"I have come to realize that there is, literally, no evidence that can dent the cholesterol hypothesis... The effect of this study on the cardiovascular research community was....as you would expect...nothing at all, a deafening silence..."
UK cardiologist Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
A nationwide study conducted by UCLA School of Medicine found that 75 percent of patients hospitalized for a heart attack had LDL cholesterol within the so called safe range - below 130 mg/dl. (21 percent of the patients were taking a statin cholesterol-lowering drug.) Even more astounding, 50 percent of patients had LDL less than 100 mg/dL - considered optimal levels! The mean LDL cholesterol among the hospitalized patients was 104.9 mg/dL.
The UCLA research team used a national database sponsored by the American Heart Association's "Get with the Guidelines program." The database includes information on patients hospitalized for cardiovascular disease at 541 hospitals across the country. The study was published in the American Heart Journal, January 2009
The researchers analyzed data from 136,905 patients whose lipid levels upon hospital admission were documented in the AHA data base. This accounted for 59 percent of total hospital admissions for heart attack at participating hospitals between 2000 and 2006.
Now don't you think the researchers would conclude something like the following?:
Taking expensive cholesterol lowering drugs and avoiding cholesterol-rich foods (as we have as a nation) may lower blood cholesterol and please your doctor but you are not effectively protecting yourself from a heart attack?
Or, heart attacks suffered by 136,905 patients in an American Heart Association data base of 541 hospitals across the country did not reveal an association between elevated cholesterol and heart attacks.
This should have been the nail in the coffin on the Diet Heart or cholesterol hypothesis, but not according to study director Dr. Gregg C. Fanarow, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Science, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, who concluded:
"Almost 75 percent of heart attack patients fell within recommended targets for LDL cholesterol, demonstrating that the current guidelines may not be low enough to cut heart attack risk... "
May not be low enough!
How low can we go? Low cholesterol is associated with accidents, depression, and cancer? Is that what we have to look forward to? Wouldn't it make more sense to conclude that elevated cholesterol is not the cause of heart attacks, the cholesterol hypothesis is wrong, and the National Cholesterol Education Program should vote itself out of business?
Not likely.
Dr. Fonarow disclosed that he has conducted research for GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer and serves a consultant and has received honorarium from the following drug companies: Abbott, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer and Schering Plough companies.
Back on July 13, 2004, the doctors in the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) who write the guidelines and, in effect, control cardiology, failed to disclose that six of the nine authors had direct financial ties to the makers of statin drugs, including: Pfizer's Lipitor, Bristol-Myers Squibb's Pravachol, Merck's Lovastatin, and AstraZeneca's Crestor.
As an example, Dr. H. Bryan Brewer, a physician-scientist at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, failed to disclose his ties to AstraZeneca. Brewer had previously written a glowing report in a medical journal about Crestor without disclosing that he is a paid consultant and had presided over a company-sponsored symposium."
He and the others forgot!
The new more stringent cholesterol-lowering guidelines boosted statin sales from $15 billion in 2004 to over $23 billion in 2005. And now we are reminded once again that there is no good evidence to support the still unproven hypothesis that lowering cholesterol with drugs or diet will reduce cardiovascular disease or the risk of heart attack.
Cholesterol continues to be demonized as a killer substance. Statins are being pushed more and more to lower cholesterol lower and lower. Heart disease research is packed full of facts that do not exist, while the majority of people dying prematurely from heart failure have low cholesterol.
Winston Churchill said: "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recommended actions from The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics
Who can be found online at: http://www.thincs.org
Have you or someone you know had side effects from statin cholesterol-lowering drug treatment? If you would like to share your experience on statin drugs with researchers at the University of California in San Diego, please email: statinstudy@ucsd.edu. And/or you can complete an online (paperless) survey at: http://www.statineffects.com.
If you are aware of the dangerous side effects of statin drugs and would like to sign a petition against their continued use, please go to: http://www.gopetition.com/online/11757.html
