The Lipitor Scam - Scientists caught manipulating results of studies.... (x-ray, blood pressure)

[emilybh]

...to make the public think Lipitor really improves cholesterol levels and reduces heart disease by 36% when in ACTUALITY the studies showed there is only a 1% chance AT BEST Lipitor helps/improves anything but the bottom line profits of the medical establishment.

Fat Head » Archive for Good Science

For the details, go to the 31.30 minute mark of this lecture, "Science for Smart People" by Tom Naughton a former health writer.

The entire lecture shows we should take everything we read about findings about diet -- especially government studies-- with a HUGE grain of salt. In the lecture he tells how medical writers form quick conclusions that they wouldn't have formed had they known how to research whether the study itself was a legitimate clinical study or not. According to Naughton, even Ph.Ds and M.D.s dont know how or don't bother to do this before they rely on "the study" that has been put out as gospel truth.

It turns out salt is not as dangerous as it has been portrayed. It turns out cholesterol levels aren't even as critical as what the medical establishment wants us to believe. Even eating meat isn't as bad as what they want us to think.

[subject2change]

Originally Posted by emilybh

...to make the public think Lipitor really improves cholesterol levels and reduces heart disease by 36% when in ACTUALITY the studies showed there is only a 1% chance AT BEST Lipitor helps/improves anything but the bottom line profits of the medical establishment.

Fat Head » Archive for Good Science

For the details, go to the 31.30 minute mark of this lecture, "Science for Smart People" by Tom Naughton a former health writer.

The entire lecture shows we should take everything we read about findings about diet -- especially government studies-- with a HUGE grain of salt. In the lecture he tells how medical writers form quick conclusions that they wouldn't have formed had they known how to research whether the study itself was a legitimate clinical study or not.

It turns out salt is not as dangerous as it has been portrayed. It turns out cholesterol levels aren't even as critical as what the medical establishment wants us to believe. Even eating meat isn't as bad as what they want us to think.

All I know is, I fought going on meds for my cholesterol for years, really restricting my diet without seeing much improvement in my numbers (it just runs in my family, we're all this way). I finally started Lipitor and my numbers were normal within a few months. I eased up on my diet a little (I even eat the occasional doughnut, which I wouldn't have dreamed of doing before) and still my numbers are excellent. Am I really only 1 in 100 that's helped by Lipitor? I can't say, obviously, but I doubt it.

[emilybh]

The point is that they lied in the studies. People aren't being helped like they THINK they are and the side effects of the drug long term may certainly do more harm than good. They have even proven that high cholesterol is not the real cause of heart disease and in fact cholsterol both HDL and LDL are needed by the body. What is really the problem are sugars and man made vegetable fats. Animal fats are actually better for you. Guess what? Surprise! Surprise! It was the government following junk science that made the entire fast food industry change over from animal fats to vegetable fats (which resulted in the TRANS-FATS which everyone now knows are bad). Thanks very much STUPID GOVERNMENT.

Watch the Documentary "Fat Head" which you can see on You
tube for FREE. Besides being very educational and well researchedit is also funny and it shows how the government and the medical establishment has been lying to us over the years about LOTS of things. It is a follow up to "Super-size me" which it pokes holes in.
YouTube - ‪Fat Head‬‏. There is the link.

Also watch the entire lecture of "Science for Smart People" that shows how even medical reporters don't do their due diligence and don't know how to evaluate whether a study is legitimate and whether valid conclusions can be drawn or not.

[MIKE2015]

it makes me mad because my mother was just put on this a couple days ago.we have had an argument or two because she doesn't believe me when i tell her to get put on Lovaza which is a fish oil prescription for cholesterol instead of the crappy lipitor.she actually thinks that this medicine lipitor will save her and she already has lupus.people with lupus definitely don't need to be on lipitor.i want badly to help her but she won't listen.much better ways to lower cholesterol than lipitor.i also don't believe the cholesterol scare big phrama is shoving down our throats.

[Whatsthenews]

Originally Posted by emilybh

...to make the public think Lipitor really improves cholesterol levels and reduces heart disease by 36% when in ACTUALITY the studies showed there is only a 1% chance AT BEST Lipitor helps/improves anything but the bottom line profits of the medical establishment.

Fat Head » Archive for Good Science

For the details, go to the 31.30 minute mark of this lecture, "Science for Smart People" by Tom Naughton a former health writer.

The entire lecture shows we should take everything we read about findings about diet -- especially government studies-- with a HUGE grain of salt. In the lecture he tells how medical writers form quick conclusions that they wouldn't have formed had they known how to research whether the study itself was a legitimate clinical study or not. According to Naughton, even Ph.Ds and M.D.s dont know how or don't bother to do this before they rely on "the study" that has been put out as gospel truth.

It turns out salt is not as dangerous as it has been portrayed. It turns out cholesterol levels aren't even as critical as what the medical establishment wants us to believe. Even eating meat isn't as bad as what they want us to think.

Maybe you could explain why you choose to believe his faulted rationale and evidence (if you can even call it that) over years and years of INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE?

I read this
An interview with anti-health nanny Tom Naughton, part 2 - Sacramento El Dorado County Conservative | Examiner.com

and it's plainly obvious that he he doesn't have a medical, science or research background, so why would you believe him? If he did he would say ISCHAEMIC HEART DISEASE. There are lots of other types of heart disease


In the interview above the writer links to the following article regarding the lipid hypothesis. A few points from this -which is so misleading it's laughable.It's a bit like an advertisement for a house far sale-it's not what they tell you, but what they don't mention that's often the most important.

Because the idea that cholesterol causes heart disease–the lipid hypothesis–has been so frequently repeated for so many years that doctors have forgotten that it is only a hypothesis, not a fact.
In simplistic terms the lipid hypothesis is as follows:
a) cholesterol and/or fat in the diet leads to cholesterol and/or fat in the blood;
b) cholesterol and/or fat in the blood causes plaque formation in the arteries and, consequently, heart disease; and, therefore
c) cholesterol and/or fat in the diet causes heart disease.

I don't believe that any scientist or MD nowadays would say that cholesterol CAUSES heart disease. It should be
1)Cholesterol is a risk factor for atherosclerosis.
2)The CAUSE of heart disease is atherosclerosis.

He is putting words into the mouths of scientists and MDs

One scientifically verified fact disproves the whole lot: only about half the people who have heart attacks have elevated cholesterol levels.

Which if you work on 1) and 2) makes perfect sense!-

OR does it? Some of the people who have heart attacks will have normal cholesterol levels because they are being treated for high cholesterol, so when he says half who is he including? Just those that aren't on medication and have normal cholesterol, or those who are and have normal cholesterol levels, and where does he get his figures from?

He has jumped from talking about heart disease to heart attack, and remember that not everyone who has heart disease has a heart attack, and hopefully that's why we are treating the risk factors when we become aware of them (if someone is having regular physicals) or once someone has symptoms of heart disease. We want to PREVENT the HEART ATTACK or STROKE.

Lipitor isn't the only statin-
but the Lipitor clinical trials included only men with established heart disease

This isn't the same as looking at primary prevention of HEART DISEASE in those with high cholesterol.


If someone has high cholesterol and no other risk factor for heart disease, eg older than 65, smoking, high blood pressure,diabetes, previous history of heart disease, stroke or PVD, then their risk for a heart disease is going to be fairly low.

a 51 year old male has had cholesterol levels that have hovered at around 300 mg/dl for the past couple of decades. A physician had persuaded this man to take Lipitor (a “statin”? drug) in the past, but he had experienced side effects and stopped it. Since that time all his physicians had been after him to go on some kind of “statin”? drug to get his cholesterol down. In his latest blood test, his cholesterol levels zoomed up to 380 mg/dl, so he finally agreed to go on a “statin”? if his doctor could give him some kind of objective evidence that his “arteries were actually clogging.”? His physician sent him for an Ultrafast CT scan of the heart, an X-ray type of test that can actually see the coronary arteries and determine the degree of calcification in those arteries. The more calcification, the worse the disease. After the radiologist examined the scan he declared the guy free of coronary arteries disease with his arteries clean as a whistle. (You can see pictures of his scan in the article along with pictures of diseases arteries.)

So an isolated example of a 51 yr old with high cholesterol but maybe no other risk factors for heart disease, but he doesn't tell us that, so we don't know!
It could be that he has hypertension and diabetes and is morbidly obese, in which case his risk for heart disease is high.

These skeptics really need to move with the times. Almost averyone should be looking at 10yr risk for heart attack and stroke and using a tool like this.
QRISK2-2011

Maybe MDs in the USA don't because there isn't one available or they are damned(sued) if they do and (sued)damned if they don't .

Lastly-the scoffing regaridng the fact that in 10 yrs only 1 heart attack would be prevented out of 100 men.
We're talking about populations here, so if we multiply that by 10,000, that's 10,000 heart attacks prevented in 1 million men over 10 years.
Contrary to what he says a man with established heart disease taking Lipitor WOULD reduce his risk of having a heart attack by 1/3, and of course , that's just heart attack, not STROKE as well where there is a similar reduction of risk.

[Jack Kronk]

whatsthenews and subject2change - you are both missing the point.

s2c - you could go on all day long about how those statins made your numbers 'better'. that reasoning alone is very dangerous to your health. who says your numbers are better now? people who lie and produce extremely faulty data, that's who.

how are your numbers better?

and even if they are do indeed appear to be 'better'... do you understand the price you may be paying to get those better numbers? do you know what you are playing with? do you know that you could be in far worse condition health wise, even with what appear to be better numbers? do you know that regardless of whatever numbers you see, that doughnut is terrible for you?

if you believe that bringing down your total cholesterol is better, you are sadly misled. if you believe that bringing down your LDL is better, you are sadly misled. i'm sorry to hit you with this, but it's true.

in almost all countries, across the board, cholesterol numbers that are slighty higher than the upper 'limit' of conventional knowledge produces far less mortality rates. the lower your TC, the higher the mortality rates.

your body knows exactly what to do with cholesterol in the blood. Let it do it. The part where your influence comes into play is what you choose to eat/drink. many people don't even realize that ingesting large amounts of fructose plays a significant role in your blood lipids. "what? you mean that drinking 3 sodas a day can raise my bad cholesterol? even if I am a vegetarian?" Uh... yes. It sure can.

please be careful with these drugs people. they are very unnatural. these people fudge all kinds of data in their own interest. or if they are not fudging data, they are surely misled, believing the wrong things, hurting people out of ignorance. it's so sad.

if you read this and think.. this guy jack kronk believes high cholesterol is the key to health, you are crazy. what i'm saying is that relying on the conventional understanding of the cholesterol numbers is dangerous and it gets many people into big trouble with their health. they are chasing a ghost.