Btw Dr. Eades, I saw your Blackburn Award entry but could not comment on it because it was so old, but now I am re-reading Alicia Mundy’s “Dispensing With The Truth” (about Fen-Phen, for those of you not familiar with the book) and taking great fearful interest in the new drug lorcaserin (in clinical trials right now), and I came across a news article from 2006 which said: “Dr. George Blackburn says the practice is untested, and patients who seek off-label drugs for weight loss are desperate and vulnerable. “They need therapy,” he said. “They need counseling, they do not need an off-label medication.”" What a hypocrite ! In the mid 90’s he was an active proponent of the off-label Fen-Phen cocktail !! This is well-documented in Mundy’s book. I guess all of those lawsuits, if not the deaths of patients, made him jumpy.

Your blame is misplaced. Doctors wanted a drug to reduce cholesteral, drug companies responded *as they should*. After investing to develop any drug, it is perfectly proper for them to want to sell enough of it to not only cover that cost, and make a profit.

It is up to *doctors* to make sure any drug is prescribed appropriately. Any doctor that becomes a shill *knowingly doing so contrary to his good sense as a doctor” deserves the most blame. Secondarily are those doctors that will prescribe medicines only to satisfy political masters and/or avoid malpractice, though it is really difficult to blame then in the latter case, the blame then belongs on the political side and all those that keep voting for socialized medicine.

I agree and disagree with you. It is the doctor’s responsibility to know the facts about the drugs he/she prescribes. But regular practicing physician’s don’t have the time nor the training to track down and decipher the scientific studies on all the prescription drugs in existence. Most doctors rely on information provided them by the pharmaceutical companies and rely on the FDA that has approved the drugs. Doctors don’t make a penny when they prescribe a drug, so greed isn’t involved on their part.

In the case of cholesterol-lowering drugs, it was the pharmaceutical companies that persuaded the doctors that their patients needed to have their cholesterol levels lowered. Doctors didn’t come up with this idea then demand that the drug companies develop a drug for them.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-winter/moral-vs-universal-health-care.asp

I’m a newcomer here and really enjoy your site. Keep up the great work!

Hi Monica–

MRE

Yes, I guess rage just brings out the sesquipedalian in me.

Cheers–

What happens when the girls (accidentally or deliberately) get pregnant?

If they stop the drugs before they get pregnant, how long a time is necessary before it would be considered “safe” to conceive? And just what are the “side effects” of being on a statin during pregnancy?

Even the drug companies say statins should not be taken by “women who may be pregnant or may become pregnant”!!

Precisely. Another contingency I hadn’t thought of. The worst part of this whole affair is that the kids will get these drugs without any choice on their part. Adults at least have the opportunity to do their own research and say no if they don’t want to take them. The kids – who will suffer in the long run (and maybe in the short) won’t have that option.

In your response to Ken you said: “I’m glad you brought this up. In my rage over these stupid recommendations, I forgot to list cardiomyopathy as one of the side effects of statins. Your theory on how this comes about makes sense. Thanks for commenting.”

Just wanted to mention that your thincs colleague Peter Langsjoen (a practicing cardiologist in Texas I think) has written about this and related topics extensively. He also recommends supplementing with CoQ10. For your other readers, here’s a link.

http://www.thincs.org/public.htm#Peter

Thanks again for all you do.

Regards,

W

“If you had a heart attack at age 52 (and I assume you are a male), you are one of the few legitimate candidates for statin therapy.”

What benefit would he get from the drug?

Thanks for the incredible information you share with us, Dr.

He probably wouldn’t get a lot of benefit, but men under the age of 65 who have had a heart attack are the one and only group of people who have been shown to receive benefit from statin therapy in terms of lower all-cause mortality as compared to that same group of subjects not taking statins. The benefit is small, meaning that it doesn’t help most, but it is still there.

I no longer trust my doctor. He prescribed me two meds in the past that had serious side effects; one was taken off the market, and for the other one, he didn’t tell me about the serious side effect (which occurred!!)

This is insane.

When I read the BBC article on prescribing statins to children I was shocked. I had just finished reading another news article on a new CJD variant found in the US, and the combination put me over the top. This is a bit convoluted, but hear me out.

Back when I was a technician in a diagnostic toxicology lab, one of my supervisors told me about a study he did using alpha-napthyl-thiourea. It was being explored as a compound to kill fire ants by blocking glutathione synthesis. Unfortunately, it caused small vacuolation lesions in the hearts and brains of the test guinea pigs and chickens used to evaluate safety. In my doctoral studies for neuroscience, I learned that glutathione is the major compound responsible for free radical absorption and prevention of oxidative damage in the brain and heart. More recently I learned that coQ10 is also required for glutathione synthesis. Since statins cause coQ10 depletion, I suspect that much of the cardiomyopathy seen with statin use is due to oxidative damage as a result of glutathione depletion. After reading the article on the new CJD variant, which has a rapid onset and none of the typical clinical predictors, it would not surprise me if it was also due to statins.

With all that you and others have pointed out about the negative side effects of statin use, and their limited benefits, I am outraged at the suggestion that children should be prescribed them. From a neurodevelopmental point of view alone, I know that there are periodic spikes in sex hormones throughout normal development that are necessary for normal brain development and sexual differentiation.

I’m glad you brought this up. In my rage over these stupid recommendations, I forgot to list cardiomyopathy as one of the side effects of statins. Your theory on how this comes about makes sense. Thanks for commenting.