Tags
adverse events, ‘nocebo’ effect, Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, effect on overall mortality, Professor Peter Sever, Side effects, Statins, The ASCOT study, the ‘Statin USAGE’ study, The Great Statin Con
Some of you will have noted that researchers have now decided that statins do not have any side effects at all. To be pedantic, the correct term is not side-effects, it is drug related adverse events. A side effect can be positive, or negative.
In order to prove that statins cause no adverse events, a paper was published in the Lancet entitled: ‘Adverse events associated with unblinded, but not with blinded, statin therapy in the Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial—Lipid-Lowering Arm (ASCOT-LLA): a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial and its non-randomised non-blind extension phase.’
A virtually impenetrable title which could mean almost anything. But the key message can be found here:
‘These analyses illustrate the so-called nocebo effect, with an excess rate of muscle-related AE reports only when patients and their doctors were aware that statin therapy was being used and not when its use was blinded. These results will…
View original post 1,517 more words
Worse still, lowering cholesterol and triglycerides plays no role in preventing heart disease. This myth is based entirely on rigged research and the dogged persecution of researchers who dared challenge Food Inc darling Ancel Keys’ unprovable theories. There is some evidence that statins may reduce heart attack risk via its anti-inflammatory effect – but this slight benefit is negligible in view of statins’ potential for causing genuinely dangerous side effects.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/07/20/the-truth-about-statin-drugs-revealed.aspx
To borrow a phrase from Denis O’Brien, whom I’m reading right now on a completely unrelated matter: “The perfect PR blitz is when the whole world is looking right where you are pointing.”
So it is with cholesterol, and that “statins,” which actually injure more people than they help, are “good medicine.”
Pingback: It’s official, statins do not have any side effects — Dr. Malcolm Kendrick | Worldtruth
Hi Norman, thanks for the post and link.
Here’s hoping I don’t find out whose opinion is correct. Since I’m only taking 40 mg I should be safe, but I also had a heart attack whilst taking them. No good asking any of the doctors at my local surgery, they probably wouldn’t make a decision that went against current thinking. After being given a list of all the things I shouldn’t eat which was just about everything I actually like to eat, my diet would have consisted of lettuce leaves and fruit drinks. Blow that for a game of cricket. Big Pharma has to peddle their wares and make money any which way they can – at our expense – in every which way it matters. My cholesterol has gone down a bit, but it wasn’t that high in the first place, so don’t know where I stand.
Damned if I do and damned if I don’t – sods law.