan Publishers, announced that it would henceforth require the authors of review articles to disclose any financial ties to the products they evaluate. It was a welcome if belated step to close a loophole in the journals' previous disclosure policies, which covered only research reports and not the review articles that evaluate progress in a particular field.

The new policy stems from a conflict of interest case last year involving a review article in Nature Neuroscience that evaluated experimental treatments for depression. As reported by Melody Petersen in The Times last month, the lead author of that article had significant financial stakes in three of the therapies he mentioned favorably. He held the patent on a lithium patch that he described as promising, owned 60,000 shares of stock in a small company whose drug he described as effective, and was a board member and recipient of stock options and consulting fees from another small company whose product he cited. Yet the journal had not asked him to disclose any conflicts of interest, and the scientist had not volunteered the information.

Requiring the authors of original research articles to disclose their financial conflicts has always made sense because industry financing is often associated with pro-industry findings. The case may be even stronger for requiring disclosure from the authors of review articles, which purport to weigh the value of one therapy against another and are, by their very nature, opinionated. Having come so far, the Nature journals may now want to extend their disclosure policy to cover letters as well, given their combative nature and potential influence.

Medical journals have made substantial efforts in recent years to reduce the potential for commercial bias. Full disclosure of financial ties is a powerful disinfectant, but when the conflicts loom too large, the journals should simply shop around for a less conflicted author.

Source: NY Times