It is tragic that the Medical Profession passively waits while Pharmaceutical Profits dictate how the Medical Profession should be run. Silence is telling – telling the reason for the silence. I am privileged to know some colleagues who have refused to be tainted by the unethical earning from abortions or from – Pharmaceutical Profiteering. Last ten years saw the development of the field of Child Psychiatry as the preying ground of this 20th Century Pharaoh –Pharmaceutical Profiteering. Thank God, Empathic Psychiatry is offering hope to distressed parents and medicated children. After the pay back of 3 billion USD for criminal behavior GSK chairman Sir Andrew humbly & roguishly says, “we have learnt from our mistakes” – after 70 deaths, subterfuge of 10 years, 340 infarcts & 400 heart failures. Certainly a slow learner!!
Now Pfizer is ganging up to develop the field for Statins in childhood. Another rip roaring decade will be inaugurated if better voices do not prevail. Will silence tell – again? Who is on Pharaoh’s payroll? Let our children go free!!
I documented in 1995 why aspirin is the safest & most effective NSAID when piroxicam was much prescribed when it was far more toxic.
(Mendis, B. L. J. 1995. Joint disease, aspirin and NSAIDs. Kandy Medical Journal, 5: 1-3. Mendis, B. L. J. 1994. Avoiding nightmares in migraine management. Journal of the Ceylon College of Physicians, 27: 54 – 55. Mendis, BLJ. 1996. Aspirin::friend or fiend. Ceylon Medical Journal. 41:76-77.)
Colleagues were incredulous. I had similar doubts when Celecoxib was introduced and about the usage of statins to further reduce cholestorel when it is effective only when cholesterol is above 330 mg per 100 ml. Down below you will find scientific proof against giving statins other than when cholesterol is above 330 mg per 100 ml
Lalith Mendis
Statins deplete your body of CoQ10, which can have devastating results. If you take statin drugs without taking CoQ10, your health is at serious risk. If you have symptoms of statin damage such as muscle pain, take anywhere from 200 to 500 mg of CoQ10 or ubiquinol, which is the reduced form. Ubiquinol is the recommended form if you’re over the age of 25. For preventative use, take around 100-200 mg.
Flaws of Jupiter Study
Now, however, researchers behind a new review that takes a second look at the findings of the landmark Jupiter study say that these results are flawed — and that they do not support the benefits initially reported.
Not only did this second look turn up no evidence of the “striking decrease in coronary heart disease complications” reported by investigators behind JUPITER (Justification for the Use of Statins in Primary Prevention), but it has also called into question drug companies’ involvement in such trials, according to an article in the June 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
Moreover, Dr. Michel de Lorgeril of Joseph Fourier University and the National Center of Scientific Research in Grenoble, France, and coauthors argue that major discrepancies exists between the significant reductions in nonfatal stroke and heart attacks reported in the JUPITER trial and what has been found in other research.
“The JUPITER data set appears biased,” Lorgeril and coauthors wrote in conclusion.
Dr. Paul Ridker of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston dismissed de Lorgeril’s criticisms. Ridker reported the JUPITER results at the American Heart Association meeting in 2008.
A group of researchers behind a new review that takes a second look at the findings of the landmark JUPITER study say that the original results are flawed.
In an email to MedPage Today, Ridker said that JUPITER data “overwhelmingly stand for themselves. Among a group of individuals with low levels of cholesterol, we clearly demonstrate that those with elevated levels of [the inflammation marker] hsCRP are in fact a high-risk population, and that using statin therapy in this group cuts event rates for [heart attack] and stroke in half.”
Ridker also pointed out that the “FDA has extensively reviewed these data, found the trial to be well conducted, and recently provided a new indication for the use of statins in primary prevention on the basis of the JUPITER data.”
AstraZeneca, maker of the popular statin Crestor (known generically as rosuvastatin), also defended the JUPITER results and the way in which the study was conducted.
Donna Huang, an AstraZeneca spokesperson, told MedPage Today in an email that the study “was undertaken with a fully independent steering committee, data and safety monitoring board, and academic study statistician.”
She also said Ridker and his co-investigators controlled all data. “AstraZeneca played no role in conducting data analyses and had no access to unblinded trial data,” she wrote.
De Lorgeril and coauthors point out that nine of 14 authors of the JUPITER article have financial relationships with AstraZeneca, which sponsored the trial. Ridker has a patent interest in the assay for C-reactive protein (CRP), an inflammation biomarker evaluated in all JUPITER trial participants.
“The sponsor’s pervasive role is clearly described in the second paragraph of the ‘Methods’ section of the report: ‘the sponsor collected the trial data and monitored the study sites,'” the authors wrote.
De Lorgeril and coauthors concluded that “the results of the JUPITER trial are clinically inconsistent and therefore should not change medical practice or clinical guidelines. The results of the JUPITER trial support concerns that commercially sponsored clinical trials are at risk of poor quality and bias.”
Adding to the controversy, authors of another article in the same issue of Archives reported that a review of 11 large primary-prevention trials showed no effect of statin therapy on deaths in high-risk patients.
The JUPITER trial has stood alone in its finding of a significant benefit in patients with no evidence of coronary heart disease. The trial examined the effect of rosuvastatin in patients with normal or low cholesterol levels but elevated levels of CRP.
Investigators randomized 17,802 apparently healthy men and women to receive either the statin rosuvastatin or a placebo, and then they studied these groups to compare how many suffered heart attacks, strokes and other heart-related problems. The trial ended early when an interim analysis showed a 44 percent reduction in these events in the group taking the statins; with results this positive, the logic went, why continue the study?
But de Lorgeril and his coauthors cited the early termination as one of several methodologic problems with JUPITER. Although prespecified early stopping points are a well-accepted feature of clinical trials, the rules for stopping should be clearly described. That was not the case in the published description of the JUPITER protocol.
“Indeed, we still do not know which endpoint was used to define [the rules for stopping], or which level of benefits … was required to justify early termination,” de Lorgeril and coauthors wrote.
The authors also expressed concern that the trial ended early despite the fact that the data were not consistent with a large difference between the actual drug and the placebo.
On the basis of their review, de Lorgeril and coauthors concluded that “the time has come for a critical reappraisal of cholesterol-lowering and statin treatments for the prevention of CHD complications. The emphasis on pharmaceuticals for the prevention of CHD diverts individual and public health attention away from the proven efficacy of adopting a healthy lifestyle, including regular physical activity, not smoking, and a Mediterranean-style diet.”
The meta-analysis reported in the same issue of the journal, led by Dr. Kausik Ray of the University of Cambridge in England, examined the findings of 11 randomized clinical trials involving a total of 65,229 patients to see if statins cut death rates among intermediate and high-risk people with no history of cardiovascular disease. In this study, too, the support for statin use was lacking.
- One in four Americans are now taking a statin drug, despite the fact that there are over 900 studies proving their adverse effects, which run the gamut from muscle problems to diabetes and increased cancer risk.
- Statins deplete your body of CoQ10, which can have devastating results. If you take statin drugs without taking CoQ10, your health is at serious risk. If you have symptoms of statin damage such as muscle pain, take anywhere from 200 to 500 mg of CoQ10 or ubiquinol, which is the reduced form. Ubiquinol is the recommended form if you’re over the age of 25. For preventative use, take around 100-200 mg.
- Statins also impair the function of all sterols, including cholesterol and vitamin D (which is similar to cholesterol and is produced from cholesterol in your skin), all your sex hormones, cortisone, the dolichols, which are involved in keeping the membranes inside your cells healthy
- Odds are greater than 100 to 1 that if you’re taking a statin, you don’t really need it. The ONLY subgroup that might benefit are those born with a genetic defect called familial hypercholesterolemia, as this makes them resistant to traditional measures of normalizing cholesterol.
- Statins are in fact classified as a “pregnancy Category X medication”iv; meaning, it causes serious birth defects, and should NEVER be used by a woman who is pregnant or planning a pregnancy.
Parents Beware: Outrageous Push to Put Kids on Statin Drugs!
In a bold attempt to increase profits before the patent runs out, Pfizer has introduced a chewable kid-friendly version of Lipitor. Its US patent for Lipitor expired in November 2011, and seeking to boost sales of the drug, children have become the new target market, and the conventional medical establishment is more than happy to oblige.
Researchers and many doctors are now calling for universal school screening of children to check for high cholesterol, to find those “in need of treatment.” In addition, older siblings, parents and other family members might be prompted to get screened as well, the researchers say, which would uncover additional, previously undiagnosed adults in need of the drug.
This is clearly NOT the way to improve public health. On the contrary, it could produce a new, massive wave of extremely dire health consequences in just a few years time.
So rather than improving school lunches, which would cost about a dollar a day per child, they’d rather “invest” ten times that for tests and drugs that in no way, shape, or form address the root cause, which is an improper, unhealthy diet! All they’re doing is allowing all the industries to maintain or increase their profits: Big Pharma; Big Sugar; Big Corn and the processed food industry.
Who pays?
You, and your children! And in far more ways than one!
drlalithmendisblog 