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CHICAGO — Every child should be tested for high cholesterol between ages 9 and 11 so steps can be taken to prevent heart disease later on, a panel of doctors urged Friday in new advice that is sure to be controversial.
Until now, major medical groups have suggested cholesterol tests only for children with a family history of early heart disease or high cholesterol and those who are obese or have diabetes or high blood pressure.
And then what? Put them immediately on a statin like Lipitor, but keep right on feeding them supersized orders of empty calories?
" . . . the number of them at risk is growing because of the obesity epidemic."
There is no "obesity epidemic". There are just tens of millions of parents who are pumping their kids up with junk food and making them FAT. Any doctor or nurse can "diagnose" those kids at risk just by looking at them, without any stupid cholesterol screen. You think all we need to do with our bloated flabby kids is drug them?
Actually, you can be rail thin and have cholesterol issues. I also know someone who's 50lbs overweight and has excellent bp and cholesterol...so you can't know just by looking.
"Several doctors on the guidelines panel have received consulting fees or have had other financial ties to makers of cholesterol medicines, and the new advice raises concerns about overtreating children with powerful drugs without long-term evidence about potential effects from decades of use."
In other words, this is about the trillion-dollar drug industry manipulating doctors and the news media to get pre-teens hooked on their cocktail of pharmaceuticals.
I know what their statin drugs did to my body and I am still paying for taking them, been off of them about 7 or 8 years. I can only imagine what those drugs will do to those young, still developing bodies..
Lipitor TV ads even state, in text across the bottom of the screen, "Lipitor has not been shown to prevent heart disease or heart attacks". Look at the bottom of the screen at the :55 mark in this ad:
In a later rewrite of the ad, Lipitor says it CAN reduce the risk of hearth attack IF several common risk factors are present. Not just one, but a combination of several. At the :25 mark, the text at the bottom lists the risk factors, and high cholesterol is NOT one of them.
The sad thing is that if they do start testing children...many parents will put their kids on the medicine thinking it is a necessity "just because the doctor said so". Cholesterol is something that can be controlled and reversed through diet and exercise...especially at such a young age!
It is definitely just another way for the pharmaceutical companies to make more money and experiment on more people.
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