Posted on 07/31/2017 9:38:30 AM PDT by Captain Peter Blood
Read this one folks.
More evidence-based options have emerged for secondary prevention. The Improved Reduction of Outcomes: Vytorin Efficacy International Trial (IMPROVE-IT)4 reported that adding ezetimibe to effective statin therapy in stable patients who experienced an acute coronary syndrome reduced low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) from 70 mg/dL to 54 mg/dL (to convert LDL-C from mg/dL to mmol/L, multiply by 0.0259), and reduced risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease outcome at 7 years from 34.7% to 32.7%. The Further Cardiovascular Outcomes Research with PCSK9 Inhibition in Subjects with Elevated Risk (FOURIER) trial5 reported that the addition of evolocumab, a proprotein convertase subtilisin–kexin type 9 (PCSK9) inhibitor, to effective statin therapy reduced LDL-C from 92 mg/dL to 30 mg/dL and decreased the composite cardiovascular outcome over 2.2 years from 11.3% to 9.8%, a 15% relative reduction. Of note, both drugs were only tested in high-risk individuals.
There are some caveats to the new evidence. Although no significant safety signals emerged with either drug, some consider the benefits to be relatively small. The US Food and Drug Administration determined in 2016 that the IMPROVE-IT trial was insufficient to expand the label for ezetimibe to include reducing the risk of myocardial infarction and stroke.
Left unmentioned is the meta-analysis that I recently reported on in which all-cause mortality was not decreased by any of these "therapies."
So yeah, you might get a 15% relative reduction in heart attack risk (but a real reduction of about 1.5%!) but other causes of mortality go up by enough to erase the alleged "benefit."
May I remind you that dead is dead and the reason is only of interest to people who have a reason to pump "interventions" that cost money?
Speaking of which, let's talk conflicts:
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: The author has completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest and reported that he received research grants from Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson (Janssen), the US Food and Drug Administration, all through Yale; works under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; chairs a cardiac scientific advisory board for UnitedHealth; is a participant and participant representative of the IBM Watson Health Life Sciences Board; is a member of the Advisory Board for Element Science and the Physician Advisory Board for Aetna; and is the founder of Hugo, a personal health information platform.
Two sources of funds make and sell things in the medical space, and what's worse two more are regulated insurance companies who can only make more money, since their operating margins are regulated, if the cost of health care goes up.
You got that one folks? Let it sink in -- companies that are limited to a "X" operating margin (for insurance firms it's typically 10%) can only make more money if the gross amount of loss in whatever is being insured against rises.
There is no other way to make more because their margins are fixed; there is no opportunity to make more money by becoming more efficient as a firm because that will simply be clawed back through forcible reduction of premiums charged by the states.
Therefore they are incentivized to waste money (rather than save it) and to see the underlying expense of whatever they're insuring against go up instead of down.
This is not a function of whether someone's an asshole it is a simple fact of arithmetic that nobody can change so long as the firm in question is regulated insurer!
Then there's this, which at this point is nearly 10 years old in print:
When asked why, he gave the Journal a cryptic answer in the form of a Japanese proverb: "The indigo dyer wears white trousers."
That's the guy who invented statins -- he was at the time up for the Lasker Award, often called "America's Nobel."
The question asked him of him was why won't he take them since his cholesterol was elevated and they were recommended to him?
The answer he gave, quoted above, is one that only an intelligent individual understands -- which, presumably, all doctors are or their credential, a PhD, is worthless.
Here's what that quote means, if you happen to be unaware: Indigo dye is inherently toxic and a residual from the process remains on the clothes and thus harms the wearer, which the dyer is fully aware of. He thus won't wear his own product because he knows it will harm or kill him but he finds no problem selling that problem to others despite actual knowledge of its harm.
Given these facts and the lack of disclosure of the recent published work showing no reduction in all-cause mortality for this class of drugs, along with the now ten year old quote from the guy who discovered them, perhaps you can explain why the rope hasn't come out and the search for lampposts begun in earnest by the general public, with the strong implication made that either politicians fix this rank exploitation and outrageous asset-stripping (not to mention intentional harm) by the medical industry, putting a stop to both using existing, 100+ year old law, or the people WILL using far less-pleasant means.
Back in about 2005 I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. Right off the bat the doctor prescribes medication for not only that, but he puts me on Blood Pressure medication as a Ace Inhibitor, to help my kidneys he says, and then cholesterol drugs.
At the time I was walking about three miles a day. As soon as I started taking the cholesterol medication I started having leg pain and trouble with my walking. So I quit the medications, told my doctor, long story short I tried all the different brands with the same side effect.
I started doing my own research and found out just how dangerous these drugs were and told my doctor. He was unimpressed and just told me the information I had given him to read was just someone with an agenda. I pointed out what agenda did he think the drug companies had.
I then ran across a book by a Danish doctor named Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, his book "The Cholesterol Myth, copyright 2000. In that book the doctor went through everything on how the cholesterol was not a culprit, and he had personally read and studied, to that time, every study on Statin Drugs and their protocols.
His conclusion was that no compelling case was made and also that most all of the studies trying to prove such a correlation were paid for one way or another by the Major Drug companies.
Statin Drugs have been, not only the biggest fraud perpetrated on a gullible public, but also one of the single most profitable scams ever done and legally at that. So now we have the main doctor who helped invent this drug and he won't even take it, what in Hell does that tell you??????
Now we have this new drug on the market that cost something like $14,000 a year plus, and the trick is to get the insurance companies to sign on and pay for it.
Karl is right they all should be in jail.
OPINION: the side effects of statins are not worth a 2% drop in risk!
I am one who usually attributes the following quote to PT Barnum but needless to say, this article reminds me of the much older adage of “A fool and his money are soon parted.”
http://www.answers.com/Q/Who_said_a_fool_and_his_money_are_soon_parted
JoMa
Actually I think it is more like a 1/2 % to maybe 1%.
Depends on what study you look at.
Tis why I avoid the Dr office as much as possible. I go once every 3-4 years at this point (mid 30s) and I take zero medication regularly and never have.
Dr Joel Wallach has been preaching for 20 years on this. Glad it is finally catching on. I told my Dr. to stick it.
What a retarded, childish title.
Maybe it would be more effective to use the proper title from the article.
My A1C continues to hover one point above their magical cuttoff for the last 10 years or so. If my back wasnt broke I wouldnt even see a doctor. And he knows that a discussion, and we both have to agree on me taking anything that requires a special note from the DEA for me to buy.
I can see and tell that all the nurses and admin staff pucker their assholes when ever I walk through the door.
Its clear that they do not like being told “NO” or asked honest questions that they take as rhetorical but I demand an upfront answer to.
Every visit includes questions by me to them on why the medical industry stays silent on he crap that our food industry get away with———and we get right down to the business of really why I am here (thank you very much.)
Just say NO to Pharma Drugs.
So, die early. I hope you permit others
the option of assisted suicide while you’re at it.
Cholesterol is a precursor for testosterone !
Some of us are past the need for testosterone.
That was the title from the article. Look it up.
Bkmk
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