(though statins are bad) linked to quasi cardiovascular benefit (yet I do not see it in the data) while elevated diabetes risk); small survival benefit yet severe complications (BRUCHA WEISBERGER)
agree fully, we had so much faith and admiration in medical doctors for centuries, we thought they were cut above the rest and we rewarded them and gave them status...many, man as per COVID, are no different than a hardened criminal...their focus is money, that nice life and the clubs and the like. social status. Not you the patient. COVID showed us the underbelly.
As you know, better than I, conducting tests on hormones can have a long range effect on many other systems. Why take chances with healthy children when they could possibly have irreversible results lasting the rest of their lives?
Thank you so much for linking my article. I would like to mention that statins are actually one of the biggest scams in medicine and are extremely harmful, and they don’t actually help. Cholesterol is critical for bodily functions and it isn’t the problem. Dr. John Abramson wrote about the statin scam extensively in his book “Overdosed America” about 20 years ago. Cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra has spoken up about statins recently.
"This report from Chou et al for the US Preventative Services Task Force, historically a very conservative guidelines body, gives the evidence from 19 randomized trials involving 71,344 participants.
The results clearly demonstrated the following significant reductions after treatment for ~2 years:
14% reduction in all cause mortality
18% reduction in cardiovascular mortality
29% reduction in stroke
36% reduction in myocardial infarction"
Statins for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease in Adults: Evidence Report and Systematic Review for the US Preventive Services Task Force
Primary Prevention in Adults > 40 Years Analyzed from Randomized Trials
"These data suggest that statins are not a “disaster” but rather protect against the occurrence of dementia and more specifically Alzheimer’s disease. In my view we can cross cognitive impairment or dementia off the list of concerns for statins as we use and take them to prevent heart attack, stroke, need for stenting or bypass surgery, and cardiac death."
Statins Reduce Risk of Dementia/Alzheimer's Disease: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Observational Studies
Pooled 32% Risk Reduction in Alzheimer's Disease Over a Few Years
In the 1960s and 1970s, a debate emerged over what caused heart disease. On one side, John Yudkin argued that the sugar being added to our food by the processed food industry was the chief culprit (e.g., in his seminal book, he stated, "I hope that when you have read this book, I shall have convinced you that sugar is really dangerous.").
On the other side, Ancel Keys (who attacked Yudkin's work) argued that it was due to saturated fat and cholesterol. Ancel Keys won, Yudkin's work was largely dismissed, and Keys became nutritional dogma. It gradually became recognized that Ancel Keys did not accurately report the data he used to substantiate his arguments. Fifty years after the initial debate, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world published internal sugar industry documents. They showed the sugar industry had used bribes to make scientists place the blame for heart disease on fat so Yudkin's work would not threaten the sugar industry.
It is now generally accepted that Yudkin was entirely right and had we listened to him, an immense amount of suffering could have been prevented. Despite this, the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease persists (despite very little evidence supporting it and a significant amount refuting it), and we still provide diabetics with disastrous dietary (eat carbs and no fats) advice that originated from the work of Keys.
Note: although sugar (and fructose) is one of the primary causes of heart disease, other primary causes, such as smoking and lead exposure, also exist. Additionally, research has actually shown cholesterol greatly increases longevity. To quote one article from the Lancet:
During 10 years of follow-up from Dec 1, 1986, to Oct 1, 1996, a total of 642 participants died. Each 1 mmol/L increase in total cholesterol corresponded to a 15% decrease in mortality (risk ratio 0–85 [95% Cl 0·79–0·91]).
Statin Marketing
For decades, researchers have looked for ways to lower cholesterol levels reliably. Once statins (the first drugs which could reliably do this) were discovered, the cholesterol hypothesis took off, and reasons were created to create more and more urgency for lowering cholesterol levels. This has gone to the point prominent doctors have called for statins to be added to the water supply, a degree of fanaticism not that different from what we saw from many of the advocates for mass COVID vaccination.
Since the rationale for statin usage is based on a lie, the benefits of statins are almost nonexistent. Similarly, since cholesterol is essential for life, many issues result from eliminating it. Nonetheless, statin sales are now over 15 billions dollars a year, and hundreds of millions of people have been placed on them.
This raises an interesting question. How on earth is this possible?
The answer is of course, very good marketing funded by an incredibly lucrative product.
Risks and Benefits
Before COVID vaccines, I considered statin medications to have one of the worst benefit-to-harm ratios of any drug on the market. To put this into context, based on clinical trials already biased in favor of the drugs and selecting those most likely to benefit from statin usage, it was found on average, taking a statin for five years would increase your expected lifespan by three days.
Conversely, beyond the medication costs (which many struggle to afford), it can be expected that around 20% of those receiving a statin will experience side effects from the drugs. 20% represents the best estimate Malhotra has been able to make from studying all the available data).
Since a 20% adverse event rate would destroy their sales, the statin industry has used a variety of tricks to argue the adverse event rate is under 1%. For example, in their trials, they will often pre-test statins on participants, remove those with bad reactions, and then make up excuses like the individuals (who had volunteered to be test subjects) not wanting to take their medication to justify removing them from the trials.
Concealing Scientific Data
Previously, one of the most egregious offenders in this regard was the statin manufacturers who have deliberately withheld their data from the public for decades. A corrupt Oxford academic consortium, the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists' (CTT) Collaboration, has access to that data and has published numerous pro-industry analyses of it but, despite continual outside requests, has refused ever to make this data available for outside scrutiny. Given the significant evidence demonstrating that statins are both ineffective and harmful, many more honest academics have attempted to independently obtain this critical data from regulators.
Guideline Committees
As time has gone forward, a great deal of effort has been made to transform the practice of medicine from doctors independently utilizing their best judgment on how to treat patients to doctors following treatment algorithms that committees of experts create. This arrangement creates a creative way to skirt the law since these committees do not require a legislative process to be enacted. In turn, a few times, they have been sued for the absurd guidelines they put forward.
In each case (e.g., the recent one against the FDA for it preventing ivermectin from being used to treat COVID-19), those promoting the guidelines successfully argue their guidelines are only ‘suggestions’ and thus cannot be legally challenged. This is important to remember since, in one ruling against Lyme patient advocates, the federal judge specified that guidelines are voluntary (which means they cannot be treated as law). Nonetheless, once these “voluntary” guidelines are created (and hence cannot be challenged through any legal process), everyone treats them as law.
Given the importance of these “guidelines,” it should then raise the question of why they always seem to arrive at conclusions that favor industry. As you might imagine, the formula is quite simple—almost everyone who ends up on those committees coincidently also takes money from those who are financially invested in the outcomes of their guidelines.
In the case of statins, a relatively simple pattern has emerged. As time goes forward, “research” keeps appearing that suggests more people need to be placed on statins. The experts on the guideline panels then conclude that even more people need to be given statins, and clinical practice guidelines are published requiring this, which doctors are sanctioned for failing to follow (e.g., Medicare gives them less money).
One of the best examples of this was shared by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick in chapter 7 of Doctoring Data:
The National Cholesterol Education Programme (NCEP) has been tasked by the NIH to develop [legally enforceable] guidelines for treating cholesterol levels. Excluding the chair (who was by law prohibited from having financial conflicts of interest), the other 8 members on average were on the payroll of 6 statin manufacturers. In 2004, NCEP reviewed 5 large statin trials and recommended: “Aggressive LDL lowering for high-risk patients [primary prevention] with lifestyle changes and statins.” [these recommendations in turn were adopted around the world]
In 2005 a Canadian division of the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed 5 large statin trials (3 were the same as NCEP’s, while the other 2 had also reached a positive conclusion for statin therapy). That assessment instead concluded: “Statins have not been shown to provide an overall health benefit in primary prevention trials.”
In addition to doctors being forced to follow these guidelines, patients often are too. Doctors often retaliate against patients who do not take statins (similar to how many unvaccinated patients were denied essential medical care during COVID-19). Employers sometimes require cholesterol numbers to meet a certain threshold for employment (although they never did anything on the scale of the COVID vaccine mandates placed on workers around America). Similarly, life insurance policies often penalize those with "unsafe" cholesterol numbers.
Is it any wonder doctors, when hearing these patient complaints of tiredness, weakness, wobbly-kneed with burning pain and numbness, poor coordination and terrible memory, respond with a predictable, "You are over fifty now and have to expect these kinds of things.
I’ve made peace with the fact many useless drugs are on the market, and now I only focus my energy on protesting medications that harm patients.
Ever since the statins hit the market, colleagues and I began observing case after case of individuals who lost sensation in their body, developed muscle pains, or had cognitive decline set in once they started the statin, which immediately resolved once they stopped the statin. Simultaneously, we also noticed that whenever we pointed this out to their doctor, the doctor would become extremely hostile, and then both insist that the statin could not be causing the symptom and that even if it was, the patient needed not to stop using it because otherwise they would get a heart attack and die.
The thing that finally really made me get how impressive the marketing for these drugs had been was the recurring battle I would have with relatives. In each case, I would take them off a statin and provide a strong argument with data supporting why they should not be on the drug. At some point later, they would go to their doctor and inform them that their relative, who was a doctor, had taken them off the statin.
Their doctor (often a cardiologist), in turn, would tell my relative I was incredibly ignorant, insist they knew the data much better than I did, say I was endangering my relative’s health, and promptly restart the statin, to which my relative dutifully complied. In many cases, I would provide the cardiologist with literature supporting my argument. In each case, they would make an excuse not to read it while simultaneously asserting they knew all the data and that I, not being a cardiologist, was unqualified to have an opinion on this subject. This made me appreciate just how challenging a situation patients (without access to the resources my relatives had) were in.
If you take this story and replace “statin” with COVID-19 vaccines, you will see it is essentially what everyone has experienced over the last two years with the vaccines. I suspect this is because, before the COVID-19 vaccines, statins were one of the most profitable medical franchises and, thus amongst the medications most aggressively pushed on patients.
Since the body requires cholesterol for many critical functions and makes about 80% of the cholesterol in your body it is swinishly stupid to subvert this process with a statin drug. My own dear mother listened to her idiot doctor and not me and ended up in emerg with all her muscles cramping at once.
Dr Mathias Rath has shown that a vitamin C deficiency can lead to heart disease. Artieries begin to develop cracks, and crevices, wherein the body goes into self preservation mode, and starts applying lipoprotein A into the crack to prevent the artery from coming a part. Maintaining a sufficient amount of C prevents this process from taking place. Dr Rath has determined 750 mg per day is optimum for prevention.
Any doctor who professed to do no harm, should be arrested for administering drugs to harm children
agree fully, we had so much faith and admiration in medical doctors for centuries, we thought they were cut above the rest and we rewarded them and gave them status...many, man as per COVID, are no different than a hardened criminal...their focus is money, that nice life and the clubs and the like. social status. Not you the patient. COVID showed us the underbelly.
As you know, better than I, conducting tests on hormones can have a long range effect on many other systems. Why take chances with healthy children when they could possibly have irreversible results lasting the rest of their lives?
FIRST, DO NO HARM! Most docs are criminal drug pushers. No different than a common street thug. Terrifying!
Thank you so much for linking my article. I would like to mention that statins are actually one of the biggest scams in medicine and are extremely harmful, and they don’t actually help. Cholesterol is critical for bodily functions and it isn’t the problem. Dr. John Abramson wrote about the statin scam extensively in his book “Overdosed America” about 20 years ago. Cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra has spoken up about statins recently.
Wondering why Dr. McCullough is saying Statins are good for people with heart disease?🤷♀️ I call bs on that!
????
"This report from Chou et al for the US Preventative Services Task Force, historically a very conservative guidelines body, gives the evidence from 19 randomized trials involving 71,344 participants.
The results clearly demonstrated the following significant reductions after treatment for ~2 years:
14% reduction in all cause mortality
18% reduction in cardiovascular mortality
29% reduction in stroke
36% reduction in myocardial infarction"
Statins for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease in Adults: Evidence Report and Systematic Review for the US Preventive Services Task Force
Primary Prevention in Adults > 40 Years Analyzed from Randomized Trials
PETER MCCULLOUGH, MD MAR 12, 2024
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/statins-for-prevention-of-cardiovascular
"These data suggest that statins are not a “disaster” but rather protect against the occurrence of dementia and more specifically Alzheimer’s disease. In my view we can cross cognitive impairment or dementia off the list of concerns for statins as we use and take them to prevent heart attack, stroke, need for stenting or bypass surgery, and cardiac death."
Statins Reduce Risk of Dementia/Alzheimer's Disease: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Observational Studies
Pooled 32% Risk Reduction in Alzheimer's Disease Over a Few Years
PETER MCCULLOUGH, MD. MAR 01, 2024
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/statins-reduce-risk-of-dementiaalzheimers
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/what-can-statins-teach-us-about-the
From the article:
In the 1960s and 1970s, a debate emerged over what caused heart disease. On one side, John Yudkin argued that the sugar being added to our food by the processed food industry was the chief culprit (e.g., in his seminal book, he stated, "I hope that when you have read this book, I shall have convinced you that sugar is really dangerous.").
On the other side, Ancel Keys (who attacked Yudkin's work) argued that it was due to saturated fat and cholesterol. Ancel Keys won, Yudkin's work was largely dismissed, and Keys became nutritional dogma. It gradually became recognized that Ancel Keys did not accurately report the data he used to substantiate his arguments. Fifty years after the initial debate, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world published internal sugar industry documents. They showed the sugar industry had used bribes to make scientists place the blame for heart disease on fat so Yudkin's work would not threaten the sugar industry.
It is now generally accepted that Yudkin was entirely right and had we listened to him, an immense amount of suffering could have been prevented. Despite this, the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease persists (despite very little evidence supporting it and a significant amount refuting it), and we still provide diabetics with disastrous dietary (eat carbs and no fats) advice that originated from the work of Keys.
Note: although sugar (and fructose) is one of the primary causes of heart disease, other primary causes, such as smoking and lead exposure, also exist. Additionally, research has actually shown cholesterol greatly increases longevity. To quote one article from the Lancet:
During 10 years of follow-up from Dec 1, 1986, to Oct 1, 1996, a total of 642 participants died. Each 1 mmol/L increase in total cholesterol corresponded to a 15% decrease in mortality (risk ratio 0–85 [95% Cl 0·79–0·91]).
Statin Marketing
For decades, researchers have looked for ways to lower cholesterol levels reliably. Once statins (the first drugs which could reliably do this) were discovered, the cholesterol hypothesis took off, and reasons were created to create more and more urgency for lowering cholesterol levels. This has gone to the point prominent doctors have called for statins to be added to the water supply, a degree of fanaticism not that different from what we saw from many of the advocates for mass COVID vaccination.
Since the rationale for statin usage is based on a lie, the benefits of statins are almost nonexistent. Similarly, since cholesterol is essential for life, many issues result from eliminating it. Nonetheless, statin sales are now over 15 billions dollars a year, and hundreds of millions of people have been placed on them.
This raises an interesting question. How on earth is this possible?
The answer is of course, very good marketing funded by an incredibly lucrative product.
Risks and Benefits
Before COVID vaccines, I considered statin medications to have one of the worst benefit-to-harm ratios of any drug on the market. To put this into context, based on clinical trials already biased in favor of the drugs and selecting those most likely to benefit from statin usage, it was found on average, taking a statin for five years would increase your expected lifespan by three days.
Conversely, beyond the medication costs (which many struggle to afford), it can be expected that around 20% of those receiving a statin will experience side effects from the drugs. 20% represents the best estimate Malhotra has been able to make from studying all the available data).
Since a 20% adverse event rate would destroy their sales, the statin industry has used a variety of tricks to argue the adverse event rate is under 1%. For example, in their trials, they will often pre-test statins on participants, remove those with bad reactions, and then make up excuses like the individuals (who had volunteered to be test subjects) not wanting to take their medication to justify removing them from the trials.
Concealing Scientific Data
Previously, one of the most egregious offenders in this regard was the statin manufacturers who have deliberately withheld their data from the public for decades. A corrupt Oxford academic consortium, the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists' (CTT) Collaboration, has access to that data and has published numerous pro-industry analyses of it but, despite continual outside requests, has refused ever to make this data available for outside scrutiny. Given the significant evidence demonstrating that statins are both ineffective and harmful, many more honest academics have attempted to independently obtain this critical data from regulators.
Guideline Committees
As time has gone forward, a great deal of effort has been made to transform the practice of medicine from doctors independently utilizing their best judgment on how to treat patients to doctors following treatment algorithms that committees of experts create. This arrangement creates a creative way to skirt the law since these committees do not require a legislative process to be enacted. In turn, a few times, they have been sued for the absurd guidelines they put forward.
In each case (e.g., the recent one against the FDA for it preventing ivermectin from being used to treat COVID-19), those promoting the guidelines successfully argue their guidelines are only ‘suggestions’ and thus cannot be legally challenged. This is important to remember since, in one ruling against Lyme patient advocates, the federal judge specified that guidelines are voluntary (which means they cannot be treated as law). Nonetheless, once these “voluntary” guidelines are created (and hence cannot be challenged through any legal process), everyone treats them as law.
Given the importance of these “guidelines,” it should then raise the question of why they always seem to arrive at conclusions that favor industry. As you might imagine, the formula is quite simple—almost everyone who ends up on those committees coincidently also takes money from those who are financially invested in the outcomes of their guidelines.
In the case of statins, a relatively simple pattern has emerged. As time goes forward, “research” keeps appearing that suggests more people need to be placed on statins. The experts on the guideline panels then conclude that even more people need to be given statins, and clinical practice guidelines are published requiring this, which doctors are sanctioned for failing to follow (e.g., Medicare gives them less money).
One of the best examples of this was shared by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick in chapter 7 of Doctoring Data:
The National Cholesterol Education Programme (NCEP) has been tasked by the NIH to develop [legally enforceable] guidelines for treating cholesterol levels. Excluding the chair (who was by law prohibited from having financial conflicts of interest), the other 8 members on average were on the payroll of 6 statin manufacturers. In 2004, NCEP reviewed 5 large statin trials and recommended: “Aggressive LDL lowering for high-risk patients [primary prevention] with lifestyle changes and statins.” [these recommendations in turn were adopted around the world]
In 2005 a Canadian division of the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed 5 large statin trials (3 were the same as NCEP’s, while the other 2 had also reached a positive conclusion for statin therapy). That assessment instead concluded: “Statins have not been shown to provide an overall health benefit in primary prevention trials.”
In addition to doctors being forced to follow these guidelines, patients often are too. Doctors often retaliate against patients who do not take statins (similar to how many unvaccinated patients were denied essential medical care during COVID-19). Employers sometimes require cholesterol numbers to meet a certain threshold for employment (although they never did anything on the scale of the COVID vaccine mandates placed on workers around America). Similarly, life insurance policies often penalize those with "unsafe" cholesterol numbers.
Continued from article:
Statin Gaslighting
Is it any wonder doctors, when hearing these patient complaints of tiredness, weakness, wobbly-kneed with burning pain and numbness, poor coordination and terrible memory, respond with a predictable, "You are over fifty now and have to expect these kinds of things.
I’ve made peace with the fact many useless drugs are on the market, and now I only focus my energy on protesting medications that harm patients.
Ever since the statins hit the market, colleagues and I began observing case after case of individuals who lost sensation in their body, developed muscle pains, or had cognitive decline set in once they started the statin, which immediately resolved once they stopped the statin. Simultaneously, we also noticed that whenever we pointed this out to their doctor, the doctor would become extremely hostile, and then both insist that the statin could not be causing the symptom and that even if it was, the patient needed not to stop using it because otherwise they would get a heart attack and die.
The thing that finally really made me get how impressive the marketing for these drugs had been was the recurring battle I would have with relatives. In each case, I would take them off a statin and provide a strong argument with data supporting why they should not be on the drug. At some point later, they would go to their doctor and inform them that their relative, who was a doctor, had taken them off the statin.
Their doctor (often a cardiologist), in turn, would tell my relative I was incredibly ignorant, insist they knew the data much better than I did, say I was endangering my relative’s health, and promptly restart the statin, to which my relative dutifully complied. In many cases, I would provide the cardiologist with literature supporting my argument. In each case, they would make an excuse not to read it while simultaneously asserting they knew all the data and that I, not being a cardiologist, was unqualified to have an opinion on this subject. This made me appreciate just how challenging a situation patients (without access to the resources my relatives had) were in.
If you take this story and replace “statin” with COVID-19 vaccines, you will see it is essentially what everyone has experienced over the last two years with the vaccines. I suspect this is because, before the COVID-19 vaccines, statins were one of the most profitable medical franchises and, thus amongst the medications most aggressively pushed on patients.
I wholeheartedly agree. Thank you for taking the time to share this detailed, factual commentary.
But they wear a nice white coat and have a degree...... LOL
I was left permanently disabled after being treated with Lupron for Endometriosis… it’s POISON ☠️
Very sad indeed. God bless you.
Tkx 🙏
Since the body requires cholesterol for many critical functions and makes about 80% of the cholesterol in your body it is swinishly stupid to subvert this process with a statin drug. My own dear mother listened to her idiot doctor and not me and ended up in emerg with all her muscles cramping at once.
Dr Mathias Rath has shown that a vitamin C deficiency can lead to heart disease. Artieries begin to develop cracks, and crevices, wherein the body goes into self preservation mode, and starts applying lipoprotein A into the crack to prevent the artery from coming a part. Maintaining a sufficient amount of C prevents this process from taking place. Dr Rath has determined 750 mg per day is optimum for prevention.
The patients requesting and doctors willing to perform such insanity belong in neighboring rubber rooms.