Collective Evolution – by Arjun Walia
A study recently published in the BMJ Open Journal really put a damper on industry-recommended treatment of high cholesterol, if indeed high cholesterol is still seen as a problem at all. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years writing about both health and politics, it’s that most of our global resources and all of the major industries that seem to surround all aspects of humanity, are in fact creating problems in order to justify the solution. Are we seeing this with health and food?
The study found that High LDL-C (cholesterol) is inversely associated with mortality in most people over 60. These findings did not corroborate the cholesterol hypothesis: that cholesterol, particularly LDL-C, is inherently atherogenic. Since elderly people with high LDL-C live as long or longer than those with low LDL-C, the analysis provides a reason to question the validity of the cholesterol hypothesis.
It’s Just A Hypothesis
As noted, the study refers to claims that ‘high cholesterol causes plaque buildup in arteries (atherogenesis) that lead to an increased risk of heart disease’ as a hypothesis. One can wonder how often a doctor has told his patient “I recommend that you take Lipitor because there is an unproven hypothesis out there that says high cholesterol is bad for you?
Even if it cholesterol is a problem, are statins the answer? Or is diet, exercise and a healthy lifestyle a better, and safer, avenue to take?
Nothing seems to justify the use of statins with the type of information that’s emerging, like one that was published in 2015, entitled, “How statistical deception created the appearance that statins are safe and effective in the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease,” published in Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, by David M. Diamond and Uffee Ravnskov. It found that the chemical war against cholesterol using statin drugs was justified through statistical deception and the cover-up of over 300 adverse health effects documented in the biomedical literature.
In their review, they describe many things, with one specific focus on “how the directors of the clinical trials have succeeded in minimizing the significance of the numerous adverse effects of statin treatment.”
Reality Check
So what’s going on here? Ultimately we have to look at the humans operating within the medical system on behalf of the drug companies. This is how those companies get a foothold in the first place. What’s happening here is that they (company paid agents) are convincing doctors that their patients actually need these medications, and need them asap. “They are banking (literally) on the fact that you haven’t brushed up on statistics in a while”, says MD, Kelly Brogan. She goes on to explain,
It turns out that a common sleight of hand in the medical literature is the popularization of claims around “relative risk reduction” which can make an effect appear meaningful, when the “absolute risk reduction” reveals its insignificance. In this way, 100 people are treated with statin medications to offer 1 person benefit, and the change from a 2% to a 1% heart attack rate is billed a 50% reduction rather than a 1% improvement, which is what it actually is. Perhaps this would still qualify as better safe than sorry if these medications weren’t some of the most toxic chemicals willfully ingested, with at least 300 adverse health effects evident in the published literature so far, with at least 28 distinct modes of toxicity.
She also provides a list in her article.
Deceptive Practices
The study in 2015 documented the deceptive strategy used by pharmaceutical companies, where negligible benefits of statin treatment “have been amplified with the use of relative risk statistics, and that serious adverse effects are either ignored or explained away as change occurrences. Moreover, the authors of these studies have presented the rate of adverse events in terms of absolute risk, which, compared to relative risk, minimized the appearance of their magnitudes.”
This is one example of many that have impacted the peer-reviewed literature for years. I wrote an article on the problem that’s plaguing peer-reviewed science in 2014 which you can read for more details.