I’m sorry if I’ve been a little less than diligent lately with getting new posts up and comments dealt with in a timely fashion. Tim Ferriss, author of the bestselling 4-Hour Workweek and popular blog of the same name, asked me to put up a post on his site. I put up an updated version of the “is a calorie just a calorie?” debate post, which was hit with numerous comments. Tim asked if I would deal with a few of the comments, which I did. It was fun, but it took some time. If you get into an argument with a hostile vegetarian you ought to take a look at comment # 73 and comment # 84 , my response. This will give you some hard info for your dispute.

I’ve sprinkled a couple of other comments in as well. All this – along with the book project – have kept me from my own blog. I wrote at the end of the last post that the next post would be a follow up on the Swedish study. I’m working on that post now (which will be the next post), but I wanted to get up some information that is a little more current. Information about one of my favorite subjects and least favorite drugs: statins.

Looks like our old buddy Robert Jarvik (aka Gollum) has gotten into a little trouble. The fact that he passed himself off as a practicing physician (he had a medical degree but he has never taken the training or certification necessary to actually practice medicine) and an accomplished rower (he doesn’t row – a body double was used in the ads) has gotten the ire of a congressional committee. According to the New York Times Read more »

I received a comment today that I feel compelled to post in its entirety as a cautionary tale for anyone contemplating going on statins (or any other drug, for that matter) for no good reason. This reader describes in much more detail than I ever could the agony of drug therapy gone wrong. And the realization that it was unnecessary drug therapy in the first place makes the experience even more devastating. I hope enough of you who are readers of this blog now realize that simply having an elevated cholesterol level is no reason to go on a statin.

The comment below demonstrates in vivid detail what happens thousands of times per day all over this country. People are prescribed drugs for the flimsiest of reasons. These drugs cause side effects. These side effects are treated with more drugs, which themselves cause more side effects. Which are treated with yet more drugs.

When patients go to a doctor for symptoms, the doctor feels the need to treat the symptoms. Often the symptoms can be treated by having the patient discontinue the drugs that caused the symptoms in the first place. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a variation of what happened to this unfortunate commenter. The symptoms are simply treated by prescribing another drug designed to quash those symptoms.

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Despite the fact that statin drugs are the best-selling medications in history, accounting for some $40 billion plus in sales world wide last year, they had a very bad week this past week. And it looks like their scrutiny is going to pick up a little.

The Vytorin trial that finally came to light late last week kicked off the cascade of bad news. It appears that the combination of a statin and Zetia, despite lowering cholesterol levels by 40 percent more than a statin, was no more effective than the statin alone in preventing problems. Which would lead anyone with critical thinking skills to wonder about the hypothesis that LDL-cholesterol is really a problem.

The next day the New York Times, in an article that wasn’t all that anti-statin, started thusly: Read more »

The notion that the pharmaceutical industry fiddles with drug studies is one that I harp on constantly. Sometimes they fiddle with the data interpretation process, but more commonly they commit what amounts to lies of omission.

Here’s what most do. If a drug company spends millions of dollars to sponsor a study designed to show that Drug X reduces inflammation and finds when all the data is assessed at the end that Drug X does indeed reduce inflammation to some extent, then you can bet that the company will rush the study in to print. But if this study instead of showing improvement shows that Drug X doesn’t help reduce inflammation or, horror of horrors, actually makes it worse, odds are that the company won’t publish the study.

We end up with a situation in which mainly positive studies get published. These positive studies then lend a aura of efficacy that really doesn’t exist to most of the drugs out there. No one can really point to studies nay saying the drugs in question since those studies were never published.

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After the Enhance study came out Katie Couric interviewed Dr. Steve Nissen, a statinator of renown.

Although Dr. Nissen, who is the Chairman of Cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, is upset over the findings of the Enhance study, it hasn’t dimmed his enthusiasm for statin drugs a whit. As you watch the video, note the quotes I’ve excerpted. They demonstrate how a famous cardiologist is firmly in the grip of the lipid hypothesis despite considerable evidence that the hypothesis has been built on a very shaky foundation.

Here is the video.

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