Earlier this year the New England Journal of Medicine and the New York Times reported on the fact that most of the unfavorable studies on SSRIs were never published, thus withholding the true picture that the medications hardly worked at all.  On top of that, drug companies such as Eli Lily withheld known suicide data (information that has been forced out in lawsuits).  There is a reason psychiatrists are bribed with more Big Pharma money than any other type of doctor.

Last year we found out that these SSRI drugs more than double the risk for fractures in anyone over the age of 50 who uses them regularly.  These bone-damaging effects of SSRIs have been confirmed by another very recent study.

In an unexpected finding from research not involving SSRIs, a new mechanism has been identified which explains why having high blood levels of serotonin is associated with increased bone loss.  The researchers found that too much serotonin directly interferes with how new bone is formed.

This new information also raises the possibility that those taking tryptophan supplements may also raise serotonin into the “bone loss” range.  Please note that Wellness Resources does not sell tryptophan because I have never felt it was the best way to boost and stabilize mood.

There are many nutrients that can help your mind as well as help your bones.  A good diet and regular exercise are the foundation for both mental and bone health.  There are no shortcuts to real health.

The FDA should warn all adults over 50 not to take anti-depressants unless there is simply no other way, as the bone loss risk is simply far too great. 

It is my opinion that statins do little more than put your cardiovascular system in a wheelchair, especially when combined with other troublesome medications like blood pressure pills.  There is a reason that the more aggressively these medications are used, especially with diabetics, the faster people die.  It is a sad commentary on modern medicine that their best efforts to promote quality of cardiovascular health in the over 50 crowd is a collection of de-energizing and de-pressurizing anti-survival medications that have the net result of treating every person so managed as if they are Humpty Dumpty about ready to fall off a cardiovascular cliff.

In the world of fast-food medicine, where numbers on paper are far more important than you, this is a dumbed-down version of medicine suitable for most of those now practicing the subject.  Big Pharma’s task of brainwashing the American public into this system of health is getting progressively more difficult.  The generation of utterly brainwashed older Americans has almost been completely wiped out by these drugs.  Those in their 60s and 70s are a little bit smarter, but still far too many are in a trance when their doctors speak.  Those in their 50s are more likely to protest, but only so far as to wish their doctors would incorporate more natural and preventive solutions.  The majority of Americans over 50 will still jump off whatever bridge their doctor points to.  Most of these drug-popping people would laugh at how dumb anyone is for being in any cult, not even able to see they are a part of the Big Pharma cult making tens of billions in fraudulent profits every year.

Think about it for a minute.  How did Eli Lilly have the money to buy ImClone for 6.5 billion dollars in cash during the worst financial meltdown in the history of the United States?  Answer:  they stockpiled billions of dollars by defrauding taxpayers with off label sales of dangerous brain meds like Zyprexa and Cymbalta, preying on disadvantaged individuals (both old and young) and collecting the money through Medicaid and Medicare at taxpayer expense (and actually got themselves included in the bailout to keep this scam going indefinitely).  In this new world of nonsense, the Wall Street Journal reported than ImClone, on paper, is worth more than General Motors!  And ImClone sells near worthless biotech cancer drugs that don’t cure cancer but keep people alive just long enough to bilk them of their entire life savings before they die ($30,000 for each 8 weeks of treatment).  The Big Pharma motto is:  Manage symptoms, manage numbers, and never under any circumstances make someone healthy so they don’t need a drug.

The questionable practice of cardiovascular preventive medicine, fueled by false “independent” groups like the American Heart Association, is a main power behind the fraudulent promotion of the 20 billion-dollar-a-year statin racket.  Scientists around the country shake in their boots at the notion of stepping on any statin toes with the truth.  Not that they really have to worry, since almost all major medical marketing magazines (otherwise known as scientific journals) refuse to run any study counter to the statin propaganda for fear of losing advertising dollars.  Only in smaller journals from other countries can we see any truth trying to poke its head up out of the sand. 

With that brief background, let’s have a look at the latest round of misinformation coming from the American Heart Association and its friends.  It’s that time of year, the annual meeting of the American Heart Association.  Missiles are shot at vitamin E, while trumpets blare as the statin red carpet rolls out.

The Jupiter Study

This year’s propaganda showpiece is the Jupiter study.  Here is the official party line, so elegantly reported by the New York Times:  “A large new study suggests that millions more people could benefit from taking the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins, even if they have low cholesterol, because the drugs can significantly lower their risk of heart attacks, strokes and death.  The study, involving nearly 18,000 people worldwide, tested statin treatment in men 50 and older and in women 60 and older who did not have high cholesterol or histories of heart disease. What they did have was high levels of a protein called high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, or CRP, which indicates inflammation in the body.  The study, presented Sunday at an American Heart Association convention in New Orleans and published online in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that the risk of heart attack was more than cut in half for people who took statins.”

This sounds great, except the original risk in the study group was negligible.  The data actually means that 120 people would need to take Crestor for 2 years to prevent 1 heart attack or stroke.  At a cost of $3.45 a day, that’s $300,000 for Big Pharma to stop one problem.  Excuse me, but the only news here is the potential bilking of taxpayers and insurance companies.

Crestor, the statin drug used in this study, is the most toxic of all statin drugs.  It works by overwhelming your liver’s ability to clear it.  A Public Citizen petition to the FDA to have this drug removed from the market was denied, as the current FDA is nothing more than a gatekeeper for Big Pharma profits.  Unless corpses are showing up in droves at their door (as with the statin Baycol) the FDA looks the other way no matter what damage is being done. 

The five-year Jupiter study was stopped after two years, under the pretense of overwhelming success (normally studies are stopped because of adverse effects).  Since the side effects of any statin are progressive and cumulative over time, it is likely that the real reason the study was stopped was to publish favorable results before the predictable adverse side effects had time to manifest.  Even in this short two-year period there was a 20% increased risk for diabetes from taking Crestor – a fact that was conveniently downplayed.

This study will be used to promote the sale of dangerous statin drugs to double the current number taking them (which is now at 17 million).  First a person will need a test to see if they even have elevated CRP, which of course implies someone pays for the test.  The leader of the Jupiter study, Dr. Paul M. Ridker, by some strange coincidence is the co-inventor of the CRP test.  Does anyone smell a financial rat?

Exercise Reduces CRP, Extends Life, and Doesn’t Cost Anything

I’m all in favor of anyone reducing their inflammation level to enhance their health.  After all, life can rack up a lot of wear and tear.  There is no one pill that will fix the wear and tear in your life.  You need adequate rejuvenating sleep, good stress management skills, a healthy diet, and exercise.  It is actually a project to be healthy.  The time you spend at it extends your life, so the idea that you don’t have enough time to do healthy behaviors is illogical.

The most effective way to lower your CRP is to be physically fit.  Your aerobic capacity is a direct predictor of your CRP level.  The more aerobically fit you are the lower your CRP.  This is not only true for healthy people; it is true for people with type II diabetes.  Aerobic exercise has been proven to extend your life, rejuvenate your heart, reduce virtually all inflammatory diseases of aging – and it doesn’t cost a penny.  Now why should society pay excessive money for statins for prevention when all people need to do is get off their duffs and exercise?  There is no combination of cardiovascular drugs that can beat out aerobic fitness in any study showing extension of quality life.

AHA Makes Sure to Attack Vitamin E

Big Pharma is always terrified that people will take vitamins that have virtually no side effects and are a fraction of the cost, instead of their extremely dangerous drugs.  Thus, part of the Big Pharma agenda is to use the American Heart Association meeting to not only promote statins but to directly attack vitamin E and other antioxidants.

For example, back in 2004 when the statin powers wanted to endorse lowering LDL cholesterol to abnormally low levels, they simultaneously promoted at their yearly AHA meeting bogus science saying that vitamin E increased the risk of death!  (A complete fallacy.) Outside the AHA marketing meeting the chairman, Dr. Raymond Gibbons of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, was holding a dog and pony show press conference: “I spend all my time trying to tell patients why they should not take vitamin E. Too often in terms of the supplements there’s very scant science. In this area, we have the science. Vitamin E doesn’t work.” He implored his captive audience of reporters to help him convince patients to stop taking Vitamin E and take the “proven” drugs. The next day, all major media ran the story telling consumers vitamin E was dangerous. Program effective. Damage done.

This wonderful formula of success is once again in play, this time as the AHA tries to convince people without high cholesterol to take statins.  JAMA released their “big” vitamin E study just in time for this week’s AHA meeting.  The study shows that vitamin E and C don’t help heart disease in a large group of doctors.  The vitamin E used in the study is a worthless synthetic produced from coal tar by the German drug company BASF, not at all a quality natural vitamin E that would do the job. 

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why these drug pushers are trying to attack vitamin E and vitamin C.  In the Jupiter study Crestor reduced CRP by 37%.  A daily dose of 1200 IU of natural vitamin E (not synthetic garbage from BASF) reduces CRP by 32% and 1000 mg of vitamin C a day reduces CRP by 25%.  It is also known that when individuals try to lose weight on a higher fat/low carb diet their CRP elevates from 25 – 40%.  A combination of 1000 mg of C and 800 IU of vitamin E not only prevents this increase of CRP during dieting; it reduces it by 32%.  Vitamins C and E are quite friendly to your liver, statins are not.  And the nutrients are far less costly than the drug.

While many Americans believe, like president-elect Obama, that health care is a right, the reality is that no society can pay for drugs and services that do not actually show true health as a result of the treatment.  Unless the use of a drug-based protocol can produce a cure and a return of health in a definable period of time (meaning the drug is no longer needed), there should be no obligation for society to be burdened with the costs of the fraudulent practice of medicine.  Doing so amounts to a Big Pharma con job, with billions of tax payer dollars winding up in companies who have produced nothing of value.  Numbers on paper are meaningless.  Quality of health and extended years of quality life are the only products of value.  It is time for Western Medicine to put up or shut up.

Related articles:

The Vital Role of Cholesterol in Health, October 8, 2008
Statins Drastically Impair Healthy Muscle, September 29, 2008
Statins Increase Delirium Rate After Surgery, September 23, 2008
Vytorin Cancer Link Opens Can of Worms, September 3, 2008
Fish Oil Helps Heart Patients – Statins Don’t, September 2, 2008
Low Cholesterol Increases Cancer and Death Risk, August 26, 2008
15% of Population at High Risk for Statin Injury, August 26, 2008
More Insane Statin Pushing on Children, August 7, 2008
Cholesterol is Not the Cause of Heart Disease, August 7, 2008
Antioxidants Low in Coronary Artery Disease, June 29, 2008
Don’t Forget Vitamin C for Your Arteries, June 28, 2008
Perverse Corruption as Doctors are Paid to Sell Drugs, June 20, 2008
Western Medicine Fails Tim Russert, June 18, 2008
Did Statins Cause Senator Ted Kennedy’s Brain Tumor? May 22, 2008
Low LDL Cholesterol Associated with Parkinson’s Risk, April 13 2008
Vytorin Fraud Blasted at Heart Meeting, April 1, 2008
Tocotrienols – A Multi-Dimensional Nutrient Powerhouse, March 7, 2008
Cholesterol Medication Causes Tendon Ruptures, March 3, 2008
The Failure of Cardiovascular Medication, February 11, 2008
Low Levels of Vitamin E Linked to Declining Health of Seniors, January 23, 2008
Vytorin Fraud Places all Statin Therapy in Question, January 15, 2008
Vitamin C Associated with 42% Reduced Risk for Stroke, January 14, 2008
The Statin Scam Marches On, December 10, 2007

In my efforts to help secure health freedom for all Americans I have had a number of interactions with Congress in the past few years and have reached the following conclusions:
1) The Senate is made up of multi-millionaires who maintain power by accepting and granting favors.  Those with large amounts of money, such as the Big Pharma lobby, mostly get what they want even though the American public is typically shafted in the arrangement.  Senators don’t need their paychecks; they get high on brokering power and facilitating deals to the highest bidder, based on whichever political party is most in control and who their friends may be.
2) While the House has some entrenched multi-millionaires who operate like those in the Senate, most members of the House are not the cream of any crop and could not make as much money in the private sector as they are being paid by their position in the House of Representatives (which includes a retirement plan that would be the envy of every American).  Most of these people desperately need their paychecks and will do almost anything to keep them coming.

Collectively, Congress behaves more like a high school click with a cult-like method of keeping its members in line, than representatives of the people.

As the House vote on the economic bailout plan failed, it was plain to see that the members of the House of Representatives, collectively speaking, are not very bright.  Many smart people on Wall Street and Main Street were left scratching their heads.  If the plan was not good enough to pass, then why didn’t they come up with a solution that could pass, rather than send a shock wave through an already teetering market?

The answer is two-fold.  Collectively, they don’t have enough economic skills to come up with such a plan.  Most of them could not run a successful business if their life depended on it, so how could we expect them to solve a real economic problem?  And, an election is coming up and a majority of those in tight races put their position as members of the House ahead of everyone else in the country, self-serving to say the least but par for the course.

Our society has something terribly wrong.  It is a dark day indeed when talking heads on business cable channels have far more average intelligence than the men and women being counted on to make tough leadership decisions for our country and take effective action. 

Within the next 10 years, most likely sooner than later, a costly health care crisis will come front and center and threaten the U.S. economy at least as much as its current problems.  Working on a solution based on identifying the actual problems would ease the pain, and give us time to implement better solutions than waiting until the last minute when hundreds of billions are then needed just to put a Band-Aid on a totally broken system.  Like the current economic crisis, the handwriting is clearly on the wall.  Unlike the current crisis, the taxpayer billions will simply be poured down a drain with no chance to recover anything.  The problem is far more serious than either presidential candidate cares to acknowledge, as talking about it or how to actually solve it would cost lots of votes.

Big Pharma fraud is rampant and not only needlessly killing Americans on a daily basis, but racking up tens of billions of dollars in pointless taxpayer expense.  Will the government bail out Big Pharma as its sales eventually collapse, putting taxpayers on the hook for more failed businesses?  Millions of baby boomers, many of whom by choice have not taken good care of themselves, are entering the world of taxpayer-subsidized health care known as Medicare.  The younger generations cannot possibly foot this bill.  At the same time equally massive numbers of low income people, many of whom suffer from self-induced obesity, are clamoring to be covered by “socialized” health care.  Once again, hard-working Americans cannot possibly foot this bill.  Currently, middle class Americans can hardly afford health care for themselves and their families – much less pay for all the people wanting a free handout.  Where is the money going to come from?  The “rich” can’t pay for everything.

Where will our society draw a line between self-induced health care costs and the obvious need to cover individuals who experience serious accidents or medical problems beyond their control?  Only in America can politicians talk about health care while successfully ignoring every elephant in the room.  It is no surprise that the Big Pharma sponsored media gives them a free pass.  Politicians certainly can’t upset seniors, baby boomers, or minorities – how could they win?  Even worse, how can they stay in power?  It is a sad comment on the decline of the moral fiber of a society when candidates pander to drooling constituents with a plethora of free handouts – rather than debating actual issues with all the cards and elephants on the table.  We all need to be more productive, not more entitled.

Another aspect of this issue is that of health freedom, as your free access to dietary supplements and natural remedies teeters on the brink of extinction as CODEX, regional trade agreements, the FDA Trilateral Cooperation Charter, and other “one world government” ideologies based on “free trade” that isn’t free at all threaten to undermine effective ways for you to take care of your own health.

Then we could talk about how big business has nearly destroyed the quality of our food supply.  This scandal runs deep and has for decades.  We have the makers of junk food.  We have the mass market farming operations and food traders, which have destroyed family farms and communities, while massively polluting the environment.  These companies are delivering disease-producing food to the American public and school lunch programs.  I’ll bet you can’t wait to eat a cloned-meat hamburger.

We have chemical contamination of food with toxic and often experimental pesticides.  We have the Frankenfood movement, which genetically alters food in a grand experiment on the nature of food itself – splicing toxins into the essence of the food that everyone is supposed to eat (all for the financial benefit of the biotech industry). 

The FDA and EPA are puppet organizations, utter failures in protecting the public health, and little more than unelected government officials (often on the take) acting as economic gatekeepers for those wishing to sell toxic compounds as food or those wishing to further contaminate the environment. 

These issues are intimately involved with the cause of cancer and heart disease in this country – and would cost billions to fix – yet must be fixed.  Otherwise, we will end up spending the same billions on health care.

These are the kinds of issues we need government to solve, so as to improve the health of all Americans.  We do not need any more stupid public health programs telling people to eat less and exercise more – everybody already knows that.  Our government could help by having guidelines that force food companies to put real quality food on the table for Americans to eat, while banning the sale of disease-producing additives that permeate our current food supply – and doing its best to actually clean up our environment to get nasty pollution out of our food supply. 

Alas, all you need do is look at the ineptitude of Congress to solve any problem, even when it hits them in the face as a crisis, and you can see that you have little choice but to take your health and the health of your family into your own hands.  Congressional “solutions,” at least those currently existing and those on the drawing board, will do little more than create another huge economic crisis while pitting Americans against Americans in class and generation warfare.  Your best plan is to not need any healthcare because you are healthy.  This requires a lot of hard work and doing the right things more often than not.  There is no easy path to staying healthy as you age – but there is a path.

We already know those in Congress can point fingers; can they look in a mirror?  Will any real leaders please stand up?

Updated on October 4, 2008, after the House and Senate passed the bailout, with the following:

It is anyone’s best guess if the Band-Aid bailout placed on America’s bleeding economy will provide enough temporary relief for Americans to get busy and work our ways out of this hole.  The weak underlying fundamentals in our economy indicate this could be a couple of years of tough sledding. 

You would think the very first priority of Congress would be to cut back unnecessary spending.  Instead, we saw the Senate “solve” the gridlock in the House by turning the bill into a Christmas tree of favors to all their wealthy friends (as I mentioned above, that is how they operate).  Every well-funded lobby in Washington had its hands held out, creating what turned out to be pork-barrel gone wild.  Such a once in a lifetime package of handouts was clearly more than the House could resist.

A bill based on the merits of the issue was not passed.  Instead, a 700 billion dollar taxpayer check was turned over to Henry Paulson.  On Friday the New York Times reported that in 2004 Paulson, along with four of his other top banking friends, were responsible for manipulating the SEC into relaxing standards for the amount of money in a bank’s reserve that has directly caused this crisis.  Bush confided in July, when he mistakenly thought he was not being recorded, “There’s no question about it. Wall Street got drunk – that’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras – it got drunk and now it’s got a hangover.” And it was Bush, in 2006, who hired the drunken Paulson to be Treasury Secretary, the man who will now oversee the bailout. 

I can’t help but mentioning the 100 billion dollar bailout given to Big Pharma as a totally unnecessary addition to this bailout.  Big Pharma is an industry teetering on the brink of collapse from its own fraud and criminal behavior of many of its executives.  It made me sick to my stomach as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle praised the Mental Health Parity addition to the financial bailout, presenting it as benevolent and helpful to the disadvantaged (what a joke).  Over the next five years this will keep Big Pharma going, as they will be able to sell their injurious and deadly brain medications to elderly and children at taxpayer expense.  90% of Big Pharma sales are fraudulent, inflating the cost of health care for one and all.  The Big Pharma lobby runs the Senate, so what would you expect.

The cancer within our government runs very deep.  At the core of the disease are unelected bureaucrats in positions of financial power.  Elected officials are all too eager to pass laws and delegate authority to people who have no right to be making the kinds of decisions they do.  This cancer permeates the SEC, FDA, EPA, and most likely many other aspects of government.  We used to call this the “revolving door,” when managers within these government agencies would do favors for those they are supposed to regulate and then go on to take high paying jobs in those companies later. 

The cancer has spread and it is no longer just a revolving door, it has become a revolving chair.  The head of the FDA is busy working deals for Big Pharma and Big Biotech while pretending to be interested in consumer safety and shooting consumers in the back on legal rights.  The EPA management has cleansed itself of scientists daring to suggest the clean up of anything, like the perchlorate that injures babies across the country on a daily basis.  And the Treasury Secretary will be doling out favors to all his drunken friends, while pretending to watch out for the tax payer.  Scum no longer has to switch jobs, swiveling in a chair to a different phone is all that is required.  Don’t count on Congress to investigate anything beyond a hand slap, as we would quickly discover the true Kings of the revolving chair.

The class action lawsuits around Vioxx have centered around financial compensation for individuals and families that can prove Vioxx was the cause of a heart-related problem – which is not that easy to prove even if it is true.  Merck has done everything in its power to limit the extent of the financial damage.  Much of the data in the new study comes from these legal cases, and many questions about Merck remain unanswered.

The researchers concluded the following about a key Vioxx study:  “The trial was designed by Merck’s marketing division to fulfill a marketing objective; Merck’s marketing division handled both the scientific and the marketing data, including collection, analysis, and dissemination; and Merck hid the marketing nature of the trial from participants, physician investigators, and institutional review board members.”

It is likely that this type of con game permeates the pharmaceutical industry and will continue to do so until drug company executives have criminal charges pressed against them by the Justice Department.  Until that time liability-related lawsuits are simply a cost of doing business and are built into the sale price of the drug.  Sending executives to jail for involuntary manslaughter would send a different message to the executive ranks of these drug companies, and safety for patients would improve immediately. 

Don’t expect help from the FDA, who let Vioxx on the market without proper warnings.  The FDA has sided with drug companies and wants to prevent all patient law suits against Big Pharma.  Since the Justice Department, FDA lawyers, and the White House are all on the same page – don’t expect justice any time soon.  Vioxx has been off the market for some time.  Merck is currently in the middle of trying to downplay its multi-billion dollar Vytorin fraud – the cholesterol-lowering drug that lowers numbers on paper and makes health worse.

If you take care of yourself should you be obligated to pay for those who intentionally do not?  This is concerning to many who do take care of themselves, and are also more likely to earn more money, and thus would end up paying a disproportionate share of taxes for any national healthcare that is devised.

I certainly believe a wealthy society can afford a safety net for serious health issues beyond anyone’s personal control (of which there are many), and such a safety net should cover all members in the society. 

However, we have a situation where Big Pharma has gone wild promoting expensive drugs for prevention that do not improve quality of life or longevity – the drugs mostly improve numbers on paper.  To make matters worse, a new report shows very clearly that the populations of various states are big users of these drugs compared to other states. 

It should not come as a surprise that the states who are the biggest users of Big Pharma pills have the poorest diets and poorest health habits – and have been leading the nation in poor health for decades.  There is a large difference between compassionate care for those in need and dragging an entire society down to its lowest common denominator.  The ten biggest drug-using states on a per capita basis are:  West Virginia, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Iowa.

The lion’s share of such drug costs now center around the subject of obesity and its long-term consequences (diabetes and heart disease) – problems that are self-inflicted to a large extent.  Individuals choose not to be active and to eat poorly. 

It is my opinion that a national health care system, or even our existing Medicare or Medicaid programs, should not pay for these kinds of drugs for longer than a period of one year if the person has a waistline that is more than ½ their height.  Doctors must be held accountable that their treatments actually resolve a problem so the treatment isn’t needed anymore.  Endless drug use as the “treatment” is a joke.

Only exercise, eating well, and getting adequate sleep will enable most people to stay in this positive measurement range as they grow older.  Those who have not taken good care of themselves should be given a chance through public service programs that facilitate a healthy lifestyle.  Taxpayers should not be burdened with drug-related costs based on years of low personal responsibility that sets the stage for poor health – especially when those drugs cannot actually improve quality of health or longevity – and a healthy lifestyle does.

It is no wonder that the AHA is being investigated by Congress for their role in promoting the other major cholesterol drug scam going on right now – the Vytorin scandal.  I certainly hope Congress can follow the stench and track down the financial payments from Vytorin makers to AHA officials, I’m sure there is more than the 2 million per year they have already admitted to.  This is beyond disgusting.

In a previous article I already explained how the AHA was paid off to advocate lowering LDL cholesterol to 90 mg./dl – an unacceptably low and abnormal level of LDL that borders on severe malnutrition of energy systems in your body.  This current scam has racked up tens of billions in fraudulent statin sales.

In the new study brain-dead researchers suggest “instituting a low-saturated fat, low-cholesterol diet in infancy (7 months) is perfectly safe, without adverse effects.” That is absurd; such a diet will cripple mental function, energy, leptin-antioxidant function in the brain, growth, and immune competence.

They go on to say “Our review of the literature convinces us that more aggressive and earlier intervention will probably prevent considerably more than 30% of coronary heart disease.” No proof of any kind is offered to support this opinion.  Certainly these researchers know that the current literature on statins is bogus – with almost all negative studies being blacklisted from publication via the blackmailing and arm-twisting with millions of Big Pharma dollars.

The researchers then go on to misquote a new Japanese study, attributing lower rates of heart disease in Japanese to low cholesterol when the study actually attributed the lower rates of heart disease to fish oil consumption and higher levels of DHA in the blood!

The AHA is a has-been organization, dedicated to the profits of Big Pharma at the expense of human health.  With this despicable attack on the health and wellbeing of children we can now call them the American Heartless Association.

This problem has been going on since 1992 when the FDA started taking money from Big Pharma so as to fast track the drug approval process – which is more akin to buying protection from the mob than to drug safety.  Real safety has been tossed to the wind – and actual effectiveness of drugs is an afterthought.  In fact, the situation is so bad that there is not one drug on the market today, released within the last 15 years, that has an accurate risk-benefit profile.  In many cases the drug companies are actively hiding the risks, waiting for lawsuits, and simply assuming they can make more money selling the drug than the liability the lawsuits will cost.  Concern about the wellbeing of patients takes a distant second place to profits.

It is no small wonder that Senators announced last week they would once again seek major FDA reforms following the next election.  We’ll see if they have any better luck than last year’s dismal attempt that only made the FDA worse. 

The latest chapter in this saga occurred on Monday when the drug companies held a special conference to release the abysmal results of another Vytorin study.  This study was supposed to show that Vytorin would benefit patients with aortic stenosis, a calcification of the heart valve that is increasingly more common in older Americans - leading to congestive heart failure and death.  The study showed Vytorin was no better than placebo – meaning the drug failed again. 

Even worse, researchers were shocked to see that the drug increased the rate of cancer by 61%.  Scrambling to do damage control Merck and Schering-Plough employed outside friendly “experts” from Oxford to evaluate the cancer data.  As the Wall Street Journal reported from a highly unusual media meeting:

“Sir Richard Peto of Oxford was part of a team brought in to analyze the cancer findings…He says the results don’t look like what you would expect if the drug was causing cancer. “It was many different types of cancer,” which you wouldn’t expect to see if the drug caused a particular kind of cancer. “This isn’t the sort of drug that would be expected to produce a material effect on cancer.” And, he said, the numbers weren’t “really much beyond what could be expected to arise” by chance.”

Excuse me Mr. Oxford genius – do you really believe what is coming out of your mouth?  The data shows that the cancer numbers are statistically significant.  Since that hard data clearly does not support the marketing efforts of Merck and Schering-Plough you want us to believe your opinion that the data was by chance?  How convenient to employ a British Knight to slay the Vytorin naysayers.

The feeble argument that Vytorin should have caused one or two forms of cancer, not many different types of cancer, is ridiculous.  Lowering cholesterol to the absurdly low Vytorin-induced levels in this study cripples the natural production of selenoproteins and isoprenoids – key natural defense mechanisms against cancer.  These are generalized cancer defense mechanisms, so of course any type of cancer could manifest based on an individual’s potential weaknesses.

The only surprise about the cancer data is that it was reported at all.  Normally Big Pharma would have swept such incriminating data under the rug.  The reason they couldn’t is because all their Vytroin data is now under such scrutiny they can’t dispose or alter undesirable data like they normally do. 

This cancer information has very broad implications for the entire statin industry – indicating that as cholesterol levels are forced abnormally under the pretense of heart disease prevention, cancer rates are going to rise.  Any fleeting benefits to high dose statin therapy or other means of aggressively and unnaturally lowering cholesterol are rapidly disappearing.

Having good cholesterol numbers because you are healthy is not remotely the same as having good cholesterol numbers because you are being drugged.  The idea that this scam will be pushed on children – wasting tens of billions of taxpayer dollars per year, is simply beyond comprehension.

Statins are fatigue-producing drugs that activate genes that damage your muscles – including your heart.  Giving these dangerous drugs to children while they are in the process of growing is inhumane and must be stopped immediately.  The medical profession, on the subject of preventive health, is an utter failure.  The fact doctors have no clue how to make children healthy is a testament to their ineptitude. 

Only use doctors for acute problems needing emergency assistance.  Never use them for anything else – they are nothing more than part of the Big Pharma drug cartel.  Get your preventive advice and assistance someplace else.