3rd March 2019
Mahatma Gandhi. ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’
A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on Sunday was gong to attack us for daring to question the cholesterol hypothesis and the benefits of statins.
Below is the e-mail I received.
From: Barney Calman
Sent: 28 February 2019 16:53
To: malcolmken
Subject: MOS/Right to reply
Dear Dr Kendrick – The Mail on Sunday plans to publish an article this weekend on growing concerns about claims you and a number of other individuals have publicly made about statins, the role of cholesterol in heart disease, and the allegations that researchers into the drugs are financially conflicted due to payments made to the organisations they work for, and so the evidence they provide about the effectiveness of these medications, and their side effects, are in some way untrustworthy.
Over the past 30 years, more than 200,000 patients have been put through the most rigorous forms of clinical trials to produce definitive proof the tablets lower heart attack risk by up to 50 per cent, and a stroke by 30 per cent, and reduce the risk of death – from any cause.
In January, the editors-in-chief of all 30 major heart health medical journals – each a leading cardiologist – signed a joint open letter, warning: ‘Lives are at stake [due to the] wanton spread of medical misinformation. It is high time that this stopped.’
A 2016 analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which tracks outbreaks and public health concerns, found fake news about statins may have prompted 200,000 patients in Britain alone to quit the drug over a single six-month period following an article you wrote for the BMJ which claimed, incorrectly, that 20 per cent of statins patients quit the drug because of side effects.
They estimate that up for 2,000 heart attack and strokes could be a result of this. We would like to offer you the opportunity to respond to this and the following:
*In your latest book, A Statin Nation, you state: ‘People are being conned. The way to avoid heart disease… has nothing to do with lowering cholesterol.’ This is despite clinical trial evidence to the contrary, and despite no evidence that there is a con, which would imply that those who claim that lowering cholesterol can help lower the risk of heart disease know this is untrue and are deliberately misleading the public.
*It has been alleged that the potential consequences of claims you have made about statins and cholesterol, far outweigh that of the infamous MMR vaccine scandal with one researcher saying: ‘In terms of death and disability that could have been prevented, this could be far worse.’
*In our article, one leading cardiologist states that the facts you and others often cite about cholesterol and statins sound convincing but that in reality ‘they contain a grain of truth, mixed with speculation and opinion, which makes is very difficult for the public to know who to trust.’
*You often quote observational studies as proof of your claims about statins and cholesterol in articles and in media appearances which contradict findings of authoritative clinical trials, which you do not mention. This is misleading.
*In a recent blog you wrote: ‘Professor Sir Rory Collins and Professor Colin Baigent made a pact with the dev… sorry … they made a pact with the pharmaceutical industry to take hold of all the data on statins. They will not let anyone else see the data they hold. Including all the data on side-effects. It is kept completely secret.’ Also: ‘A fact that needs to be emphasised is that the CTT will not let anyone else see the data they hold. Including all the data on adverse events [side-effects] and serious adverse events.’ It is a version of similar claims you have made numerous times over the years. However, the CTT have stated numerous times that they did not originally request the data on all adverse events so did not have it. They also point out that the said data must be requested from the individual research organisation which carries out the trials, and is not in their gift to provide. They say you know this, as they have told you this, so to repeat the claim amounts to a lie.
*Your stance on statins and the link between cholesterol and heart disease amounts to misinformation.
*There is no evidence you work in NHS practice, or as a GP in private practice.
If you wish for any comments to be included in our article please send them to us by midday this Friday.
Many thanks,
_________________
Barney Calman
Health & Lifestyle Content Director
Mail on Sunday
I wondered whether or not I should bother to reply, as I knew that the article would already have been written, and very little was going to be altered – no matter what I wrote. Indeed, I thought long and hard about responding to the allegation that there is no evidence you work in NHS practice, or as a GP in private practice.
This would have been a complete lie, so I wondered about letting them print it, then suing their backsides off afterwards. Then I thought I will spend the next ten years having people write that I am not a doctor at all – on the basis of a lie printed in the Daily Mail. So, I disavowed them of printing this direct lie. Maybe I should just have let them get on with it.
They were also going to write this…
A 2016 analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which tracks outbreaks and public health concerns, found fake news about statins may have prompted 200,000 patients in Britain alone to quit the drug over a single six-month period following an article you wrote for the BMJ which claimed, incorrectly, that 20 per cent of statins patients quit the drug because of side effects.
Frankly, I wish I had written that paper, but I did not. It was written by Aseem Malhotra. This, I trust, gives you some idea of the high level of fact checking going on at the Daily Mail. In the end I did write back to the Daily Mail, and this is what I said. Amazingly, there were very few swear words.
Dear Barney Calman,
Thank you for your e-mail. This is all very familiar ground to me. I am not entirely sure how you would like me to respond to each of your points.
First, I do work for the NHS as a GP, and if anyone wishes to claim that I do not – then that would be direct libel. I am employed by two NHS trusts East Cheshire and CCICP (Central Cheshire Integrated Care Partnership). Feel free to check with either trust, or look me up on the GMC website. But if anyone states that I am not employed in the NHS then I will most certainly sue. And I will win, so I would recommend caution on this point.
As for other specific points.
*You often quote observational studies as proof of your claims about statins and cholesterol in articles and in media appearances which contradict findings of authoritative clinical trials, which you do not mention. This is misleading.
Do I not mention that the studies I quote are observational, or that I do not mention the findings of authoritative clinical trials? Which of these is a problem, and why?
I would add that the proof of the link between smoking and lung cancer was based on observational studies. Does this mean that smoking does not cause lung cancer? Or is that not their argument. Whilst observational studies are not generally considered as robust as randomised clinical trials, they have value. Equally, most epidemiologists would agree that, whilst observational studies (demonstrating association) cannot prove causality (unless the hazard ratios are very high) a lack of association does disprove causation. So, it can be fully valid to rely on observational studies where there is no association, or the observation is in direct contradiction to the hypothesis.
*It has been alleged that the potential consequences of claims you have made about statins and cholesterol, far outweigh that of the infamous MMR vaccine scandal with one researcher saying: ‘In terms of death and disability that could have been prevented, this could be far worse.’
If I am wrong, then this statement could, perhaps be true, although it does represent a form of reprehensible bullying – accusing someone of causing many thousands of deaths. This is an accusation that Rory Collins has repeatedly made. He attacked the BMJ for publishing an article suggesting statins may have a high incidence of adverse effects. You may wish to see the e-mail exchange between Rory Collins and Fiona Godlee on this site https://journals.bmj.com/sites/default/files/BMJ/statins/SP13_Emails_between_Rory_Collins_and_Fiona_Godlee.pdf
I would also like to point you to a study published in the BMJ open Kristensen ML, et al. BMJ Open 2015;5:e007118. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2014-007118
The main findings of this study – not refuted by anyone were…
6 studies for primary prevention and 5 for secondary prevention with a follow-up between 2.0 and 6.1 years were identified. Death was postponed between −5 and 19 days in primary prevention trials and between −10 and 27 days in secondary prevention trials. The median postponement of death for primary and secondary prevention trials were 3.2 and 4.1 days, respectively.
What this study found was that if you took a statin for five years, the increase in life expectancy would be (on average) 3.5 days. That is around 0.75 days per year of statin treatment. That is the important outcome. The figures quoted by Collins and Baigent and the Oxford CTT group are relative risk reductions, and these figures are entirely meaningless unless you know the absolute risk. Equally, to state lives can be saved is meaningless. No-one’s life can be saved. The best we can achieve is to increase life expectancy. That is what matters. I covered much of this in my book Doctoring Data, which I would recommend you read, as it outlines the ways that data are presented to look as beneficial as possible.
*In our article, one leading cardiologist states that the facts you and others often cite about cholesterol and statins sound convincing but that in reality ‘they contain a grain of truth, mixed with speculation and opinion, which makes is very difficult for the public to know who to trust.’
I cannot answer this, what does a grain of truth mean? What is a grain of truth mixed with speculation and opinion? Specific and concrete examples would be required before I could provide any meaningful answer.
*In your latest book, A Statin Nation, you state: ‘People are being conned. The way to avoid heart disease… has nothing to do with lowering cholesterol.’ This is despite clinical trial evidence to the contrary, and despite no evidence that there is a con, which would imply that those who claim that lowering cholesterol can help lower the risk of heart disease know this is untrue, and are deliberately misleading the public.
Yes, I believe that people are being conned, and I believe the public are being deliberately misled. That is why I called my first book The Great Cholesterol Con. I would point out that there has been one major placebo controlled double blind statin study done. ALLHAT-LLT, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health in the US. The conclusions of the study, published in 2002, were that:
CONCLUSIONS:
Pravastatin did not reduce either all-cause mortality or CHD significantly when compared with usual care in older participants with well-controlled hypertension and moderately elevated LDL-C. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12479764
All of the industry funded studies were positive. This is either a remarkable coincidence – or something else. A con perhaps?
In a recent blog you wrote: ‘Professor Sir Rory Collins and Professor Colin Baigent made a pact with the dev… sorry … they made a pact with the pharmaceutical industry to take hold of all the data on statins. They will not let anyone else see the data they hold. Including all the data on side-effects. It is kept completely secret.’ Also: ‘A fact that needs to be emphasised is that the CTT will not let anyone else see the data they hold. Including all the data on adverse events [side-effects] and serious adverse events.’ It is a version of similar claims you have made numerous times over the years. However, the CTT have stated numerous times that they did not originally request the data on all adverse events so did not have it. They also point out that the said data must be requested from the individual research organisation which carries out the trials, and is not in their gift to provide. They say you know this, as they have told you this, so to repeat the claim amounts to a lie.
You could perhaps ask them to point you to any letter or any other form of communication that the CTT have had with me. I will let you know the answer, they have never communicated directly with me, at any time. So, for them to say that they have told me anything is, to be fully accurate, a lie. They claim do not hold the data, yet they have managed to publish major papers on statin adverse effects? For instance, this one. Interpretation of the evidence for the efficacy and safety of statin therapy. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)31357-5/fulltext
Which contains sections such as these
‘The only serious adverse events that have been shown to be caused by long-term statin therapy—i.e., adverse effects of the statin—are myopathy (defined as muscle pain or weakness combined with large increases in blood concentrations of creatine kinase), new-onset diabetes mellitus, and, probably, haemorrhagic stroke. Typically, treatment of 10 000 patients for 5 years with an effective regimen (eg, atorvastatin 40 mg daily) would cause about 5 cases of myopathy (one of which might progress, if the statin therapy is not stopped, to the more severe condition of rhabdomyolysis), 50–100 new cases of diabetes, and 5–10 haemorrhagic strokes. However, any adverse impact of these side-effects on major vascular events has already been taken into account in the estimates of the absolute benefits. Statin therapy may cause symptomatic adverse events (eg, muscle pain or weakness) in up to about 50–100 patients (ie, 0·5–1·0% absolute harm) per 10 000 treated for 5 years.’
So, they have written a paper outlining all the issues of adverse effects and serious adverse effects – and yet they do not have the data. So, how did they manage that?
*Your stance on statins and the link between cholesterol and heart disease amounts to misinformation.
Perhaps you would like to read this paper (which I co-authored) ‘LDL-C does not cause cardiovascular disease: a comprehensive review of the current literature.’ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17512433.2018.1519391?needAccess=true Which was THE most downloaded paper published by Taylor and Francis in the last year.
Or this paper ‘Lack of an association or an inverse association between low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol and mortality in the elderly: a systematic review.’ Published in the BMJ open in 2016
‘High LDL-C is inversely associated with mortality in most people over 60 years. This finding is inconsistent with the cholesterol hypothesis (ie, that cholesterol, particularly LDL-C, is inherently atherogenic). Since elderly people with high LDL-C live as long or longer than those with low LDL-C, our analysis provides reason to question the validity of the cholesterol hypothesis. Moreover, our study provides the rationale for a re-evaluation of guidelines recommending pharmacological reduction of LDL-C in the elderly as a component of cardiovascular disease prevention strategies.’
Which was the most read paper in the journal for five months in a row.
All I see from your e-mail are ad-hominem attacks on me. I see no facts at all. I hope that I have given you sufficient information
Yours Truly
Dr.Malcolm Kendrick
I followed up with a section of the battle that Prof Sir Rory Collins had with Fiona Godlee over the publication of the Aseem Malhotra paper where Rory Collins demanded an apology and a retraction of the paper. The BMJ took this so seriously they held an independent review.
I wrote a second e-mail to Barney Calman
I would also point you to this paragraph
A 2016 analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which tracks outbreaks and public health concerns, found fake news about statins may have prompted 200,000 patients in Britain alone to quit the drug over a single six-month period following an article you wrote for the BMJ which claimed, incorrectly, that 20 per cent of statins patients quit the drug because of side effects.
I did not write that article. I suggest you check your facts a little more closely before putting any article out there.
Listen, we all know where this attack is coming from. The CTT and Professor Rory Collins and Baigent et al. They attacked Aseem Malhotra and Professor Abramson, then the BMJ, for publishing articles by Aseem and Abramson suggesting statins caused adverse effects in around 20% of people. Collins attacks were severe, and the BMJ was require to hold an investigation, in which Collins attacks on these papers were judged to be unfounded. The entire review can be seen here. https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/349/bmj.g5176.full.pdf
I would strongly suggest that you read it in full. It is, in a restrained manner, damning of Rory Collins and the CTT.
Here are a couple of sections from that report
All-cause mortality —A recent editorial by Vinay Prasad in Annals of Internal Medicine illustrates a fundamental problem that has consistently concerned the panel. Prasad compared two meta-analyses of statins in primary prevention that differed in their statistical conclusions by less than half a percentage point and yet reached opposite conclusions—namely that that “statins reduce . . . total mortality” or conversely that “data. .. showed no reduction in mortality associated with treatment with statins.” Unfortunately, patients and clinicians have to make decisions in the grey area between these two diametrically opposed conclusions. The panel supports Prasad’s contention that “The Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ study has a robust set of de-identified individual-patient data, which can improve our understanding, and those data should be made widely available.
The conclusions of the BMJ report, which are carefully written are worth considering
The panel was unanimous in its decision that the two articles do not meet any of the criteria for retraction. The error did not compromise the principal arguments being made in either of the articles. These arguments involve interpretations of available evidence and were deemed to be within the range of reasonable opinion among those who are debating the appropriate use of statins. In making this assessment, the panel is not expressing an opinion about the merits of these arguments, as that work was beyond the scope of the panel.
The panel did have one final comment. It became clear to the panel that the fact that the trial data upon which this controversy is based are held by the investigators and not available for independent assessment by others may contribute to some of the uncertainty about risks and benefits. Different investigators may come to different conclusions with the same data. In fact, a particularly germane example occurred recently in which two experienced Cochrane groups were charged with evaluating a particular intervention and, despite being given the same instructions, data, and resources, did not arrive at identical results or conclusions. The panel strongly believes that the current debates on the appropriate use of statins would be elevated and usefully informed by making available the individual patient level data that underpin the relevant studies
Yours truly
Dr Malcolm Kendrick
P.S. employed to work in the NHS as a doctor – which is a fact.
In other words, the attacks on Aseem Malhotra were completely unfounded, as were the attacks on the BMJ. The whole issue of all-cause mortality is complex and there is a need for debate. Rory Collins and his team hold the robust set of de-identified data and those data should be made widely available. That would be the data they claim not to have?
How can it possibly be allowed that one group of researchers hold all the data from the statin trial (not, apparently the adverse effects data – although they have written detailed papers on this issue) and refuse to share it with anyone else?
Anyway, this is probably enough for now. I just wanted to give you some idea of the attacks and battles that are gong on and to shine a little light on what happens. The Mail on Sunday have published a very long article attacking ‘statin deniers’ with pictures of me Zoe and Aseem at the front. I think I look quite dashing. Not as dashing as Aseem who is a very handsome swine, and also young, and intelligent – and brave. Yes, I hate him.
Nor am I as attractive as Zoe Harcombe. But hey, at least I got my picture in the national press. I wasn’t very keen on the bit where they called me self-pitying. But I was quite pleased that they included some of the stuff that I sent.
Until next time, best wishes from the mass-murdering, statin denying, self-pitying Dr Kendrick.
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick 
A good balance on mail on Sunday !!
Alasdair
>
It is sad that people are so sure they are right that they cannot countenance the opinions of anyone who disagrees. I am reminded of a comment by Montaigne (writing about the burning of witches) “It is putting a very high value on one’s conjectures to have a man roasted alive because of them”.
Have your book sales increased? Perhaps the government is trying to secretly kill everyone off early due the increasing cost of pensions and elderly care.
Go Dr – you tell’em! Tho it makes me mad they put you, and Zoe, Asseem et al, through this – yet again! Keep banging your drum sir, not your head – it will get through to them eventually.
Hello Malcolm How on earth can “cholesterol” be regarded as the cause of heart attacks? A major problem is the spin put on to data by the use of relative rather than absolute changes in event mortality rates. It should continually be pointed out that at the height of the epidemic of coronary heart disease deaths (1970–1980) pravastatin given to men with the world’s highest incidence of heart attack deaths (west of Scotland) caused the five-year death rate to fall from 4% to 3%. This to my mind is a 1% reduction in that of 100 men at very high risk taking a statin for five years, only one benefited. This simple fact is hidden behind the spin. With heart attack deaths having declined dramatically (mainly before the introduction of statins) it is likely that today more than 1000, and perhaps 10,000 men will need to take a statin for five years for one to benefit (and far more to experience side-effects). You know all this. It is worth pointing out that statins were developed as antibiotics, but the side-effect of cholesterol lowering became a much more lucrative direction of marketing. I have just been writing a presentation on Giordano Bruno, executed in 1600 by hanging upside down over a burning fire. I hope you do not experience the same at the hands of your inquisitors. Keep up the good work. David Grimes
>
David, nice to hear from you. I like your work. As you are well aware, the entire cholesterol con is simply nonsense. You may be pleased to know that I am plagiarising your comments on the ‘flat paradigm’ in the book I am currently writing.
Well done, Dr Kendrick, but what a waste of your time having to answer this nonsense.
It may not be the case but I wonder if The Science Media Centre have had a hand this?
The parallels between the way the truth is being spun reminds me very strongly of the PACE trial. This was a trial commissioned by the government to look at ( and ultimately sell) the “ benefits” of Graded Exercise Therapy and CBT to patients suffering from Myaalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), many of whom are bed bound with serious neurological problems,
More than £5million pounds was allocated to this psychological paradigm where results were manipulated so that you could finish the trial with a higher disability score than you had when you were recruited and yet be considered to have benefited.
(http://www.virology.ws/2018/06/13/trial-by-error-a-curriculum-for-treating-cfs-with-cbt/)
Many people taking part were left much more severely affected by being “sold” this “treatment” by GPs and other health professionals as this one trial informed the NICE guidelines for ME/CFS.
People have been left bed bound or wheelchair bound as a result of the misinformation peddled by those who conducted the trial and aided greatly by the Science Media Centre who are behind most stories concerning ME/CFS or “ Chronic Fatigue” as they like to term, and hence denigrate, it.
Never fear, Dr Kendrick, you will be vindicated. The PACE trial is now being taught in universities across the USA as an example of how not to conduct rigorous scientific investigation and every MP who referred to the PACE trial in 2 recent House of Commons debates did so with the prefix “ fraudulent” or “ discredited” – and for the first time NICE are rewriting their ME/CFS guidelines.
Good luck!
That’s good to hear! I recall a TV programme where some poor child with ME was forcibly removed from his family and put into a mental hospital where he was subjected to the PACE treatment. When they let him out he still had ME and also had PTSD.
Book ? you’re writing ‘another’ one? – I thought it would be difficult to go beyond the Statin Nation… We look forward to it !
When ?
It’s not just the use of relative mortality. It is the egregious, and probably deliberate casual mix and match of relative and absolute rates, carefully presented in a way designed to reinforce their case.
Dr James le Fanu has commented on this in his excellent book, ‘Too Many Pills’.
Self pitying Quack 😉
I trust your opinion whereas I mistrust the mainstream consensus.
Keep up the good fight!
Ooh how I’d love to prove these smug idiots wrong. 56 this year. 5’6″. 52 kg. Zero medication, not even paracetamol. Keto/very low carb 5 years. Gave up statins in my suicide attempt (hahaha) 19 years ago. When I reach 100 years I’ll contact this crappy paper and ask them to print my story. Meanwhile, I remain a loyal fan of yours as well as Zoë’s and Aseem’s and many other brave ones.
They’ve been proven wrong thousands of times over.
Truth isn’t as profitable as the statin con.
Forgot…I have FH with sky-high cholesterol. I was expected to kick the bucket in my 20s or 30s.
Ha, love it! But what a ridiculous waste of time having to respond to spurious nonsense by the Daily Mail. I think you were right to reply, it might (though probably won’t) make them consider their article a little more carefully.
On the strength of it all I’ll buy your book.
Best
Joanna
________________________________
From: Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Sent: 03 March 2019 10:51:44
To: joannadennison@hotmail.com
Subject: [New post] Cholesterol Games
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “3rd March 2019 Mahatma Gandhi. ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’ A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on”
Respond to this post by replying above this line
New post on Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
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Cholesterol Games
by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
3rd March 2019
Mahatma Gandhi. ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’
A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on Sunday was gong to attack us for daring to question the cholesterol hypothesis and the benefits of statins.
Below is the e-mail I received.
From: Barney Calman
Sent: 28 February 2019 16:53
To: malcolmken
Subject: MOS/Right to reply
Dear Dr Kendrick – The Mail on Sunday plans to publish an article this weekend on growing concerns about claims you and a number of other individuals have publicly made about statins, the role of cholesterol in heart disease, and the allegations that researchers into the drugs are financially conflicted due to payments made to the organisations they work for, and so the evidence they provide about the effectiveness of these medications, and their side effects, are in some way untrustworthy.
Over the past 30 years, more than 200,000 patients have been put through the most rigorous forms of clinical trials to produce definitive proof the tablets lower heart attack risk by up to 50 per cent, and a stroke by 30 per cent, and reduce the risk of death – from any cause.
In January, the editors-in-chief of all 30 major heart health medical journals – each a leading cardiologist – signed a joint open letter, warning: ‘Lives are at stake [due to the] wanton spread of medical misinformation. It is high time that this stopped.’
A 2016 analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which tracks outbreaks and public health concerns, found fake news about statins may have prompted 200,000 patients in Britain alone to quit the drug over a single six-month period following an article you wrote for the BMJ which claimed, incorrectly, that 20 per cent of statins patients quit the drug because of side effects.
They estimate that up for 2,000 heart attack and strokes could be a result of this. We would like to offer you the opportunity to respond to this and the following:
*In your latest book, A Statin Nation, you state: ‘People are being conned. The way to avoid heart disease… has nothing to do with lowering cholesterol.’ This is despite clinical trial evidence to the contrary, and despite no evidence that there is a con, which would imply that those who claim that lowering cholesterol can help lower the risk of heart disease know this is untrue and are deliberately misleading the public.
*It has been alleged that the potential consequences of claims you have made about statins and cholesterol, far outweigh that of the infamous MMR vaccine scandal with one researcher saying: ‘In terms of death and disability that could have been prevented, this could be far worse.’
*In our article, one leading cardiologist states that the facts you and others often cite about cholesterol and statins sound convincing but that in reality ‘they contain a grain of truth, mixed with speculation and opinion, which makes is very difficult for the public to know who to trust.’
*You often quote observational studies as proof of your claims about statins and cholesterol in articles and in media appearances which contradict findings of authoritative clinical trials, which you do not mention. This is misleading.
*
Brilliant reply.
Brilliant Riposte Malcolm.
As indeed is Zoe’s.
Guessing Knighthoods and Damehoods gone forever, but think of the bigger and better picture.
Thank you for persevering
Yes, but they knighted Professor Sir Rory Collins. And Jimmy Saville. In that context, NOT being knighted is something of an endorsement…
Jo – 👍😂
HAHAHAHAHA!
I’m surprised he isn’t a Lord, yet . . .
Briilliant!
I saw it on twitter this morning – thank you for your prompt post.
Will they publish their apologies to all three of you with similar fanfare I wonder?
The “Mail on Sunday”??? To quote a certain tennis playing gentleman, “you cannot be serious.”
The Mail on Sunday isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Go get ‘em, Dr. K. You and your colleagues are beacons in the dark for which an enormous THANK YOU for all your hard work and dedication.
Eeh, I’m proper cross. 😬
As I said last month….I am still being pestered to restart these toxins after a 6 year spell without them.
Thank goodness for Dr Kendrick’s new post this morning, as such dreadful press coverage by the Mail rag proves to me that he and his like must be correct. I am so sorry that they are being persecuted in this way.
I got to see the poisonous article for ‘free’ on the internet….I couldn’t possibly hand over real money; plus family members would lynch me if they found a copy in our house.
Jennifer, I also happened to read it for free here in Florida and although it was a fairly decent photo of the good Dr. Kendrick I was quite disgusted by the poorly written and sensationalized article. “Fake news” was a really tacky little jibe, wasn’t it? I checked this blog right away; happy to read today’s blog post. In a few weeks I shall be confronting my cardiologist and telling him that I am no longer taking the atorvastatin/toxin he prescribed me last year which I am convinced cause significant hair loss, malaise, and muscle pain. He’s going to yell at me but at least my primary care doctor gave me her blessing to go off the statin when I told her about the side effects. I bought Dr. Kendrick’s “Cholesterol Con” book and found it compelling and empowering. I, too, am sorry for the persecution and I hope his rejoinder will find readers, but only time will tell!
The one good thing about the Daily Mail is that the respondents often have far more Clue than their journalists, which cannot be said of the Guardian. But who are all those people in the right hand column and why should I know about them?
Yes, your one and half quid buys a xx pp of tabloid with blank newsprint. Ink, wages and profit comes from advertising revenue, so the more “interesting” – or controversial they can be, the greater is the circulation and therefore, the more that can be charged for the honour of advertising therein.
Quite simple really, so accuracy of boring facts is counter-intuitive.
Forty + years in the newspaper trade.
The performance of these, “Usual Suspects” is both persistent and predictable as their produced ‘results’.
Anyway, with apologies to scripture, ‘Who is the Mail on Sunday that we ought be mindful of him?’
James. I watched the Levison enquiry on TV as frequently as I possibly could. It was an eye opener and I had great hopes, especially awaiting part 2, (which never materialised) But it has all come to nothing, and here we have witnessed a side of British ‘journalism’ which we could well do without. Trump seems to have brought the word ‘fake’ into universal use, but I prefer to be blunt…LIES. Honest journalists must cringe at stuff printed in the Mail and it’s like, as must Malcom, Zoe and Aseem, when they are mentiioned in detrimental tones by members of their own professions.
I am so thankful that we have good people who are prepared to put their heads above the parapet…it restores my faith in humanity. They are courageous and honourable people.
I wouldn’t wrap my fish and chips in the Mail on Sunday.
Actually, the price of a newspaper generally covers the cost of the blank paper, folded, cut and wrapped in bundles. Advertising pays for ink, costs and profit, which explains why so little effort goes into “Journalism” – News is only used to fill un-sold column-inches.
Malcolm
Great reply. I note that there seems to be a flare up of similar attacks, so guess the statin actors are getting worried.
It must be very flattering to you three to be the subject of such attacks, it must mean you are getting somewhere. Well done.
Please keep on.
They only attack those they fear…
Don’t worry, the Schopenhauer Effect will kick in before you know it !
My First Schopenhauer: ; – )
https://fs.blog/2017/01/schopenhauer-dangers-clickbate/
Excellent fine NHS Dr. 🙂
Bravo! Everyone knows that the press sensationalise and print what they like. Husband currently being persuaded to double his statins from 20-40 despite previous side effects (elevated blood sugar/mind fog) and the fact that his QRisk2 score of 14.1 is only 1point above the general population as his BP is low and his BMI 25. Nurse told him they want to get it ‘down to a 10’. I ran it with altered criteria to find he would have to be 10 yrs younger to get anywhere near a 10 😂. Nurse wasn’t familiar with the effects of CQ10 either. I really wish (some) health professionals would start listening to the patient instead of simply prescribing! Keep going Dr Kendrick. It is a con.
Having had a heart attack last autumn, I have been surprised and very disheartened to find out how narrow is the knowledge range of the two cardiologists I have seen. (One in the private sector, one NHS). I worked my whole career in electronic design engineering, a fast-moving field where you have to keep learning about new ideas and techniques all the time. If not you’ll soon find yourself out of a job.
As far as I can tell, in medicine, you get your qualifications, and then work hard to get the comfortable, well-paid position. You then sit back, put your feet up and not bother to keep up to date with new ideas, new techniques, and certainly don’t read widely about ideas that may be a bit too much for you.
Thank Heaven for doctors like Malcolm Kendrick, James le Fanu and others who did keep up their interest in what was happening in the wider medical world.
I think it has more to do with the tick box culture instilled by NICE. If I had a pound for every time a health professional has tried to tell me what NICE guidelines say…
I saw a cardiologist recently as I had a high calcium score. He wanted to put me on statins but he did consed that statins increase the calcium. Who in their right mind would want to do such a thing? I do not have any supposed risk factors, except familiarly risk. I now do my own research and love the work of Dr Malcolm Kendrick.
Jan B – ‘The Mail on Sunday isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.’
Agreed, and I think the online version is an abuse of technology, although I admit to reading it, after being tipped off, to see how objective it might be. Not very, in my opinion.
Oh, they really must be scared to attack like this. I would love to see a court case, are you up for it.
Keep buggering on.
Excellent response, Dr Kendrick. My response is to order your latest book, ‘Statin Nation’.
I am just reading it, and it’s brilliant. Thanks for all your work, Dr K. I am extremely sorry you have to endure these attacks, but there are plenty of us who really respect and appreciate what you and others in the field are doing.
It is an excellent book. All the better for Dr Kendrick being a little more restrained and detailed than he was in his first!
Perhaps you should have let them publish the
‘not in the NHS’ bit. Then suing them successfully could have given you a chance for an out-of court settlement which included a right to reply with equal prominence in their appalling rag. But no matter. This could mean a spike in book sales for all three of you!
Regards
John Burton
Go gettum Dr K!
I was gifted a wry smile when I drifted to the comments section of that article. It read like, “hold on a second” and “but, but” “I had to quit statins” “I got depressed had to give them up” “enuff of this pro statin propoganda” “suffered pains and aches” and maybe I am wrong but there appeared to be no comments in favour of statination. So the great British public must heed the officially sanctioned medical denyers of statin side effects and purveyors of pharmaceutical snake oil and ignore their own experience. The “devastating investigation” had a devastating response from those who should take their Medicine & stay quiet.
Still the comfort zones of middle England represented by the Daily mail was unusually antagonistic in their response. Like they were being asked to sanction knife procurement for all men of a certain age in east London.
The very unfortunate experience of one man who opted out of statins many years ago & who recently had a heart attack was emotive but proved absolutely nothing.
Reminds me of the Aesop’s fable of the frog in the boiling hot water and as it got hotter and hotter it just sat there till it died.
Oh yeah, I like that – statin side effect deniers!
I think the overall dire quality of this Daily Mail article is best summed up by the last part of this ridiculous introductory paragraph…
Over the past 30 years, more than 200,000 patients have been put through the most rigorous forms of clinical trials to produce definitive proof the tablets lower heart attack risk by up to 50 per cent, and a stroke by 30 per cent, and reduce the risk of death – from any cause.
“ Statins can reduce the risk of death – from any cause”. Does this mean that Statins will protect you from a 1,000 ft fall from a building or standing in front of a speeding train…😂😂😂😂
Dr John Patchett
Of course not – maybe a 500ft fall
Oh dear, well now, that must have been the very cause of the fact that the husband of a good friend gave up his statins (two years ago now, but I introduced him to Dr Kendrick, and he chucked the statins ! Now, just a few days ago, he was up a ladder coming down from the mezzanine floor in his garage, when the ladder slipped, he fell with the ladder on top of him. 5 broken ribs, punctured lung, and multiple fractures to his pelvis.
Definitely caused by giving up statins… (He is a fractious and impatient patient – but blokes make lousy patients !)
Love your response to that preposterous article in the Mail on Sunday – and love the note on the reader’s responses to the Mail’s article. Laugh a minute. You go get em, they need a darn good roasting. Thanks for your courage.
mmec7
I hope the husband of a friend of yours has learned his lesson. Statins prevent falls from ladders. I remember getting a bee sting after quitting statins. Spooky or what ? It seems like “but apart from” no muscle pain, fewer aches and pains, reverse of Type 2 Diabetes, greater mental clarity; – What has getting off statins “ever done for us?”
Peace of mind ?
mmec7 Hope ur not suggesting that I am brave !
Jerome Savage – “mmec7 Hope ur not suggesting that I am brave !” That remark was was directed to Dr Kendrick. I am really making an omelette this evening ! Though am sure that you are very brave
Falling off ladders – Not to be recommended. Statins, lack of, must be the causal factor. Hmmmm. Perhaps calls for research, followed of course by a detailed paper, AKA the great parachute jump…
mmec7 Me brave ? WIP !
Bet you statins don’t protect you from medical mistakes / misadventure, either !
Yeah. Both statins and the flu vaccine lower all cause mortality. So take a statin so you won’t get run over or struck by lightning
I find it overwhelmingly depressing that ‘senoir’ medical figures defend what is obviously the undefenable. I am not a medically trained individual but with a couple of neurons buzzing about my cortex even i can establish the relative merits of statins from the information provided by you. Certainly enough to cease using them after quickly developing muscle fatigue and brain fog, even though i was only on the cusp of being , apparently, needing to take them. Also i am not remorseful of losing half a day of my life in relinquishing the use of statins.
As Mr Obama said. “They go low, you go high” Kendrick out!
Thank you and your two cohorts for your bravery, dashing good looks and perseverance.
I think you are proving Mrs Ghandi correct.
I, too, am not medically trained, but a modicum of intelligence, combined with Dr K’s marvellous clarity (the recent book The Statin Nation is a model) means I can evaluate the evidence and decide without difficulty that statins are, to say the least, not a good idea.
Apologies – I got the title wrong. It is A Statin Nation, not The Statin Nation. Brilliant book!
Thanks to Malcolm I was able to stop taking statins as what I read about them helped me get my health back to 80% , I still have muscle wastage from taking 4 different statin, being told we just need to find the right one and statins don’t do that to your muscles .
Thank you Malcolm for helping me
Oh Malcolm.
Thank you for fighting for critical thinking, and for not losing your nerve. I hope they don’t succeed in this monstrous bullying witchhunt.
Courage, and thank you. LSW
Right on Malcolm!
👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
We love your posts, so please keep up the good work!! Fight the battle for truth!!
Vriendelijke groet, Geke Veenstra
>
Just replied to Sunday Mail article comments as follows: OMG HOW WRONG CAN YOU BE?
Dear Sir, Your paper today contains fake news, stating that “statin deniers” are putting patients at risk, how little you understand the situation and how lilttle you have inverstigated and read up about it. You are actually 100% wrong, so I can only assume that you are an ignorant journalist, (the alternative could only fringe benefits from the statin industry) or you are deliberatelt putting out this information to scare poeple into buying the paper (or taking statins)
I knew nothing about this issue until I was prescribed stains last June, following which my health deteriorated due to statin-induced side effects, which was statins(toxic fungi extracts) doing what they are meant, to, stopping my body producing amongst other things, over 50% of the cholesterol it should have to keep my organs running, inparticular my brain. Without enough cholesterol your brain goes into slow motion (as do your mescles), and has even been shown to be a cause of Alzheimers disease. (If you relly want to know, Read Henry Lorins Book, he studied and investigated the cause of alzhehimers and found it to be low levels of cholesterol). Ask carers in care homes, what do alzheimers patients look lilke? thin, they used to be active, they used to be intelligent, they were not fat underacive layabouts, they were fit, active, slim poeple whose choletsterol was reduced. The gene assocxiated with higher levels of Alzheimers is APOE4, what does it do differetly to APOE 2 or 3? It gived the brain less cholesterol.
If you really want to know the truth, read DrKendricks books, read the evidence that is not trials paid for by pharmaceutical companies, read David Evens books, read Duane Graveline, read the Yosephs books, I dare you, then you decide. And if you take statins, they age you fast, so you dont think you have side effects as your brain starts to go, the perfect drug to make lots of money. We question the right to die and organisations like EXIT, yet statins slowly, surely, bit by bit do the job for us. On the NHS! and for profit by a drug manufacturer!! Open your eyes and smell the coffEE!!
I was a a patient last year unaware of what statins actually were and what they would do to me, I stopped taking them and am recovering, I am lucky, I asked quesions, and the answers I got from Dr Kenrick, and others, are the truth, which eventually will out. Have no douby about that, its just a matter of time, truth will surface. Meanwhile many including yourselves now, are creating this FAKE NEWS, helping increase statin profits, reducing the quality of life of those taking them and not realizing thst it you that have been conned!
Dr Kendrick, Zoe Harcomber and Dr Aseem Mamlhotra are very brave, courageuous, intelligent questioning individuals who are risking their own professions and personal lives for us to know the truth and to give us the option of choice. I cant thank them all enough, and hope I will still be around when Dr Kendrick gets a Nobel prize for his work.
You should be running a story to help the public understand the truth, not to deny them, shame on you.
Read these books then make an informed opinion. And then please print the truth in your paper. If you dare, its hard to stand up for the truth against a large prevailing financial wind.
Until then you have no right to slate these fanatstic professionals to whom many poeple owe their quality and length of active life.
Yours, Deborah B
If they were so interested in saving lives and not profits. They will look at many other more beneficial interventions without the risk of side effects that statins have.
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196%2813%2900127-4/fulltext
Conclusion
Compared with placebo or control, L-carnitine is associated with a 27% reduction in all-cause mortality, a 65% reduction in VAs, and a 40% reduction in anginal symptoms in patients experiencing an acute myocardial infarction. Further study with large randomized controlled trials of this inexpensive and safe therapy in the modern era is warranted.
And a bit off the subject, I left a box of books ( Kendrick, Graveline, Yosephs, Evans) with a local GP practise last week with a cov eri ng letter suggesting tnat they may find them inetersting and maybe it would count towards CPD. I receieved a phone call asking me to collect them, they did not want them. Not totally uunexpected,so I guess my next target is the CCG and maybe the Health Minister as he obviously hasnt read them yet!
Deborah B –
I lent my copy of the first book to my GP, who, when I first decided NOT to take stations and mentioned the book, said “Yes, but is this book written by a DOCTOR?” To which I said yes, etc. etc. I handed the book over to him.
The GP then promptly emigrated to Australia, and I never saw the book again. (I suspect he LIKED the book – and at least was open-minded-enough to give it a read.)
Update – he’s back in the UK now, many years later, and back in the same GP practice. And I’m still alive. Age 66, and still working, but on shorter hours. But I can’t get an appointment with him ; – )
david hoare: I never loan anything that I want back. In the case of a book important enough to lend, as all Dr. Kendrick’s books are, I simply purchase a new copy. Lent books never come back; probably a good thing.
The article in the Mail was truly dreadful – all very worrying. Keep up the good work and don’t let the buggers grind yoo down!
This is as controversial as Semmelweis recommending that doctors wash their hands. (For which he was ultimately beaten to death.) However he was right. Don’t need big pharma to protect statins when the massive egos of Collins and co are doing the job for them.
Dear Dr. Kendrick,Cowards, thiefs and the super greedy, always attack the folks who have something valuable to contribute to the well-being of human kind. The main interest of the pharma mob is the in-interrupted flow of cash into their coffers. My husband was on Atorvastatin for many years, yet he died anyway. It messed with his body and his mind. He even got what one neurologist described as Transient Global Amnesia. Hardly anyone knew about this new mental ailment and there was no cure. Perhaps it was caused by Statins as well, as some sources describe Statins to be neuro-disruptors. I guess we’ll never know, as the pharma boys will not let go of their handsome income. Despicable and unspeakably SAD. I am sure that there are many more people out there who appreciate your efforts and are just as grateful as I am for your integrity and loyalty to human kind. Thank you. Anna
Fantastic!!! Brilliant!!!! Keep it up!!!!!!
I suspect many more people will now find their way to your blog. Hurray!
Sorry you have to take time to reply to this rubbish when you could be continuing the series. However, well done!
With a mention in the national press you’ll soon be notable enough for your own Wikipedia entry ;o)
I see Tim Noakes is also not a Rory Collins fan:
Martin Back, yes; it never fails to shock me how Professor Collins routinely downplays the significance of statin-induced diabetes, even while saying it is the most likely serious side effect.
If statins can cause diabetes in the first place, to what extent do they make it more difficult to control once you are officially “diabetic”?
What amazes me is that one is prescribed a statin BECAUSE one is diabetic. Der. It makes it worse, surprise, surprise.
“That’s all right, we have drugs for that too”
Dear Dr. Kendrick, What sloppy journalism from the Mail on Sunday. It took me two minutes to check that you are registered as a GP with the GMC (not that I ever doubted it). For the journalist to post such an inflammatory and ignorant comment throws doubt on anything else they might have to say. In fact, the whole article reeks of some kind of ‘cut and paste’ article without any original or critical thinking.
Thank goodness we still have some people like you, Dr. Kendrick, Dr. Aseem Malholtra and Dr. Zoe Harcombe among others to rebuff this 1984 ‘groupthink’. To date question any criticism of the status quo on a matter of health seems to have become heresy – a sad state of affairs.
I’m just re-reading ‘Doctoring Data’. It’s brilliant. Thank you Malcolm.
Hi, nice one Doc. I have just been watching Doctor Aseem Malhotra’s lecture to a parliamentary committee. He talks and shows data obtained from Doctor David Unwin relating to tests on Type 2 diabetes. Part of the data is ‘Total Cholesterol’ HDL Cholesterol ‘ and ‘Cholesterol Ratio.’ Doctor Malhotra talks of ‘Cholesterol profiles improving significantly.’ ‘This fantastic’ he goes on to add. Firstly, are they significant? (TC 4.9 to 4.4, HLD 1.2 to 1.3(?) CR 4.0 to 3.5.) Secondly, is it that you and the other good doctor would agree about statins but have some disagreement about cholesterol? Thirdly, am I just misunderstanding? I brace myself your answer.
I spent a bit of time with David Unwin giving walks in the NW of England. His job was to say that a high fat diet helped people lose weight and cured diabetes. My job was to tell people that eating fat did not cause CVD. Neither Aseem or David believe in the cholesterol hypothesis, but currently they are trying to battle on the diet/weight loss/diabetes front. They are not fighting two battles at one. Maybe a good tactic, maybe it will backfire on them. Not sure
Oh dear!! So much for a free intelectual of expressing ideas and data. We the public are not stupid and would like to hear the other views.
Hold on tight. We really need your brave voice.
Thank you. It is because of you, Zoe and a few others that we are not being conned. I just feel sorry for those people who will just skim the article and keep taking their pills.
When I lived in the UK my doctor measured my cholesterol and told me that I had to go on to statins. (Simvastatin 40). I followed his advice and took them religously for a while, thinking that my doctor obviously knew what was for the best. Then I came across your work and after reading everything I decided to change my lifestyle regarding eating and exercise. At the time I was in the process of relocating to Germany, and after getting settled in here I registered with a local doctor. On my first visit I had all the tests done including Blood tests, and when I went for the results, I was waiting for the prescription for Statins and BP meds. When they did not come I asked her why she was not writing a prescription for them, and she told me that I didn’t need to take any medicines. Every six months I have my Bloods checked at the clinic, and so far after 3.5 years I have not had to go back on any medicines at all. My Doctor also told me that she thought Statins were prescribed far too much, when they were not necessary. You and her are proof that I have put my trust in the right people. Keep up the good work Dr. Kendrick.
“There is no evidence you work in NHS practice, or as a GP in private practice.” This shows the level of investigative journalism, It took me less that 1 minute to locate you on the GMC List of Registered Medical Practitioners. Of course, that does not mean you practise but probably a phone call would have resolved that in minutes, or an email within a day.
On the CTT & statins, I would say that you only have scientific results worth publishing if the results can be checked and verified by others, which is what you are saying. On the adverse effects, again this would be a first line of study for honest science, not an afterthought, using the Popper insight into falsifying a hypothesis. Like Prof Collins making a big fuss over a decimal place in a number in the Malhotra article, this attack on you and others suggests that you must be onto something significant.
It took me two and half minutes to discover this earth-shattering fact
“GMC Reference Number
2xxxxxx (redacted for privacy)
Given Names
Malcolm Edward John
Surname
Kendrick
Gender
Man
Status
Registered with a licence to practise; this doctor is on the GP Register”
with a slow, ADSL internet connection,
– from Australia.
You are one of my heroes!
Well that’s scuppered my thoughts of ever buying the Daily Mail on Sunday. What a bunch of journalistic idiots. I imagine they didn’t bother checking their facts anyway. What it immediately made me wonder was whether said journalists were being paid a little extra by certain interested parties. You must have spent hours writing that email and inserting the relevant quotes. What you said in it should be seen and read by others. Newspapers have a massive influence as we know from their plugging statins all the time. The people who attack you are obviously out for blood. Is there anything any of us can do to support you practically ie write to the DM?
Dear Macolm, the senior medical folk seem to be doing a seriously stupid dummy spit with you & your colleagues clear sound & sensible views about statins. I wonder if the dear old buggers are ‘statinising’ themselves as well as being ‘statinists’ ? That could explain their childish behaviour I suggest.
And so to the future. What can we offer on their dummies to pacify them ? Honey ? Or would a nice sugar buttie do the trick perhaps ? Or perhaps a dose of worm wood solution to ease their upset tummies ?
Gall, wormwood is too good for them…
But cattle & sheep & goats will eat wormwood leaves to get rid of intestinal worms Janet…
I was sort of impying that might work for these ‘senior medical’ folk. 🙂
I wonder who in the Mail on Sunday has a relative (or perhaps is themselves) on the board of directors of a pharmaceutical company. Rather like Brian Deer’s boss (James Murdock) who was on the board of GSK when Andrew Wakefield was misrepresented by, er, Brian Deer.
Well done, now get ready for next round.
Would cholesterol proponents have a conflict of interest if they did not take statin medications?
We support you 100% and don’t let them buggers get you down.
There was an old man from Prestatyn
Who’s doctor prescribed him a statin
You won’t live no longer
But I need the wonga
To buy a big house to get fat in
Admirable how you can stand up so powerfully against the corruption of medicine and without fear.
To me the level of corruption in our democratic societies has reached almost unbelievable levels today. As always corruption is driven by personal greed of various kinds and within medicine Big Pharma is criminally at the head of all this. It is so disgusting!
It though seems as corruption being the limitless greed from the richest is today permeating the whole society and the poor who suffer will finally have enough of this greed and take to the streets as happens in France today.
What about UK? Brexit?
Never mind Brexit. We need Staxit.
Reblogged this on Lorraine Cleaver.
Thanks, Malcolm. Another interesting post. You’ve certainly managed to piss a few people off, as this episode and the Wikipedia saga demonstrate. It’s not pleasant to be openly attacked in public, but I think you should take it as a compliment. And it’s a good opportunity to demonstrate some of the fallacies in the statinators’ case.
To be honest, I don’t give a monkey’s what the Mail on Sunday thinks about statins, but unfortunately this pro-statin view seems to be widespread throughout the popular press with nobody prepared to produce anything like a balanced argument. I think it’s time for us to repair to the moral high ground and get back to what really matters – what causes heart attacks? -and let all that don’t want to follow drown in a sea of simvastatin.
On the plus side, I’ve been working on casting for the big film having seen the pictures in the MoS article. I’m still thinking: you – Brad Pitt with Zoe – Cameron Diaz and Aseem – Dev Patel.
Dear Dr Kendrick
THESE ARE NOT CHOLESTEROL GAMES: LOWERING CHOLESTEROL KILLS
Attached is written proof of evidence (nurse’s report) of the horrific injuries I suffered in 2008 caused by a life-threatening 20mg Lipitor/statin-induced adverse drug reaction (ADR) that triggered near death due to irreversible dangerous side effects involving rhabdomyolysis/muscle wasting, heart failure and polyneuropathy. In addition I’ve been left with severe bowel and bladder problems too that isolate me and prevent me from enjoying any social activities.
Also attached is important evidence of a 6-year statin drug trial (2006-2011) carried out on 145 rats by the Home Office. I asked for the test results but my request was refused. Why?
I have *photo evidence too of my physical injuries that are clear to see showing severe muscle wasting and burning of the skin. I have a *photo too of the bed cage I was prescribed to treat the polyneuropathy when I was housebound for 6 months and abandoned by the NHS ever since.
I took the statin drug for 2 years first prescribed in 2006. But my GP medical record entries end in 2007 which proves record tampering. There were letters/documents deliberately omitted from my Patient Record Summary to cover-up the medical disaster and I was forced to go to court as a litigant in person to have the records reinstated. As a consequence of my action I’m without a GP and have been blacklisted ever since.
Statin cheerleader Barney Calman at The Mail on Sunday wouldn’t be interested in publishing the truthâ¦
I strongly support your stand against the cholesterol lies and you have my permission to pass all of this information/evidence onto another newspaper for publication. I won’t be silenced about what happened to me.
My phone number is: 01903 418581.
Yours sincerely
Elizabeth Joan Wade
*I can send photos of the injuries if requested.
From: “Dr. Malcolm Kendrick” Reply-To: “Dr. Malcolm Kendrick” Date: Sunday, 3 March 2019 10:51 To: Elizabeth Joan Wade Subject: [New post] Cholesterol Games
WordPress.com Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “3rd March 2019 Mahatma Gandhi. âFirst they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.â A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on” Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on Dr. Malcolm Kendrick Cholesterol Games by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick 3rd March 2019 Mahatma Gandhi. âFirst they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.â A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on Sunday was gong to attack us for daring to question the cholesterol hypothesis and the benefits of statins. Below is the e-mail I received. From: Barney Calman Sent: 28 February 2019 16:53 To: malcolmken Subject: MOS/Right to reply Dear Dr Kendrick – The Mail on Sunday plans to publish an article this weekend on growing concerns about claims you and a number of other individuals have publicly made about statins, the role of cholesterol in heart disease, and the allegations that researchers into the drugs are financially conflicted due to payments made to the organisations they work for, and so the evidence they provide about the effectiveness of these medications, and their side effects, are in some way untrustworthy. Over the past 30 years, more than 200,000 patients have been put through the most rigorous forms of clinical trials to produce definitive proof the tablets lower heart attack risk by up to 50 per cent, and a stroke by 30 per cent, and reduce the risk of death â from any cause. In January, the editors-in-chief of all 30 major heart health medical journals â each a leading cardiologist â signed a joint open letter, warning: âLives are at stake [due to the] wanton spread of medical misinformation. It is high time that this stopped.â A 2016 analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which tracks outbreaks and public health concerns, found fake news about statins may have prompted 200,000 patients in Britain alone to quit the drug over a single six-month period following an article you wrote for the BMJ which claimed, incorrectly, that 20 per cent of statins patients quit the drug because of side effects. They estimate that up for 2,000 heart attack and strokes could be a result of this. We would like to offer you the opportunity to respond to this and the following: *In your latest book, A Statin Nation, you state: âPeople are being conned. The way to avoid heart disease… has nothing to do with lowering cholesterol.â This is despite clinical trial evidence to the contrary, and despite no evidence that there is a con, which would imply that those who claim that lowering cholesterol can help lower the risk of heart disease know this is untrue and are deliberately misleading the public. *It has been alleged that the potential consequences of claims you have made about statins and cholesterol, far outweigh that of the infamous MMR vaccine scandal with one researcher saying: âIn terms of death and disability that could have been prevented, this could be far worse.â *In our article, one leading cardiologist states that the facts you and others often cite about cholesterol and statins sound convincing but that in reality âthey contain a grain of truth, mixed with speculation and opinion, which makes is very difficult for the public to know who to trust.â *You often quote observational studies as proof of your claims about statins and cholesterol in articles and in media appearances which contradict findings of authoritative clinical trials, which you do not mention. This is misleading. *
Wow. So isn’t denial of medical care a violation of human rights? Were you referred to another NHS service location? I’m surprised because I hadn’t ever heard that it’s possible to “blacklist” a patient before. But I’m not in the UK, so I’m even less likely to hear about it. A cursory google search turned this up: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/patients_who_are_blacklisted But I’m not sure that’s the whole story either. How interesting.
Good news travels fast: https://www.facebook.com/glyn.wainwright.7/posts/1487061611431147
Keep up the good work, and it’s so great to see you getting back to them and putting them in their place (as to their fake news and pitiful excuse for journalism).
I am living proof of the adverse effects of statins, and that high cholesterol causes plaque/calcification leading to heart disease is a myth.
Don’t stop doing what you’re doing! We need your clarity and sanity!!
As dreadful as the press is in the U.S., it is worse in the U.K. I did not realize that until now. The level of public trust in the press is likely as dismal in both. What we are seeing in 2019 is a massive propaganda campaign by the pharma PR operation to protect their highly lucrative gravy train. To hell with evidence, to hell with the health of human subjects. Just four days ago, after a direct question, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases testified before Congress under oath that MMR does not cause encephalopathy. The package inserts for both Merck’s MMR and MMRV list encephalopathy as an adverse effect. The audience in the hearing were reprimanded for gasping in shock, while Dr. Fauci was allowed to go on his merry way spreading misinformation.
Sad and depressed that you have to deal with this nonsense. Ah well. Reminder to self – Must get a copy of the Mail – we are running low on lavatory paper.
High five, Dr Kendrick. In my training, they told us, “If nobody is shooting at you, you are not doing anything worth wasting bullets on.”
It’s not a rule, just a reminder. If people are shooting at me, maybe I’m trespassing or something. Or maybe I’m wrong and promoting something dangerous. But something is important to somebody.
Because it was linked from here, I have been reviewing The Cholesterol Controversy, a post on the Science-Based Medicine blog, and when I read posts and comments, I will often respond. Because Darryl L. Smith,/Skeptic from Britain/John66 showed up to attack you, I commented, and predictably, he extensively attacked me. So far, no other socks that I can identify have appeared there. The Discus account he is using is markphilipsskeptic
This is obvious obvious. The moderator there is . . . interesting. He trolls participants. People like that often gravitate to positions of power. He’s not entirely dim.
My Discus account is
abdulrahmanlomax.
One point that is becoming obvious: the pseudoskeptics refer to you, to me, to THINCS, etc., as “conspiracy theorists,” (conspiracy theory being reasonably well defined on Wikipedia, but requiring a knowledge of what is real or not, on a matter necessarily secret, and a “conspiracy” is (also from Wikipedia) “a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose”. Allow a more general definition that does not require omniscience, and THINCS, and, if educating on cholesterol is harmful — it could be!, a little knowledge being a dangerous thing — it is a conspiracy, and many THINCS members appear to promote the idea of a conspiracy to promote statins, then some members, at least, are promoting a conspiracy theory.
Yet the same is true from the “science-based medicine” crowd, I’ve been reading claims that there is a conspiracy between Big Food and diet authors to attack the cholesterol theory and statins. With no evidence at all, that I’ve seen, just claims. Pot, kettle, black.
<a href:"https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sarahboseley"Sarah Boseley, I’m looking at you.
That is far more apparent as false, at least to this member of the public, than the reverse. Big Pharma supports research, and there is this strange tendency not only in those papers and some industry-supported reviews to focus on risk reduction percentage rather than on absolute reduction of risk, which is far more useful as information for patients. Since heart disease is a major cause of death, and I know or believe that, 30% reduction of risk sounds like a lot! But risk reduced from 3% to 2% for a defined period (ten years?), with no more detail, is not a lot, and what I need to know as a patient deciding to take or not take a statin, is much more, and the medical research establishment is not developing the information I actually need. What is the effect in my age cohort? (I’m 74) What about people in my age cohort with a disciplined exercise program? (Which I created two years ago in response to my diagnosis.)
Anyway, the irony. Those who call themselves skeptics use the term “denialism,” which must mean that they know the truth, but genuine skeptics know that truth is never known with perfect certainty, it’s all a matter of preponderance of evidence, which requires considering all the evidence, which requires much more than individual opinion and is never final. So using that word strongly implies that they are not skeptics at all, but pseudoskeptics, a variety of “believer.” Just with an opposite opinion.
And it is obvious that if they could do it, the self-appointed protectors of a small minority (the 1%) would suppress criticism of what they believe. They may or may not have a basis in “science,” but they definitely are advocating the destruction of real scientific process, and thus creating long-term harm.
Truly effective medicines have an NTT in the single digits, maybe even smaller than 2. I routinely take such medications even when they have known (and serious!) side effects. When a medication directly modifies the cause of a syndrome, the side effects can be tolerated; and it is routine to inform patients of possible side effects, even if they are rare. Prescribing a medication for a fungal infection, my physician required a test of liver enzymes, to rule out a possible harm from taking the medication for six months. As a patient, if I know what side effects are possible, I can be vigilant. Could I experience a side-effect because nocebo? Of course I could, those pains might come from someone else. But we do not suppress the information. Always, we are told to consult our physician if we see these symptoms. We are not told to bury our heads in the sand. The information sheets that come with medications do not read, at the top, Warning! Reading This May Be Hazardous To Your Health!
But those who are effectively statin promoters would suppress the information, would not allow commentary on it, and clearly would discourage people prescribed a statin from reading the accounts of those who took them and quit. And instead of creating genuine educational programs, that give patients they need to make informed choices, they blame the authors and bloggers for stating their experience and opinions, and appear to want to keep patients in the dark, so that they don’t suffer from the nocebo syndrome. Great excuse, but preposterous.
This is being called “fascist medicine,” and that is not unreasonable.
But we should be very careful about accusing skeptics or pseudoskeptics of being shills for Big Pharma. If we have evidence, presenting it is fine, and simply for presenting evidence, we will still be called “conspiracy theorists,” but to assess any theory we need data, and if the data is rejected because of what it implies, that is true “denialism.”
Those who might, speculatively, benefit or be harmed from taking statins, an individual choice which may be very difficult to study, may experience the nocebo effect from “negative information,” but, then again, perhaps they intuitively know better than statistics from studies of side-effects, what will harm them or not, and it all gets complex.) Our body-sense of well-being is important! It is a very sensitive detector, if we become attentive and careful with it. It is also thoroughly enmeshed with the mind, or with brain activity. If our intuition — which is not what we think, more what we “feel,” — is not functioning well, we are at very high risk.
But where are we trained to develop highly functional intuition, and to distinguish it from reactive fear, which is not a function of the cerebral cortex, but of the amygdala? There are places and methods, but few even realize the problem, much less solutions.)
Modern medicine is fantastic at handling crisis care, but often primitive in handling chronic problems. As life expectancy has increased from improvements in crisis care, it was predictable that some chronic conditions would appear to increase, because of surviving long enough to succumb to them. At the same time, it is possible that “guidelines” prematurely created for addressing chronic conditions have actually caused death rates to increase, and it is difficult to tease all this out.
Everyone sensible, in my view, agrees that we need more and better research, which requires funding and possibly massive funding. Yet the reality denialists claim that the issues are resolved, which would imply that such funding would be wasting money.
Resolving these issues may indeed require massive investment in better research, but is also likely to generate very long-term benefit, outweighing the expense. Pseudoskeptical rejection clearly harms the long-term interests of humanity. We need to know, not merely enforce what we think is established.
In my primary field of interest, what I have found, researching the field, is that low-energy nuclear reactions are real (by the preponderance of evidence), and that, then, there is a possibility of a non-polluting energy source of energy, with fuel to last for a very, very long time, effectively forever (depending on details). A group of environmentalist investors, seeing the claims, rather obviously suspicious, of an inventor, Andrea Rossi, decided that they needed to know, not speculate from ad hominem and other weak arguments, and they only way to find out was to buy the technology. He had announced that he would sell his secrets for $100 million. So they negotiated an agreement, in which they paid him $11.5 million, $1.5 million for a 1 megawatt reactor, and $10 million for the intellectual property, with, then a test to verify operation, on successful completion of which they promised to pay $100 million, and they also had a license for half the planet for the technology and all derivatives.
With all the work they did in various ways, they put in about $25 million, and they have been called stupid and gullible, but, in fact, I won’t go into detail, that $25 million investment allowed them to raise another $50 million for research (after they knew with reasonable certainty that the technology was worthless), with another $150 million committed. They blew Rossi out of the serious investment market.
The point is that one something of extreme importance, we need much better than circumstantial evidence, weak epidemiological studies, and reliance on appearances. We need definitive evidence, and that company considered the probability of success of the Rossi effect, if even 1% was worth their investment, because the value could be as high as a trillion dollars per year.
What I have found over the last few years has been that genuine skeptics (I am talking here about cold fusion) agree readily with my proposals for better research, they are aware of the open issues, and of the possible importance, even if they feel it is unlikely. I am quite sure that Gary Taubes (who wrote Bad Science about cold fusion) supports this. He is a genuine skeptic and a tireless journalist. That does not mean he is always right. It does mean that when he says something, there usually something behind it.
What would be the value of knowing the exact etiology of atherosclerosis, and how to directly (1) prevent it, if doing so would not cause harm in other parts of our system, and (2) learning how to prevent consequential damage?
Stents allegedly prevent death, but only, if I’m correct, in crisis care, not with chronic, non-acute conditions. I have a cardiac blockage that shows up in a nuclear stress test. I have never had serious angina, I carry nitroglycerin in case I do, but have never taken it, even if I have experienced what might be minor, transient angina.
Calling skepticism “denialism” does not help at all. It is avoidance of reality, and the clear reality here is that we need more research to have better knowledge. I am deconstructing that blog post, on a page at coldfusioncommunity.net, but I have not announced it and won’t until it has reached some level of completion. The post is full of “cholesterol believer” arguments and information, with references to deep sources, and, speaking for the public, we need all of this.
Meanwhile, my opinion, we need more connection and cooperation, what others will call “conspiracy,” but we also need to be careful about “conspiracy theories,” or, perhaps more accurately, the appearance of such. Appearances matter in social campaigns.
I respond to these words the same way I respond to bull pats: conspiracy theory, denialism, alternative facts, and fake news. The internet started out as limited to academic institutions and the government. When it was opened to commercial use, it became a cess of uninformed opinion and these words are the tools of mind control. Nothing more. Those calling for reasoned debate are the ones to care about. Those attempting to narrow the field of conversation to the mainstream opinions, aren’t being rational.
There are a lot of offensive opinions in the world. Denialism can be applied to the Holocaust as well as the Cholesterol-HD connection. But the debate shouldn’t be about labels for opinion, it should be debate of ideas and which ones produce the best life for the most people with the least harm. When the labels become more important than the idea (ie. something labeled a “conspiracy theory” is automatically rejected), we’ve lost any claim to being rational, but worse, we’ve lost sight of the goal of debate: to produce positive and helpful results while remaining open to new data and possible refinement of ideas.
Frankly Malcolm, I wouldn’t do him the courtesy of a reply(except to sue his backside off of course!). After all, it must be obvious to anyone who takes a look at this mans C.V., that his whole claim to fame is a Degree in Fashion! (We up North, call it a degree in knicker making)! lol. This apparently allows him to insult and slander anyone his likes, under the guise of a hack for the “venerated” Mail on Sunday. Some folks will do anything for five minutes fame. I hear there are even people who defend statins in return for 30 pieces of silver? Can this be true? lol!
Big Big P.S. God, you’ve really upset them this time haven’t you? Don’t you dare ever give up/in, or I’ll pelt you with my old stash of Atorvastin(all 80mgs of it!)
Thank you
Thank you for continuing to speak and fight for the truth. I benefit from your information because you give an unbiased view. It is clear you stand to gain nothing, while pharmaceutical companies gain billions. It is also clear to me the pharmaceutical companies control medical schools (have since they were established in the US in the early last century), the governing bodies (FDA etc), and federal governmental bodies. Left to those who profit from our disease (not health) we would all pay the price for filtering ridiculous amounts of drugs through our bodies.
No large amounts of cussing? I’m going to start believing you are a Canadian passing your self as a Scotts. : )
On a more serious note, it has been amazing to me at how the press, UK press in particular, can be sensitive to criticism of pharmaceuticals and medical theories. I can imagine several reasons why that is.
Overall from my experience, with doctors and people, most realize and will acknowledge the cholesterol theory is just that, a theory. It’s a theory of many on the cause of heart disease.
Side effects from statins are well known. From a personal stand point i’m glad my mom’s experience with a statin side effect did not result in her having a major operation. Since stopping the statin she continues to do well. She went on a long walk this morning. When she was taking the statin and experience severe hip joint pain that would not be possible.
Hope the negative press on you three backfires.
From across the pond, thanks Dr K for speaking the truth. It shall prevail!
Just read the mail on sunday and saw a picture of Barney. The tone of the letter he sent you fits the man in the picture. Flat earthers. Keep up the good work.
Yes he may be a fashion graduate but he doesn’t seem to be much good at that either. His medical knowledge is nonexistent but he knows how to kowtow to The Anointed.
The most entertaining part for me was reading the replies. Of course all those complaints about side effects must be nocebo. They must all be Statin Deniers. They need locking up because They Are Killing People. Oh is that my brown envelope?
The more that the invested self-interested stridently cry “Denier!” yet hide data in self-defence, the more clear it is that they fear that they will be revealed – even to themselves – as being destructively wrong.
Okay, I had my cardiac ‘event’ 7 years ago, I had 2 stents installed and was put on Avorvastiin (my CH was 7.7 I think). I took it for over 3 years with muscle pains, locked joints and so on. I stopped taking it over 3 years ago.
In October 2018 I had another cardiac ‘event’ and 3 more installed. I’m almost 74, have a healthy diet, not overweight, exercise regularly, don’t drink, don’t smoke but, I live in central London and have been sucking in diesel particulates for 16 years. When I asked my GP how do you know it’s not the pollution wot done it?
The answer? Statistics and nothing more. Statistically I’m prone to heart attacks (my dad and his brothers all died from heart attacks, though I’ve outlived them all so far). Had I stayed on statins does that mean I wouldn’t have had a 2nd heart attack? Answer? Statistics, nothing more and nothing less.
As I commented in response to a Mail Online article that referred to the Sunday one:
“The new way to suppress discussion and debate: call someone who questions an unproven assertion a ‘denier’. How *dare* anyone contradict the established experts on anything? That’s the message of this article.”
Just finished reading the article in the MOS. I didn’t buy it, but read it on line. As has already been said, the use of the word ‘denier’ says a great deal about the writer. I haven’t reached the age of 71 without recognising honesty when I see it, and I know who I trust to tell us the truth. Dr K. Thank you for it. And I hope the truth wins soon. And may I say that you do look exceedingly dashing in your photo.
The AHA is a non-profit organisation of cardiologists. They get $521 million in donations. I am a non-profit organisation, I get $0 in donations. What am I doing wrong?
https://thenutritionwatchdog.com/the-real-truth-about-coconut-oil-dont-believe-the-propaganda/
Very good
Absolutely fantastic. So inspired by you all. Plus you really made me laugh! Agree, you do look quite dashing!
Warm Regards
Jackie
PHC Ambassador
Administrator of Pioppi Diet Support Group
Well countered again Doctor K. I just cannot understand how denial, refusal, and ignorance can be allowed to even exist today, given that we are all empowered to seek and learn the truth if we’re prepared to make some effort. It seems that the Daily Mail, ( and another Daily with a second part meaning ‘fast’ or similar), can’t be taken seriously despite their own freedom to find facts. This is born out by the annoying and persistent headline policies that they employ whereby things like coffee, eggs, red meat, vegan diets, aspirin, etc., can kill you….but 9 months later, according to headlines again, said killers are now life-savers. Yes, Statins too are in this fabulous list. I’ve seen this regularly over the years and it’s pitiful. I’ve even given up checking the ‘specialist health reporter’ by-lines in case I find a name that anagrams into some sort of in-joke spoof by the press. They’re probably just trying to increase their sales,( he said naively), but their own version of fake news is ultimately more malicious than the ‘real’ fake news out there. Your Gandhi quote is wonderfully appropriate.
Well done. Right behind you.
Well, Dr K, you old quack! How dare you rouse the rabble and / or upset the apple cart (to mix metaphors).
Seriously, though, despite the extra effort you put into replying, I think this is a good development. It means you’re getting under someone’s skin. You’re getting noticed, and someone doesn’t like it. You’re drawing attention to flaws in the science and causing pain in some of the right places.
So, hang in there, and keep it up. With your new-found notoriety, you might just find yourself in Wikipedia once again! It’s a proud day!
A court case would need to be jolly long to give justice and a proper airing to all the evidence. Then there would need to be some intelligent people who are capable of understanding it. Where are they to be found these days? Still, good things could come from it.
Life is not, and never will be fair, and they will try to drag you through the mud. But who wouldn’t be proud to be out on such a limb, having spent years doing the spade work that most others are too lazy and ignorant to entertain.
If you will allow me to say, probably unnecessarily, – Just don’t let them stress you! You would expect unfairness since it goes with the territory. Even if they did succeed in undermining your credibility with some people, you can feel good inside and know you gave your all. And the people who matter to you would still be there with you. If you were to allow these other twats to stress you, it would be their gain and your fault. Yes, it would be your fault Dr K, because you wiould have given them the power. YOU would be “DOING” anger. It is only ourselves who can prevent this. Thankfully, we know you have plenty of guts and inner strength.
I would never claim to be particularly smart, but I can spot when censorship happens. I’m more convinced than ever that it wasn’t “vegans” who attacked your entry on Wikipedia, that it was part of this current sally into silencing non-mainstream opinions on statins. The claim that it was “vegans” looks more and more like a cover. The facts that you called for more debate on the issue and they called for silencing detractors is the most important to me.
Nothing says it couldn’t be both! Look at FReSH sponsorship following on from EAT-Lancet, pretty much all “food” manufacturers, drug companies and agrochemical suppliers are supporting the Vegan Push. Big money and (religious) ideology combined.
I am a Vegan, and I would never attack Dr Kendick. He talks a lot of sense. I may not eat animal protein, but I make sure I get lots of plant protein and plant fats (saturated ones too) like coconut oil and avocado). I also try to keep my diet balanced and not deficient in nutrients. I avoid most junk or heavily processed foods, trying to eat the food straight from growing to cooking to plate.
Meat won’t kill you, but it does need balance with other food groups or deficiencies can occur.
The whole cholesterol thing is a nonsense.
To Dr Kendal, I say that three years ago I had a doppler scan of my carotid arteries. The cardiologist found plaques and suggested a ‘statin.’ I said no, and instead went to a complete plant based diet. That was my choice, and I knew I had to be very careful about any deficiencies. And I am doing my best with it (I. E. I have to supplement colbamin) . A follow up scan showed clear arteries. This had little to do with my cholesterol scores which fluctuate, but remain at between 4 and 5.5. Rather, my diet change has reduced inflammation. I have reduced bowel and digestive tract problems. I no longer feel arthritic, achy problems and while I still suffer with some allergies, they are better controlled. I actually think our food can make a huge difference to how we feel, and it will be different for each person.
The medical profession should always consider lifestyle and nutrition before prescribing drugs for long term conditions. Sadly, doctors in medical school receive little training about nutrition or prevention of disease. They are taught to put out fires and save lives on a statistical basis. We have come a very long way from the Hippocratic Oath to firstly ‘do no harm.’ Dr Kendrick is one of the few brave people who will call out ‘the harm that has been done’ in a valid fight to change the system.
You might be interested to know, some direct to consumer labs have sprung up in the US, driven by the downturn in routine testing. The locations sometimes offer B12 shots. I got one (I have Celiac Disease) just last week from a Vitamin IV place for $50, performed by a full RN who leads the IV unit. Also, another former vegan (Denise Minger) suggested that bivalves might be a good food source of Omega-3 since they lack a nervous system, and can’t feel pain. But that’s down to the personal feelings of each vegan. Jut something to think about. If I felt confident that I wouldn’t hurt myself, I’d be vegan too. Best wishes to you.
Thank you for that Angelica. Most appreciated. I am in the UK. I too am Celiac (Coeliac here in UK). I get tested sometimes in Thailand, where it is about 1/4 the private testing charge in the UK. Peace of Mind, and all that! 😊
Thank you Angelica.
I posted a reply, but it disappeared? Here is a sort of repeat. I too am Celiac (Coeliac in the UK) and it is in my family, so I eliminate wheat and other grain gluten from my diet. I do some of my medical testing privately abroad where it is a fraction of private medical in the UK. I have had medical problems caught abroad where the UK NHS has been unable to offer support (My arthrosclerosis plaques were found on a test done abroad whereas the NHS considers me healthy and worthy of only a few routine wellness tests every 5 years (used to be every year). I take my health seriously. My Mother died of heart attack at age 65 and my father at 80. Two of my aunts lost limbs to vascular disease and peripheral neuropathies. My family is generally not long lived. So I do what I can to take best course of action based on latest research and common sense as much as I can. I have lost faith in the medical profession as a whole because they are head-turned by pharmaceutical companies who have biased interests. Instead, I look at all the information available to me, and make my own decisions (Good or bad). I know that most doctors shake their heads when told ” I found this article or paper posted on the Internet. ” They hate any refute to the industry standards. My own GP (General Practitioner) family doctor is a nice man, but he toes the line on official propaganda and waits for it to change before revising anything he prescribes. I guess he is afraid of litigious possibility and so ‘hides behind the apron strings’ of the ‘official and insured medical association guidelines. Dr Kendrick sticks his neck above the trench parapet into the firing line. And thank goodness he, and others like him, do so, or we would all be at mercy of pharmaceutical companies who’s only real concern, is their bottom line.
All power to you! I have no objections if anyone *chooses* to follow a vegan diet. My ire is directed to those who want to impose it on EVERYONE ELSE.
I had the exact opposite experience as you, vegetarian and especially vegan diets didn’t improve my health but eating meat, poultry, game, fish and a wide range of vegetables did. Grains and especially wheat were my biggest problem, and of course processed “foods” containing them.
I can agree on that Chris. We are all different. I, like you, avoid wheat and gluten grains. Coeliac disease runs in my family. So, although it is a plant based carb, it just makes me ill.
We all have to eat for best health outcomes. Many people across the world have no choice in what they eat… They eat what is available or nothing.
Sanctimonious admonishing will accomplish nothing. However, if we can be sustainable (renewable, organic, kind choices for the earth and us) when we choose our food from the variety available, it makes a lot of sense.
My beef is really with the medical establishment and a system that does not teach the benefits of a good dietary balance for optimum health. It isn’t as simple as 5 or 7 fruits and veggies per day. Nor is it helpful to have ‘diets’ to lose weight, only to go back to something more pleasurable to eat once a desired weight is achieved. Diet is a lifestyle, and there are many combinations that will do the job. If our medical profession and food standards agencies joined forces, perhaps they could stop picking at individual ‘red herrings’ and cherry picking what is good or bad for us. Instead, they could look at the whole food processing industry and start eliminating the cheap unhealthy foods that give us neither nutrition nor healthy body weights. Unfortunately, that will cross into commercial, corporate power territory. Another minefield of disinformation. 😊
I agree Chris. Everyone has to find the combination that makes them feel most healthy. And we are fortunate to have choices… So many in the world do not.
I am unable to eat grains without severe reactions, and also highly sensitive to dairy, onions, eggs and sulphites (wine and grain alcohol is totally out of the question or I am an itchy wreck). I tend to use the word Vegan, because I also have compassion for animals in those awful factory farms. But it is slightly inaccurate because I use soap or something that may have an animal product that I might be unaware of… In reality, I have just tried to avoid all the products that I consider to be unhealthy for me or that make me feel unwell. My diet then, is plant based, rather than Vegan in the true sense of the word. I have a lot of empathy with the Vegan philosophy, but I do not agree with the vehement attacks (either Vegans to meat eaters or vice versa). It is not helpful to the discussion about healthy living and good nutrition.
Having spent years researching this issue your blog has been a rare beacon of rational thought. Thank you for improving my life! There’s a fundamental assumption that the cultural elites have of the public – we’re ignorant and can’t act in our own rational interest. They’ve seen the light and have access to truth, but we’re not smart enough to understand. Thus the public policy message must be clear and unambiguous, dissenters must be silenced. This is exactly the opposite of how science must be carried out. I wonder if the author even paused after writing “This is an indisputable scientific fact” and then listed several now discarded previous “indisputable facts”. Why not ask why the skeptics’ arguments are so convincing and the statin argument not? If it is as unequivocal as they claim it should be easy. Instead it is the non-scientific methods of intimidation, hyperbole, threats, ad hominem, etc. Just last week a cardiologist recommended that I take the highest possible statin and the ideal level of LDL was 0. Zero! Like cholesterol isn’t a fundamental building block of cells, sex hormones, etc. Not a very convincing argument. I admire your courage – again thanks.
I find this dissemination of blatant propaganda extremely disturbing; it reminds me of the takeover of mainstream media in Germany in the 30’s.The UK press is as bad as the US; today in the Sunday Times was one of their frequent articles trashing Dr Wakefield, ‘the godfather of antivax, while there is a groundswell in the US to ban on social media any comment or blog that questions vaccinations. The water in the frog’s pot is getting dangerously hot.
Frederica Huxley: Right you are. The only silver lining is that censorship always backfires. And we ordinary mortals are not as stupid as our overlords.
Hello Dr Malcolm Kendrick
A few years ago I read your book “The Great Cholesterol Con”.
Before I read the book, my own research came to the same conclusion as yourself. ie elevated cholesterol levels does not cause heart disease/hardening of the arteries. After reading your book I didn’t feel alone in my own findings.
My own conclusion was that if your arteries are clogged up, then that is a symptom of already having heart disease as this means the body has not repaired the arties properly from normal daily wear and tear, hence causing uneven surfaces inside the arties and hence the cholesterol sticks. A bit like having a tube that is rough on the inside and hence makes the flow more difficult. The body’s inability to a make efficient repairs is caused by the inadequate synthesis of collagen that is present in all flexible body tissue (including skin, muscles etc). The synthesis of collagen needs three main ingredients – L-lysine, L-proline (both amino acids) and vitamin C. But’s that’s a different subject for a different time (very important though with regard heart disease).
Getting back to your article. Maybe you should remind the daily mail of one fact.
Artificially lowering cholesterol levels increases mortality rate.
This information is easily seen in clinical trials that have been performed when groups of people are given statins to lower cholesterol levels. If my memory serves me right, these trials show that as the cholesterol levels go down, artificially, mortality rate goes up and when the level drops to 4 or less the mortality rate is quite disturbing. The optimum levels, from the graphs, for survival I think was 5.5 or higher.
I know this is old news to yourself Malcolm, but maybe they need to be reminded of this or if they don’t believe you, maybe they should get the raw data from a number of clinical trials, over the last 40 years, and do there own analysis.
Another point regarding statins (not related to heart disease).
About two years ago I read an article in one of the med pub publications regarding Alzheimer’s.
Since about 1960 the rate of Alzheimer’s has gone through the roof. Before this, Alzheimer’s was hardly mentioned and it was difficult to find it mentioned in most medical books. Only 5% of people that have Alzheimer’s are hereditary. So why has there been a big increase in Alzheimer’s? This med pub article came to two conclusions as to the main reasons for the increase in Alzheimer’s
1. Low fat diet for very long periods of time 2. Statins
A friend of mine who is a retired analytical chemist, who’s job it was to analysis drugs will not take statins as he says ” I have analysed statins to the nth degree and wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole”
Hope you find this useful and keep up the good work.
On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 at 10:51, Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “3rd March 2019 Mahatma Gandhi. ‘First they > ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’ A > few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe > Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on” > Respond to this post by replying above this line > New post on *Dr. Malcolm Kendrick* > Cholesterol Games > by Dr. > Malcolm Kendrick > > 3rd March 2019 > > Mahatma Gandhi. *‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then > they fight you, then you win.’* > > A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe > Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on Sunday was > gong to attack us for daring to question the cholesterol hypothesis and the > benefits of statins. > > Below is the e-mail I received. > > From: Barney Calman > Sent: 28 February 2019 16:53 > To: malcolmken > Subject: MOS/Right to reply > > *Dear Dr Kendrick – The Mail on Sunday plans to publish an article this > weekend on growing concerns about claims you and a number of other > individuals have publicly made about statins, the role of cholesterol in > heart disease, and the allegations that researchers into the drugs are > financially conflicted due to payments made to the organisations they work > for, and so the evidence they provide about the effectiveness of these > medications, and their side effects, are in some way untrustworthy.* > > *Over the past 30 years, more than 200,000 patients have been put through > the most rigorous forms of clinical trials to produce definitive proof the > tablets lower heart attack risk by up to 50 per cent, and a stroke by 30 > per cent, and reduce the risk of death – from any cause.* > > *In January, the editors-in-chief of all 30 major heart health medical > journals – each a leading cardiologist – signed a joint open letter, > warning: ‘Lives are at stake [due to the] wanton spread of medical > misinformation. It is high time that this stopped.’* > > *A 2016 analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, > which tracks outbreaks and public health concerns, found fake news about > statins may have prompted 200,000 patients in Britain alone to quit the > drug over a single six-month period following an article you wrote for the > BMJ which claimed, incorrectly, that 20 per cent of statins patients quit > the drug because of side effects.* > > *They estimate that up for 2,000 heart attack and strokes could be a > result of this. We would like to offer you the opportunity to respond to > this and the following:* > > **In your latest book, A Statin Nation, you state: ‘People are being > conned. The way to avoid heart disease… has nothing to do with lowering > cholesterol.’ This is despite clinical trial evidence to the contrary, and > despite no evidence that there is a con, which would imply that those who > claim that lowering cholesterol can help lower the risk of heart disease > know this is untrue and are deliberately misleading the public.* > > **It has been alleged that the potential consequences of claims you have > made about statins and cholesterol, far outweigh that of the infamous MMR > vaccine scandal with one researcher saying: ‘In terms of death and > disability that could have been prevented, this could be far worse.’* > > **In our article, one leading cardiologist states that the facts you and > others often cite about cholesterol and statins sound convincing but that > in reality ‘they contain a grain of truth, mixed with speculation and > opinion, which makes is very difficult for the public to know who to > trust.’* > > **You often quote observational studies as proof of your claims about > statins and cholesterol in articles and in media appearances which > contradict findings of authoritative clinical trials, which you do not > mention. This is misleading.* > > **
I hope the new version of the Spanish Inquisition is not able to silence you.These attacks are predictable unfortunately, coming from people with big egos in an entrenched position.They have forgotten an important historical lesson.
Experts make mistakes!
Eg Titanic couldn’t sink,Radium was healthy,Smoking was healthy,Asbestos is harmless,Thalidomide is safe!!!
The list goes on.
Don’t give in Malcolm.
Follow the money!.
Terrible article by MOS. Keep doing what you are doing. Its hard to be in the minority. I am with team deniers any day
The Guardian had an article in the autumn, in its G2 section, calling Asseem and all of the group of cholesterol skeptics “Cholesterol Deniers”, plus the worse-than-anti vaxxers smear. The author claimed that because Collins is not paid directly by statin manufacturers, his department couldn’t possibly be misreading the data on side effects. Also saying that because statins are out of patent they have no motivation to push unnecessarily for their prescription! Instead of the reality that in order to make a profit, we all have to be statinated.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/30/butter-nonsense-the-rise-of-the-cholesterol-deniers
I have reviewed this article on Boseley because she had been mentioned by Labos in his SBM blog post. I am still working on the Labos review, of which the above is a subpage. The Guardian has really gone downhill.
You know you are over the target because the flak is thickest there, Dr. Kendrick.
Thanks for all your efforts. I just finished reading “A Statin Nation”. I spent 7 years in the meteorology/atmospheric/environmental science business a long time ago and follow the current global warming/climate change hysteria (the political responses to this nonsense have the capability of ending western civilisation instead of merely killing people one at a time) and I see uncomfortable parallels with the saturated fat/cholesterol/CVD debate including use of the term “deniers”.
Eyrie AM uncomfortable with bringing climate change in to these arguments. Any link is tenuous & different ballpark. If glaciers are retreating by miles in a few decades, something is happening, whether we can do anything about it is another thing. The issue can confuse the cholestoral debate, sidetracking the main event.
Here, here!
It is a useful source of mirth, though.
I was reading today about the promising new theory that Alzheimer’s disease is caused by bacteria that enter the bloodstream through gum disease. This is radically different from the conventional “plaques and tangles” theory but there seems to be much less opposition to it than one might expect. Is this because nobody is making billions of dollars from Alzheimer’s drugs (unlike statins)?
Ian Roselman: You can be certain they’ve been working on Alzheimer’s drugs for decades to beat hell. None of them, so far, have worked, even with the all-the-tricks-in-the-book data manipulation they normally employ. The normal course of events in pharmaceutical research is to invent or find a novel molecule, then invent a disease to target with it. Some drugs, such as anti-coagulants, are crucial to survival, or holding symptoms at bay, as JDPatten has so well explained in Afib, and Dr. Kendrick after ischemic stroke, but, in my opinion, most drugs have little net benefit except to industry. Some, such as SSRI’s carry tremendous social cost, in causing acts of violence. At 70, I take no drugs, and I think most people would be best off without drugs.
Gary, I largely agree, but they do make some useful products. Greed is the problem.
I was very grateful for some powerful painkillers recently, but I only needed them for a week, which isn’t much good to pharma. Type I diabetics need insulin, but I think it simply deals with a symptom with type 2’s and not the cause. It stuffs the excess glucose in places it shouldn’t be and damage follows in time.
There isn’t enough money for them in making ill people well, so we get these drugs, like statins, to take for thirty or forty years. Anti-depressants are, as you say, another good example. I understand they shouldn’t be prescribed for more than six weeks, but people are parked on them for life. I suspect many people with moderately raised blood pressure don’t need drugs.
Making people better in a few days isn’t good business, which is why pharma shows so little interest in developing new antibiotics.
Get a copy of ‘The End of Alzheimer’s : The First Programme to Prevent and Reverse the Cognitive Decline of Dementia’ by Dr Dale Bredesen. You will then see why drugs will never be found to deal with this process of neural protection.
The interesting thing about gum disease of course is that no-one really knows which of the hundreds of different type of bacteria which live in the mouth cause whatever.
An Alzheimer’s prevention theory that my father follows is an idea Dr. Kendrick has written about in a blog post. He wrote an article about taking high doses of the different vitamin Bs for preventing dementia. The same idea has been written about preventing Alzheimer’s disease in other articles. Dad in particular stress that he takes a certain type of B12 along with other B vitamins. I ironically forgot this morning the name of that type of B12.
So far the B vitamin idea has worked for dad. He shows no signs of the condition. Alzheimer’s runs on dad’s side of the family. My father is 74 years old and everyone that developed Alzheimer’s in the family had either developed the condition by his age or had passed away from it.
Soul – This came through on an RSS feed a few days ago, might find of interest :-
Diet and dementia –
https://www.healthnutnews.com/82-year-old-woman-with-dementia-gets-her-memory-back-after-changing-her-diet/
Would that Vitamin B12 be Methylcolbamin? Developed by Japanese scientists in 2010, it is the most absorbable( in the digestive tract) of the oral B12 options.
My husband recently had a medical (abroad) and was diagnosed with low B12 and folic acid (necessary for absorption of B12).
As a Vegan, I take Methylcolbamin supplements. I watch my intake of sufficient plant proteins (crucial) and I eat saturated plant oils (coconut, avocado, etc). My cholesterol sits between 3.5 and 5.2 (dependent largely on what saturated fats I might have eaten, but also on the status of my own immune system. If I am sick or injured, cholesterol will be released into my blood stream to help rebuild tissues destroyed by injury or inflammation. I am aware, that blood cholesterol levels bounce up and down according to what my body needs, so I ignore the scores from my blood work, rathe like I would ignore high white blood cell counts if I was fighting a chest infection or similar. These numbers are our own defense mechanism kicking in to repair our tissues.
But, back to my husband…
He began to take my Methylcolbamin. He had stopped taking his Statin, as he learned (himself) that it not only stopped the body from naturally producing cholesterol, but also stopped the production of Q10, an essential enzyme required for muscle function (the heart being the most important muscle in the body).
My husband went to our GP hoping he could re-evaluate his B12 levels (after 2 months of taking 500 micrograms of B12 daily). The doctor said it wasn’t possible as the NHS had currently run out of the testing medium. Instead, the GP did test his cholesterol, insisted it was very high (usually about 5.7 but for some reason his previous test had been at 7). He insisted that my husband go back on the Statin, and stay on it. Because we travel, he has to comply for insurance purposes. His last cholesterol reading was 2.5, which in my opinion is low and not healthy. He also suffers from sudden and debilitating muscle spasms when he’s on them.
My husband’s low B12 was much more of an issue, but not addressed. Our GP had no idea that B12 is a soil based organism that grazing animals ingest whilst grazing (hence it is present in their muscles as it is essential for nerve transmission). He also did not know that factory farmed animals are supplemented with B12.
And I was having a problem too…
I have had treatment for cervical cancer many years ago… So keep up my smears. But my last one (a concern because I had been having some problems) was routinely taken and I was told to wait a week for the results. 10 days later, having heard nothing, I went into the Office. I was told matter of factly that nothing had come back and that the wait would be three months as the hospital had a backlog. Honestly, I am shocked at how GP’s are being limited, and hindered by a dying NHS system.
I think we need people like Dr Kendrick who question everything, learn all new research, and most of all, make sure that we, the public, know what is going on. My thanks to him and everyone who keeps us moving forward through the tide of greed, mismanagement and ineptitude.
MMEC7- Fantastic! Thanks for the diet change article helping someone with severe dementia. I passed it onto my father.
That is something I’ve personally suspected and is something I’m working on at the moment. My father, sister and I all share a common memory problem. We are terrible at remembering how to spell words. I’ve seen some writing listing poor spelling as one of many risk factors for developing severe memory problems when older. Not to go into boring details but I’m always fiddling with my diet.
Something I’ve learned a couple times, and lost, is that there is a diet that improves my spelling memory ability. Spelling can become very easy. Figuring out what in the diet is the offending foods is rather tedious though and takes long work. Fingers crossed though that I figure this out in the near future. There are a lot of ifs in saying this but avoiding the right offending foods could save me from a couple health issues and possibly help my father and sister avoid Alzheimer’s or severe dementia.
Colettebytes – Yes, that sounds right. I believe B12 Methylcolbamin is what my father takes. Dad ‘s a believer in it. My sister is also a B12 taker. For what ever reason most synthetic B vitamins are a problem for my stomach but have learned recently that B12 seems to be going down the hatch well enough for me.
Best to you and your husband. I second the continuation of the questioning everything medical by Dr. Kendrick and others. Modern medicine is a dangerous mess in my opinion.
I’ve been taking the same B12 for the past 7 years and aside from the seeds, the diet is almost exactly the same as mine. Didn’t help my heart but I can still reason and work creatively (I’m 74).
Soul, you might also find Chris Exley’s work on Alzheimer’s and aluminium (and drinking silicon-rich mineral water) of interest. His blog is at https://www.hippocraticpost.com/?s=Exley
I took statins for about a fortnight in which time I experienced awful gastric problems which included sprints to the nearest toilet. I really would have found it impossible to live like this. My point is that when I told my GP about this he was quite happy for me not to take them. However as he didn’t write down, or ask, about my symptoms I’m willing to bet this was never recorded in any case notes.
Let’s not be in too big a hurry to condemn Mr. Calman. The odds are very good that he is simply taking psych meds or perhaps other prescription meds, or the vaccines he received as a child whose side effects have impaired his ability to think clearly, in much the same way that the statins I was prescribed, _through no fault of my own_, robbed me of the ability to enjoy taking long walks in nature. Thanks to the nonsense he has been brainwashed into believing since childhood, such as not eating egg yolks, he very likely has also become so cholesterol-deficient himself that his brain is barely limping along the way my legs now do whenever I try to walk any distance.
So rather than assume the worst about him, maybe we should just be praying for him to someday escape from the clutches of the medical-industrial establishment the way we all have, and to the extent that he has not been crippled for life, at least halt his decline into dementia and perhaps even to partially reverse the damage to his brain that apparently has already been done by whatever factors are at play. It serves nobody’s interest, certainly not ours, for us to sit in judgement of the mentally handicapped, especially so when their disability in all likely has been medically induced the same way that certain vaccines can cause susceptible children to revert into autism or less severe dysfunctions such as ADD/ADHD. Let us all just pray for Mr. Calman’s rapid awakening and recovery from the damage that has obviously been done to the functioning of his brain _through no fault of his own_.
Nah, it is not for us to condemn him, he condemns himself, in the hell he creates by his obvious lies. I cover this in Special Place in Hell (from his title) . Warning, it is long, but perhaps some kind reader will summarize it. I need editors, any volunteers? Malcolm, I could create a Cholesterol Skeptics wiki, for community collaboration in developing deep documentation, I have extensive experience with wikis and on-line collaboration.
I am not saying vaccines are totally safe or everything is OK with them, I believe there is as much misleading official bs associated with vaccines as with statins and cholesterol. My point is, that we have no moral right to decide about them, if we want to live in these societies. It sucks, but such is life. What we have to do, is speak. We must try to bring every grievance to the open, we must discuss the problems. But we can’t stop vaccinating our children as long as official recommendations advise us to vaccinate bacause of public health safety. There is a risk, that those documentaries or books have it wrong someway.
Sorry all the grammatic mistakes, english is not my native language and I have to use google translate quite a lot.
Lots of people here are speaking against vaccines. I havent done my research about vaccines, but I know, that it’s a lot more serious issue than cholesterol. There is a risk of getting back all the nasty diseases we have already got rid of. A risk of actually killing our unvaccined children. I don’t have an opinion of vaccines, but what I’m just trying to say is.. be very sure about what you are doing. I wouldn’t let my own child unvaccined based on some youtube videos or a single book i have read. There are responsibilities being a parent or being part of society. You should be absolutely god damn fu***** sure that you are right about such a thing, if you ignore the official recommendations of vaccination, because these diseases that we are vaccinating against, are bad, very bad. And it is not about our own individual health, it is about us all. We can play with our own health as much as we like, but when it comes to our collective health or our childrens healt.. dont play with that. If you are only 99,9% sure about your opinion, don’t. You don’t want to kill your child first and then recognize you were wrong after all. These are so serious issues that we just can’t let the decision be based on doubtful sources.
Of course it’s ok to use common sense. It might be not reasonable to vaccine against all flu-epidemies. I don’t. It’s completely different thing.
This is not an attack against anybody, this is just about principles and responsibilities, when it comes to living in a society, where our individual decisions may affect other people around us. I hope you guys understand.
Tuuba: What diseases we vaccinate for are “bad, very bad?” Today, vaccine-promoting experts, such as Dr. Gregory Poland, say that measles has become a disease of the vaccinated. In fact, in the recent outbreak in New York, 75% of the cases were vaccinated. In my time everybody got measles-even the Brady Bunch! As a result we got the gift of lifetime immunity, a better-developed immune system, a reduced risk of cancer and CVD, and a few days off of school. What’s not to like about that? The vaccine, by the way, provides none of those benefits.
The risk of getting back to the levels of disease experienced up to the 1910s in e.g. the USA and UK is the same as the risk of reproducing the same, often abysmal, levels of public sanitation, food standards, working conditions, and child labour exploitation as then existed.
Talk to your Tory MP about the ‘race to the bottom’ that their Brexit will result in if you want to stop it dragging us back to such levels of disease that had actually been almost completely eradicated in the ‘best of the west’s’ living conditions prior to the era of mass vaccination programmes.
The best prevention against anything but novel diseases is a healthy immune system in a healthy body.
To be convinced that mass vaccination could achieve this you have, first, to be convinced that ‘we’ understand how immunisation works, from everything I read we don’t…yet.
Meanwhile there was a flurry of excitement that high plasma Al levels were found in patients who had to have fluid replaced during e.g. surgery, due to leaching of Al from bare heating coils (not coated with a ?bio protective layer). Laughably there was much said about Al and toxicity but no mention of the routine exposure of neonates and infant to reactive Al compounds in vaccine adjuvants, or to the high exposures to Al in the Camelford Incident.
And, finally, there were adjuvant free vaccines produced in the US (Flublok) and in France (Pasteur Institute childhood vaccines) but Sanofi bought both out – any idea what happened to those products since?
Tuuba, I see you have swallowed all the “herd immunity” bs hook, line and sinker. It’s all based on misleading and often falsified statistics, little more than blue smoke and mirrors, cooked up by the same Big Pharma companies and their sponsors in government like the Fraud and Deception Agency (FDA) in the U.S. who are also deceiving so many of us about statins. This is not the right place for a detailed discussion of all that, but on the Internet you can easily learn all you need to know about the outright lies they are telling us. There are a couple of recent ducu-series called “The Truth About Vaccines” and “Vaccines Revealed” that you can purchase access to online or wait for them to become available again to watch for free later this year. Individual names you can search for are Suzanne Humphries and Sherry Tenpenny. You can also check out the websites NVIC.org and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s childrenshealthdefense.org. I guarantee you that once you learn the truth, you will be totally outraged about how you have been deliberately deceived, possibly to the point of becoming a vaccine safety activist yourself.
Gary
The Guardian nor it’s readers ( judging by it’s readers’ comments) have any time for anti vaccine folk.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/05/anti-vaxx-propaganda-internet-tech
I have only just joined the debate on vaccination but still surprised at the pro vaccine attitude of the Guardian readers. In comparison the pro statin MoS article was totally out of step with it’s readers experiences.
Jerome Savage: I know very little about U.K. newspapers, but it appears that the Guardian is just like the rest of the media-serving as a propaganda mouthpiece for the benefit of pharmaceutical profits. As for the comments, perhaps they only allow favorable ones? This is a common tactic. If not, the Guardian readers appear to be an incurious lot. Sheep, we would call them here. Otherwise, is it worth lining the bird cage with?
Hi Tuuba, I know you said you hadn’t studied the issue of vaccines so I’m not upset about what you said. It is very mainstream though and many will take issue with it. I’m not sure where I stand on it exactly. But I do know that they aren’t as well made as we wish they were. There were issues of contamination which may or may not have been fixed (and there’s no way to tell), and as people have pointed out, natural immunity after an episode of an illness is stronger than vaccinated immunity.
The first time I thought, “Hey, something is wrong here” was when I read Dr. Susan Humphreys book “Rising from the Dead” which is an autobiography of a doctor who did exactly what she should do, she reported adverse events of vaccines when they were forced on cardiac patients who were admitted to the hospital where she worked. She says they had to vaccinate every admitted patient due to a Medicare rule, and that it often caused a marked reduction in kidney function that sometimes sickened the person further. And when she reported this, well, I’ll led you read what happened. Since I read that, I’ve read other accounts from doctors that agree to some extent, that things are not as straightforward as we imagine. I honestly wish they were.
Doctors are being forced to sometimes act against the best interest of the patient, even overriding their own judgement as doctors. That’s what’s wrong.
I haven’t really got into the Vaccine debate, but the UK now issues combined doses to ver young babies… They can have had 30 different vaccines administered in three combined injections by age 1 year. That seems to be more than I remember I had back in the 1950’s and 60’s (the toddler one was the worst, that left a big blister and scar). Why are there so many now?
colettebytes: It is a horror show, a crime against humanity. No vaccine currently licensed has ever been properly safety tested, as all drugs are, and they don’t even bother to consider that multiple vaccines given at the same time might be orders of magnitude more dangerous, both on an individual and a population level. Read the interview John Rappaport re-published today.
I had a severe reaction to combination travel vaccines in 2006. I had Boosters for Polio, Tetanus, Diptheria, and Typhoid, Hepatitis, Japanese Encephalitis. Then on top of that lot, I had a Yellow Fever inoculation for an eventual end to my travels in Brazilian rainforest. I am pretty sensitive to eggs (albumin carrier) , so braced myself for the joint pain and inflammation that I knew would come. What I wasn’t prepared for was, at the start of my trip, a debilitating sensation of my oesophagus dissolving. The pain in my throat down to my chest was horrendous. My parotid glands swelled up to the size of large plums and visible to the eye. I shivered constantly, my temperature 105°F.
I sought an English speaking private doctor who agreed to see me at the end of his evening surgery on a Friday night. He was horrified at my state. He told me that he suspected glandular fever, but said he also thought my immune system was collapsing. He put me on three drugs (one of which was immunuferon) to try and stop my free fall. He told me that I should be hospitalised, and that he would send in a full blood test on the Monday for analysis if I was no better on the Monday. I declined hospitalisation, went and bought the drugs and bed rested over the weekend. I pulled out of it. I put that little episode down to the administration of too many vaccines at once.
And that is when all my current food sensitivities really started to affect my life.
What you put in your body will affect you. If you have problems with symptoms that cannot be explained as a virus or bacterial or injury, look to the other obvious things that you put into your body.
colettebytes: Absolutely right. Bit of a shock at first to realize that so much of Medicine is based upon limited or no evidence, and evidence of harm is often willfully hidden. As Dr. Kendrick has pointed out, when Medicine hasn’t a clue, they invent a sciency-sounding term, like “essential hypertension,” or, better yet, a Latin term, like “parotitis.” A U.S. warship has been quarantined at sea for a couple of months for an outbreak of parotitis. May very well be mumps, but military leaders are legendary for their prowess at obfuscation, so we’ll never know. It is clear, though, that the efficacy of the mumps component of MMR is so low that it has not prevented outbreaks among the fully vaccinated (true, to an extent, of the measles portion, for somewhat different reasons). We are at infancy in our understanding of the microbial world, so its interaction with the human immune system is a great mystery. Yet we are willy-nilly subjected to interventions and products which may help due to the placebo effect, but may very well harm; that harm is almost universally denied, unless you can get rock-solid evidence in front of a jury. This, unfortunately, costs a fortune, and, in the U.S., impossible in the case of vaccine injury.
Have read that report Gary. Very revealing. And it conjures up questions on a number of levels. I suddenly have a lot of why’s?
The third leading cause of death in the US is Iatrogenic. I am not sure what the percentage of deaths attributed to Iatrogenic cause is in in UK, but this is a serious number.
It means that the cause of death was due to whatever the doctor prescribed as treatment. It is a fancy little Latin name to hide the incompetence that plagues the medical profession for all sorts of reasons. 😦
At risk of sounding like Miss Cleverclogs…I wrote a paper about the iatrogenic effect on patients. I received a 98% pass mark. Of course, I had obviously learned the theory, but really did not take it on board until well after my retirement. Better late than never, I suppose; but quite honestly, it really frightens me by what I have learned in recent years regarding Big Pharma tactics. It was a known concept 35 years ago, but rarely questioned in my circle of colleagues.
colettebytes: By the way, I’ve been reading your posts about food, and wish to commend you for your open-minded dietary experimentation. Find what works and enjoy it. My first rule of thumb is, whatever the government/media says or recommends about food, I do the opposite (this rule also applies to medical care).
I was so excited to arise this morning to the most recent instalment of what causes heart disease part one million. Unfortunately I’m now pissed off! What a pack of Fuckwits! ( I’m allowed to swear). Politicians aren’t they all. Wouldn’t know the truth if they fell over it. Keep fighting doc. We the people know who’s knee deep in the b.s here. Unfortunately we don’t get to vote on this. Dictatorship anyone? He who controls the media controls everything. It’s too easy to throw mud at the doctors who have a conscience or perhaps a brain and see how much sticks. There are people of truth and then there’s these spin doctors. Unfortunately the spinners far outweigh the others and of course they have far more influence. They must protect their investments. Humans are not part of this plan. Money is king. Care of humans is secondary. Global warming anyone. Please!! There’s a thing called evidence or do they not believe in that. If they did we’d quickly find change. How they can say your book TGCC is unfactual is disturbingly. Have they read it? Here’s some nerdy nobody telling probably the greatest researcher into what really causes heart disease that his research is akin to a lie. I have a great bullshit detector and the alarm bells are ringing. It must be so disheartening for you Malcolm but we the people are behind you. That won’t help you in the real world but at least you can know we are. Maybe it will take a generational change maybe two and maybe never but you must keep trying. Human beings don’t deserve the present dietary advice or this outdated cholesterol hypothesis. We shouldn’t even be talking about it. Chin up mate.
I’ll disagree, we should be talking about it, we should refuse to shut up, and we should be advocating for and facilitating better research, with our voices, our votes, and our money.
This topic matters, and there are many others where defects in scientific process lead to major errors or premature conclusions, so at least some of us should care about better scientific communication and decision-making process, or we have more and more messes to clean up that could be avoided by insisting on solid science in the first place.
We blame the drug companies for following their own self-interest, but we set up and tolerate the system that more or less requires them to do that.
How many people does it take to change the world? I have a long-term debate with myself, is it two or is it three? Have an idea for transformation. Try to communicate it and you are likely to find, it is very difficult to find a second person to commit to a real project. People will say, sometimes, “Great idea! I’m glad someone is thinking about this,” and I’ve heard that more than once, but . . . those people won’t lift a finger. And I understand why. Most of us are enmired in entrenched despair, and great thinkers have been saying this for a long time. We don’t believe change is possible, except maybe, for some of us, a brief period when we were young, and “we tried then and it didn’t work.” Therefore it’s impossible? This is, in fact, how most of us think.
It is possible and it happens, but it takes training and patience and persistence and being willing to be shot at. Sometimes literally.
Serious irony that as you received this hateful drivel many great names are speaking to the British Parliament to plead for better dietary guidelines. They are using some of the very evidence you are being bashed for here! These attacks are inevitable. I am waiting for the shoe to really “drop” here in the States, where hundreds of practitioners are veering away from standard of medicine, sticking their necks out with better dietary advice, and one has to wonder–when the “sh—t” will hit the fan they sit under! Scary that these attacks are blatant and with no seeming fear of retribution for THEIR libelous statments. Nonetheless Malcolm–we stand behind you 100%! Just keep up the great work!
One should never forget the first principle of the old KGB.
“Always accuse your enemy of exactly what you are doing”.
I can’t BELIEVE all this! Extraordinary! Shades of the Yudkin/Ancel Keyes sugar war!
Keep us informed re: the response to your reply!
Bon courage, mon ami!
Jill Leslie
From: Dr. Malcolm Kendrick Sent: Sunday, March 3, 2019 10:51 AM To: jill.leslie@btopenworld.com Subject: [New post] Cholesterol Games
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “3rd March 2019 Mahatma Gandhi. ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win’ A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on” Respond to this post by replying above this line
New post on Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Cholesterol Games by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
3rd March 2019
Mahatma Gandhi. ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’
A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on Sunday was gong to attack us for daring to question the cholesterol hypothesis and the benefits of statins.
Below is the e-mail I received.
From: Barney Calman Sent: 28 February 2019 16:53 To: malcolmken Subject: MOS/Right to reply
Dear Dr Kendrick – The Mail on Sunday plans to publish an article this weekend on growing concerns about claims you and a number of other individuals have publicly made about statins, the role of cholesterol in heart disease, and the allegations that researchers into the drugs are financially conflicted due to payments made to the organisations they work for, and so the evidence they provide about the effectiveness of these medications, and their side effects, are in some way untrustworthy.
Over the past 30 years, more than 200,000 patients have been put through the most rigorous forms of clinical trials to produce definitive proof the tablets lower heart attack risk by up to 50 per cent, and a stroke by 30 per cent, and reduce the risk of death – from any cause.
In January, the editors-in-chief of all 30 major heart health medical journals – each a leading cardiologist – signed a joint open letter, warning: ‘Lives are at stake [due to the] wanton spread of medical misinformation. It is high time that this stopped.’
A 2016 analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which tracks outbreaks and public health concerns, found fake news about statins may have prompted 200,000 patients in Britain alone to quit the drug over a single six-month period following an article you wrote for the BMJ which claimed, incorrectly, that 20 per cent of statins patients quit the drug because of side effects.
They estimate that up for 2,000 heart attack and strokes could be a result of this. We would like to offer you the opportunity to respond to this and the following:
*In your latest book, A Statin Nation, you state: ‘People are being conned. The way to avoid heart disease… has nothing to do with lowering cholesterol.’ This is despite clinical trial evidence to the contrary, and despite no evidence that there is a con, which would imply that those who claim that lowering cholesterol can help lower the risk of heart disease know this is untrue and are deliberately misleading the public.
*It has been alleged that the potential consequences of claims you have made about statins and cholesterol, far outweigh that of the infamous MMR vaccine scandal with one researcher saying: ‘In terms of death and disability that could have been prevented, this could be far worse.’
*In our article, one leading cardiologist states that the facts you and others often cite about cholesterol and statins sound convincing but that in reality ‘they contain a grain of truth, mixed with speculation and opinion, which makes is very difficult for the public to know who to trust.’
*You often quote observational studies as proof of your claims about statins and cholesterol in articles and in media appearances which contradict findings of authoritative clinical trials, which you do not mention. This is misleading.
*
Malcolm, You’re obviously hitting them where it hurts and scoring big. Keep up the pressure.
The fact that the Mail on Sunday journo couldn’t even verify that you worked for the NHS, or that you weren’t the author of the BMJ paper speaks volumes as to the level of fact checking undertaken before contacting you.
The implication that you might be responsible for death and disability were people to stop their statins based on your writings reminds me of the reaction of Norman Swan to the ABC’s Catalyst program on Statins in 2013 when he exclaimed ‘people will die’ (if they stop taking their drugs in response to the program).
I guess scaremongering is a natural response to anything that threatens a multi billion dollar industry. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live an average of 3.5 days longer?
Here’s interesting – I got this from the references in a paper someone kindly posted on your previous blog
The AT04A vaccine against proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 reduces total cholesterol, vascular inflammation, and atherosclerosis in APOE*3Leiden.CETP mice
https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/38/32/2499/3868072
“For many years, atherosclerosis was considered to be mainly a lipid-driven disease caused by the continuous accumulation of cholesterol in the arterial intima. However, it is increasingly recognized that atherosclerosis is predominately a chronic low-grade inflammatory disease of the vessel wall with an interplay of humoral, cellular, and locally produced pro-inflammatory factors.29,30 One of the initial stages of atherosclerotic disease is endothelial cell activation and the recruitment of inflammatory cells to the vessel wall.29,30 Multi-analyte profiling of inflammatory markers showed a reduction of several cytokines with chemotactic activity for monocytes by AT04A vaccine (see Supplementary material online, TableSI) which is in line with the reduced expression of endothelial ICAM-1 and adherence of monocytes to the vessel wall. The decreased levels of M-CSF-1 and VEGF-A, which activate endothelial cells and stimulate monocyte/macrophage migration, may have additionally contributed to the reduction in lesion number and size.”
I read this as “even if the lipid hypothesis turns out to be wrong, our drug still works” – arse covering in action.
Would be interesting to know what else PCSK9 is involved in . . .
chris c: to avoid atherosclerosis, solution for mice is not to eat a western-stye diet. This recommendation can also be effectively applied to humans. I did not read any further in the study.
NO NO NO! You should eat a western style diet and take western style drugs. It may not help your health but think of the profit! Do you not WANT to contribute to the economy? You must be a DENIER!!!
chris c: The study author is a closet statin denier by stating that western-style diets caused CVD in his mice. Cholesterol studies keep him employed.
I feel so sorry for the poor meeces, being fed things like “high fat” diets which are actually high carb diets with a lot of added soybean oil or similar crap. Non-species-appropriate diets are not good for man or beast.
Great response Dr. K to attacks by Big Pharma supported news media. What I have seen is the pharmaceutical industry has totally corrupted healthcare, government regulators, and the news media. As mentioned by others, the pharmaceutical industry, through their paid shills, are calling for censorship of any writings that disagree with the official policy. I’ll add “A Statin Nation” to my to do reading list after I read “Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma has corrupted healthcare” by Peter C. Gotzsche, and “Conspiracy Theory in America” by Lance deHaven-Smith. The term “conspiracy theory” is used to shutdown debates on subjects in which debates are needed.
Sci-reader: I also recommend “The Great Cholesterol Con,” and especially “Doctoring Data,” taken together a powerful indictment of business as usual in Medicine, of government and the media which promote the interests of industry over actual humans out of greed, perfidy, and ignorance.
Thank you, Gary, I have read them both and I highly recommend them.
You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there’s
no occasion to.
Humbert Wolfe 1885-1940
TS: Thanks! Excellent!
Women too *cough* Sarah Boseley *cough*
Re the increased incidence of Type2 diabetes onset with Statins, I often wonder if that’s also the link to the dreadfully unsuccessful Levothyroxine treatment meted out to thyroid patients based on mere consensus evidence. We poor patients with low levels of T3 are sitting ducks for Type2 diabetes. Follow the money indeed! Keep going Malcolm, Aseem and Zoe, they must fear you something rotten to mount such a drastic, kneejerk offensive.
It’s mildly encouraging the the comments on the article are mostly against, perhaps not all Mail readers live up to their knuckle-dragger stereotype
It is obvious to anyone with even half a brain, what is really going on here. This was quite simply a “hit piece”. The real (rhetorical) question is who put out the “contract” on you and why did the “mechanic” comply so eagerly? The conversation goes something like this. ” We gotta do somethin’ about this asshole, he’s costing us dear. Put the word out to all our friends, tell ’em we’ll pay extra good for saturating his fat with a few good paragraphs. He’ll be needing statins after this! ”
Sadly, this is going on across the board. Only a few days ago Youtube closed the account of Mark Steele. He has been warning the public of the dangers of 5G. Character assassination and astroturfing are everywhere. The puppet masters rely on the gullibility of the public, most of whom are not scientifically minded, have no real interest beyond the headlines and lead busy lives. Others simply trust the men and women in white coats or anyone with a few letters after their name.
It may already be too late to help the masses because they won’t help themselves. My mother in law is a perfect case in point. She has taken statins for 5 years now and I have watched her health slowly deteriorate. My best efforts to gently and now forcefully educate her on the subject have failed miserably. She has unwavering faith in the doctors and the NHS website. She thinks that I am deluded. What hope then?
A few weeks ago whilst in a restaurant, I overheard a man castigate his fellow diner for ordering bread and butter pudding because it was made with “real butter”.
Keep up the good work Dr K, be sure footed and deliberate. You are a marked man and you haven’t even started on diabetes or vaccines yet!
I hope this is the right place to leave these links but I too am very concerned about the health risks with the arrival of 5G, formally a military application, so here are some links to stories on the health implications:
Yet another health scare. Probably warranted.
But is there such a thing as health scare fatigue? seems living in the first world is a health hazard akin to living in third world.(unless u have money in third world & hav no major health issues)
Health ‘scare’? Not if living is killing us. It’s all around us, in the air, in the water, in the food, in the medicines. And then there’s the endless wars launched on the defenceless because they stand in the way of the resources the West needs to kill all of us!
Barovsky
Maybe so, but life expectancy in the West despite all the hazards and indications that it life expectancy is coming down, is still way above the old communist countries.
Almost all of Europe ( with exception of former Russian affiliated), Australia, Japan NZ, Canada hav life expectancies over 80. The US dips just under 80 while China is 76 and Russia is 70.
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/life-expectancy-by-country/
I suggest everyone watch any lecture that they can find by Magda Havas, Martin Pall, Devra Davis, Martin Blank, Walter Graham, Barrie Trower.
People need to start organising some community action and political pressure.
Unless you want to experience what the G stands for, and its not good.
Consider the legal limits of microwaves in places like Austria and Russia.
And the winner is….Malcolm Kendrick, M.D. in fact.
Nice post!
Dear Dr. Kendrick, Wow! that was powerful reading. Very entertaining also. I just trust your heart attacks don’t come from those terrible accusations. Keep at it. I always enjoy your articles. I also don’t take statins! thanks to your very valuable comments.s
Isolde Holmes
I wouldn’t worry in the slightest because most free thinking people would only ever buy the Daily Mail if there was a national shortage of toilet paper.
Keep up the good work.
Dr. K, I realize your focus is on CVD, but it would be most helpful if you would include with your blogs some pointers on avoiding diaphragm spasms and hiccups for your readers. I laughed too hard, too long. It is good to know that you can treat these obvious (and pathetically fumbling) attempts at intimidation and character assassination with humor and grace. I do hope in the future, one of these snivelers will publish some lie for which you can sue, and that you are awarded a large punitive damages assessment.
Apparently, Mr. Calman is such a poor fact-checker on the issue of cholesterol and CVD that he does not realize that even the USDA (firmly in thrall to the pharmaceutical industry) four years ago declared that the cholesterol content of foods no longer has to be listed on nutrition labels because “it is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption”. (The USDA was sued by a vegan-oriented NGO over this decision, but there are, as we all know, no data to support tracking dietary cholesterol).
Daily Mail: Zinoviev letter = fake news
I stumbled across Dr Kendrick’s books recently. I enjoyed his informal writing style and was impressed by his dissection of research funded by the pharmaceutical businesses. Like him I’m a UK trained GP and I’ve been around a while. I had just started practice when in 1978 Atromid S (the first cholesterol lowering agent marketed on a worldwide scale as a primary prevention and not, by the way, a statin) was withdrawn in a hurry from all markets because it was demonstrated to be increasing overall mortality rates (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3522803/) . I’ve been a GP since then.
It’s my view also that the drugs industry in pursuit of profit, together with the medical establishment in pursuit of profit and prestige, have certainly killed many, many, more people than the Cosa Nostra. They’ve helped a lot of people too. Even the Cosa Nostra provides protection of a sort. Some of the researchers and doctors involved at least have doubtless been very well motivated. However I assume the business end of Big Pharma is entirely money centred. I have to admit that over the years I’ve been duped into helping the bad guys out and it is embarrassing to contemplate that at the end of my career. I have seen so many victims of prescribing. At least I did stop seeing drug reps about 30 years ago. I’ve been refusing statins from my own GP for some years and been an anti-polypharmacy GP for longer. I’ve retired from public practice now and working in private GP practice as a completely free agent. I prescribe less and less and concentrate more and more on lifestyle advice. There is not much doubt that prescribing deters people from biting the bullet of life style changes – e.g diabetes treatments/osteoporosis treatments/statins/stomach acid lowering agents/antihypertensives/HRT etc. I have the time now – 30 minutes per patient not 10. This lack of time for front line prescribers in the NHS is vitally important. Doctors don’t have the time to talk and everyone, anyway, including doctors, would prefer to take a simple effective short course of pill treatment to avoid the chore of eating less, eating better and exercising more. Unfortunately most chronic disease needs permanent treatment and all effective treatments inevitably have serious side effects. It also seems inevitable that the pharma industry will lie indefinitely about side effects. As an example of how corrupt and deadly industry can be it is interesting to contemplate the history of asbestos use. The link between asbestos and lung disease and cancer was shown definitively in the 1930s. It took about 60-70 years to ban it simply because it is cheap and effective insulation. Death rates from asbestos related lung cancer have yet to peak because of a generally long interval between exposure and death from lung cancer.
Unlike Dr Kendrick I didn’t have the intelligence, courage, conviction, enormous energy, bulldog perseverance and resistance to attack needed to investigate, dissect and then take on medical professional group think and cynicism – not to mention the pharma industry. How he manages to put all this effort in and run a practice I have no idea. I am immensely impressed by Dr Kendrick.
Dr Patrick Nerney
From: Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Sent: 03 March 2019 11:52
To: Patrick Nerney
Subject: [New post] Cholesterol Games
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “3rd March 2019 Mahatma Gandhi. ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’ A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on”
Respond to this post by replying above this line
New post on Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
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Cholesterol Games
by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
3rd March 2019
Mahatma Gandhi. ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’
A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on Sunday was gong to attack us for daring to question the cholesterol hypothesis and the benefits of statins.
Below is the e-mail I received.
From: Barney Calman
Sent: 28 February 2019 16:53
To: malcolmken
Subject: MOS/Right to reply
Dear Dr Kendrick – The Mail on Sunday plans to publish an article this weekend on growing concerns about claims you and a number of other individuals have publicly made about statins, the role of cholesterol in heart disease, and the allegations that researchers into the drugs are financially conflicted due to payments made to the organisations they work for, and so the evidence they provide about the effectiveness of these medications, and their side effects, are in some way untrustworthy.
Over the past 30 years, more than 200,000 patients have been put through the most rigorous forms of clinical trials to produce definitive proof the tablets lower heart attack risk by up to 50 per cent, and a stroke by 30 per cent, and reduce the risk of death – from any cause.
In January, the editors-in-chief of all 30 major heart health medical journals – each a leading cardiologist – signed a joint open letter, warning: ‘Lives are at stake [due to the] wanton spread of medical misinformation. It is high time that this stopped.’
A 2016 analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which tracks outbreaks and public health concerns, found fake news about statins may have prompted 200,000 patients in Britain alone to quit the drug over a single six-month period following an article you wrote for the BMJ which claimed, incorrectly, that 20 per cent of statins patients quit the drug because of side effects.
They estimate that up for 2,000 heart attack and strokes could be a result of this. We would like to offer you the opportunity to respond to this and the following:
*In your latest book, A Statin Nation, you state: ‘People are being conned. The way to avoid heart disease… has nothing to do with lowering cholesterol.’ This is despite clinical trial evidence to the contrary, and despite no evidence that there is a con, which would imply that those who claim that lowering cholesterol can help lower the risk of heart disease know this is untrue and are deliberately misleading the public.
*It has been alleged that the potential consequences of claims you have made about statins and cholesterol, far outweigh that of the infamous MMR vaccine scandal with one researcher saying: ‘In terms of death and disability that could have been prevented, this could be far worse.’
*In our article, one leading cardiologist states that the facts you and others often cite about cholesterol and statins sound convincing but that in reality ‘they contain a grain of truth, mixed with speculation and opinion, which makes is very difficult for the public to know who to trust.’
*You often quote observational studies as proof of your claims about statins and cholesterol in articles and in media appearances which contradict findings of authoritative clinical trials, which you do not mention. This is misleading.
*
I value your contribution to the statin wars.
I thought you might need to know about the lecture attached given at the House of Commons on 6 Feb 19 by another hero of this battle whose good looks make you hate him, please see:
On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 at 10:54, Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “3rd March 2019 Mahatma Gandhi. ‘First they > ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’ A > few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe > Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on” > Respond to this post by replying above this line > New post on *Dr. Malcolm Kendrick* > Cholesterol Games > by Dr. > Malcolm Kendrick > > 3rd March 2019 > > Mahatma Gandhi. *‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then > they fight you, then you win.’* > > A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe > Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on Sunday was > gong to attack us for daring to question the cholesterol hypothesis and the > benefits of statins. > > Below is the e-mail I received. > > From: Barney Calman > Sent: 28 February 2019 16:53 > To: malcolmken > Subject: MOS/Right to reply > > *Dear Dr Kendrick – The Mail on Sunday plans to publish an article this > weekend on growing concerns about claims you and a number of other > individuals have publicly made about statins, the role of cholesterol in > heart disease, and the allegations that researchers into the drugs are > financially conflicted due to payments made to the organisations they work > for, and so the evidence they provide about the effectiveness of these > medications, and their side effects, are in some way untrustworthy.* > > *Over the past 30 years, more than 200,000 patients have been put through > the most rigorous forms of clinical trials to produce definitive proof the > tablets lower heart attack risk by up to 50 per cent, and a stroke by 30 > per cent, and reduce the risk of death – from any cause.* > > *In January, the editors-in-chief of all 30 major heart health medical > journals – each a leading cardiologist – signed a joint open letter, > warning: ‘Lives are at stake [due to the] wanton spread of medical > misinformation. It is high time that this stopped.’* > > *A 2016 analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, > which tracks outbreaks and public health concerns, found fake news about > statins may have prompted 200,000 patients in Britain alone to quit the > drug over a single six-month period following an article you wrote for the > BMJ which claimed, incorrectly, that 20 per cent of statins patients quit > the drug because of side effects.* > > *They estimate that up for 2,000 heart attack and strokes could be a > result of this. We would like to offer you the opportunity to respond to > this and the following:* > > **In your latest book, A Statin Nation, you state: ‘People are being > conned. The way to avoid heart disease… has nothing to do with lowering > cholesterol.’ This is despite clinical trial evidence to the contrary, and > despite no evidence that there is a con, which would imply that those who > claim that lowering cholesterol can help lower the risk of heart disease > know this is untrue and are deliberately misleading the public.* > > **It has been alleged that the potential consequences of claims you have > made about statins and cholesterol, far outweigh that of the infamous MMR > vaccine scandal with one researcher saying: ‘In terms of death and > disability that could have been prevented, this could be far worse.’* > > **In our article, one leading cardiologist states that the facts you and > others often cite about cholesterol and statins sound convincing but that > in reality ‘they contain a grain of truth, mixed with speculation and > opinion, which makes is very difficult for the public to know who to > trust.’* > > **You often quote observational studies as proof of your claims about > statins and cholesterol in articles and in media appearances which > contradict findings of authoritative clinical trials, which you do not > mention. This is misleading.* > > **
Keep on killing us softly. and with laughter.
Thank you so much for being, writing and doing all these wonderful things.
Cheers,
Ari
As always follow the money !!
My own family’s experience is one of the GP “pushing” a drug regardless of patient lifestyle, just take it its good for you believe me I’m a doctor. Lets keep lowering the cholesterol limit to pump up the sales revenue. Its no better than a placebo and maybe it is a good placebo ??
I also would agree with Dr Malcolm that the statin “deniers” look more healthy than the cartel members !!!
Never give up! Don’t give in to them!
Statins in my experience, are a very ‘dirty’ drug, with frequent side effects. So many patients FEEL SO MUCH BETTER when the statin is stopped and were always extremely grateful.
Best wishes
John Qualtrough ( GP rtd)
You were lucky it was the Mail. Had it been the Guardian you’d probably also have been accused of being a misogynist, racist transphobic.
Hold on: I’ve just absorbed the identity of your two allies. But you are still short a transexual.
Joking aside, I do admire how steadfast you are. I am also struck, given that you are no more infallible than the rest of us, how feeble is the evidence your foes seem able to gather against your thesis. Is it possible that they know they are wrong?
Dearieme,
I am absolutely certain that they know they are wrong. Wouldn’t they release a point by point rebuttal of one of Dr K’s books if they could? They know damn well that they are wrong, and that makes what they are doing totally wicked.
David Bailey: The “journalist” who wrote the piece may very well not know the difference between shit and Shinola, but the man behind the curtain who commissioned the piece most certainly knows Dr. Kendrick is on to their scam, just as the CDC knows perfectly well what their liability-free vaccines are doing to children. I greatly respect Dr. Kendrick’s largely steering clear of the latter issue; the attacks would be orders of magnitude more vicious. In any case, his area of expertise is CVD, which concerns, interests, and fascinates all of us. I’ve learned more about how to live healthily and well since I’ve been coming here than in all the other years of my life put together, and I feel great without any drugs, tests, or screenings. Makes me proud to be half Scottish! Seems the area of expertise of the Daily Mail is rubbish.
Gary,
I wouldn’t excuse the journalist at all. He must know that these issues have boiled for years, and if he had – say – gone to Dr Kendrick and asked for a set of questions to ask his other interviewees, he could have nailed them very quickly. He could then have written a brilliant exposé of the whole horrid scam. Alternatively he could have bought Dr Kendricks books and gone through the points with them. I think journalists are a big part of the problem.
David Bailey: You are certainly right. Both the writer and the rag which published this rubbish deserve all the excoriation we can heap upon them. What is truly frightening to me is that 2019 seems to be the year when the pharmaceutical industry will be given carte blanche to force upon the population their miracle products, no questions, no dissent allowed. At this very moment there is a brand new dog and pony show going on in the U.S. Senate, following closely on the heels of last week’s in the House. They won’t get away with it. Although Americans are not accustomed to protesting in the streets, they are certainly capable. The industry has over-reached. Statins and vaccines are very much the same story. With statins, though, at least adults can say no.
David & Gary
The mail is a comfort zone for mid England, anybody who remembers the old Readers Digest will know what I mean. It is simple conservative with a nod in direction of controversy, a kind of opium of the people. To expect cutting edge journalism or state of the art reporting is not realistic. (Tho the express is worse) The fact that the article did quote those who don’t inhabit the contrived comfort zone and ask too many questions was encouraging. Ok it was merely a nod away from the status quo but it was significant, in my humble opinion. The suggestion by Prof. Colin Bageant that none of the pharma millions came to him smacked of Father Ted “it was only resting in my account”, the discerning reader will make his own mind up. In case the article strayed too far from the official line (and possible advertising revenue) support to the minister of health and a campaign to restore world order was guaranteed as a finale, restoring the mail’s role as Britain’s teat. Of course the comments section revealed the injured of middle England were having none of it which was delightful. Injury, pain, fear & hurt not to be dissmissed.
David and Gary, the journalist knew what he was doing. He has apparently been receiving Zoe Harcombe’s newsletter for years and she has helped him out more than once. I suspect he was ordered to write this.
On the competence of cardiology departments: in the last three months I have been told by a consultant that I have CVD, and boast a stent. Neither is true. I have been told by a different consultant that I take a particular beta-blocker: also untrue. And one of the department’s nurses misdiagnosed the cause of my having fainted.
Yet the facts are all in my notes (or so I bloody well hope). Either the buggers didn’t bother reading the notes or they read someone else’s in error.
World-famous hospital, eh?
Malcolm,
Thanks for pointing out this article – I went to the DM and added several comments of my own – my own experience, a link to the NNT site, and a link to a list of studies about overall mortality vs blood cholesterol level:
http://vernerwheelock.com/179-cholesterol-and-all-cause-mortality/
Although the DM article is negative, do read some of the comments! Most of them are on our side. I think the establishment’s problem is that they know the truth is spreading far and wide. Presumably the doctors who prescribe statins, are engaging in more and more awkward discussions, where the patients have learned the facts off the internet, their friends and their own bodies.
The desperate fight-back by the medical establishment – don’t listen, just preach – makes me very, very angry.
I would urge everyone here who knows from first or second hand what statin side effects can do, to listen for over sixties conversations about skeletal pain and insert the word ‘statin’ into the conversation. I have, I think, ‘saved’ a number of people that way. If they are doubtful, or have had CVD problems, I am cautious – pointing out that just stopping the statins for a couple of weeks will probably let them know if they are causing their their pain – then they can decide what to do.
OK, doing this incurs a 35% relative risk of becoming a statin bore.
Statin bore, I’m already there, thanks, in part, to this site!
Aseem may be handsome, but you look ‘comfortable’. Much nicer!
😉
This morning Sharyl Attkisson posted a segment originally broadcast Nov. 4, 2018, called “The Statin Wars.” Worth a watch. She says sales are expected to reach $1 trillion by 2020. Thus propaganda like this.
I have added a few comments to the DM article, including this one:
“I would urge anyone who has medical/scientific/statistical training to read Dr Kendrick’s 3 books. You will find: detailed discussions about the various tricks Big Pharma use to bias the drug trials, discussions about relative vs absolute risk figures (relative risks are always quoted and are misleading), A discussion about NNTs of statins, etc. Everything is referenced, so it is easy to check that you are not being lied to. If you have detailed quibbles, I am sure that Dr Kendrick will respond to your problems on his blog – he has nothing to hide.”
Bravo! Have you checked back to see if your comment is still there?
Me thinks Barney must be feeling rather foolish with his biased, unbalanced piece of journalism, hmmm wasn’t it the Daily Mail that supported the MMR doctor? Yes and as a result measles which almost stamped out is back putting peoples lives at risk!
Yes I admit to buying the Daily Mail at the weekend, the TV pages are great! Oh must mention, for news and articles worth reading its the Independent for me.
Show me some journalism in MSM that deserves the name?
It is only when they speak into something that overlaps your own experience that you realise it is mainstream mind meds.
Stephen Ingles Repeating myself here but just to say that as an 11 year old I had measles. I remember having spots & being off from school for a few days but nothing too exciting and certainly hav had worse. (Flu, hangovers etc) On a previous study here, there was a reference to a Japanese study that found that inoculations against measles were seen to have an association with weaker immune systems going forward.
Hi Jerome, I too had measles as a child which like most I recovered from, some unfortunately do not and the concequense are well documented. My point was that a disease which in essence should have been eradicated was stalled by media hype which the Daily Mail is infamous for!
When you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is the one that got hit…
I despise bullying. And the actions of academics who hide behind studies and economic power while fermenting bullying. I love the hearts of people who, at risk of their own reputation and circumstance, determinedly stand up to bullying behaviour. I judge you as one of the latter, engaged in an intellectual and economic battle with the former. Malcolm: You are a warrior, even if you think you’re only a doctor! Keep on keeping on. Be proud of your stand! We, the great Unknowledgeable, prey to the vicissitudes of Big Pharma, salute you and your amigos!
I am not very easily intimidated. Maybe I am a psychopath? Or maybe I damaged my hypothalamus when younger and do not respond to danger in a normal fashion. Or maybe I just think these guys deserve a good slap – and the rest.
Scottish backbone or something ! Or better still, maybe wee bit of Irish DNA there. Can we claim you?
This is a request to Barney to supply me with written proof of the revelation by GOD to
Collins and company that he alone is correct and every one else is wrong about cholesterol and statins.
I will enjoy some very fine brandy in the mean time, as this will be very long wait .
Just very glad there are some bright people that has the common sense to think logically and not like IDIOTIC sheep.
I completely agree with John—–Dr. K you are definitely a warrior—–I wish to align my sept with your clan. Errett
Clan Cameron. That is my Scottish Heritage.
Clan Cameron is a West Highland Scottish clan, with one main branch Lochiel, and numerous cadet branches. The Clan Cameron lands are in Lochaber and within their lands lies Ben Nevis which is the highest mountain in the British Isles. The Chief of the clan is customarily referred to as simply “Lochiel”
‘You can take my life, but you cannae get me to take statins.’
I whined at a very minor attack on me on this blog a few pages back, and this reminds me of what you have to put up with – imagine having an article like that published in the DM and having to just grin and bear it! I’m jolly glad you lot didn’t vote to leave the UK a few years back!
However, the DM seems to publish both sides of this argument, and perhaps you could manage to get another article in the DM that debunks what has been written.
The rugged beauty of the West Coast and Lochaber is unparalleled!
Publishing both sides of the argument means stating research , stats etc. to support your
theory . Not incorrect references , libel ,false accusations and misleading claims about effectiveness .
All sides must be given the opportunity to argue their case with the evidence in their posession.
If this is not allowed then the only conclusion is that a person , or group ,or special interest lobby was behind this and most probably there was some financial transaction , and to cause as much damage as possible to the character of the person being attacked .
“It’s better to be a lonely lion than a popular sheep”
“HealthCare” needs more brave people like yourself, Zoe, Aseem, Noakes, and Fettke who are willing to present the truth so that people like myself can make informed decisions.
As I previously mentioned, Doctoring Data was a great read (I love math!). The games people play with numbers and statistics is very interesting to me. Just finished A Station Nation. An excellent book, very well written and full of useful information.
Thank you for putting in the time and effort to write it.
Cheers from the USA!
In case no one has already posted this – the recent talk Feb 26 2019 by Malhotra to the House of Commons on low carb diet and health
Even Dr. Malhotra mentions ‘improvements in cholesterol profile’, when citing examples of benefits of a low carb diet, as assessed by the Virta health data. What does that mean, when we know that there is no causal link between high cholesterol and heart disease? Does he actually mean that cholesterol goes up on a carb diet as an improved cholesterol profile? Doubt it.
I picked up on that too. Listen carefully though….he said cholesterol PROFILE….which is quite specific; presumably, suggesting to me that he was talking about ratios. He only had 30 minutes to get his message across. I kept pausing the video when new power points came up, as there was a lot to take in. In all, I thought it was an excellent presentation.
Jennifer – I agree with you about profiles/ratios. Since I stopped the beastly statins and started a LCHF eating pattern my total has risen to 7.3 but my ratios have been brilliant. Even acknowledged as excellent by my DN.
I do get weary of the constant pressure to medicate by the introduction of fear.
JanB. Yes, it certainly gets tedious responding to the never ending pressure for me to restart statins. Following an acute episode of a health problem last year, ( from which I recovered immediately by the interventions of brilliant NHS staff), I am now ‘back in the system’. I do not mind though, because after 5 years in the wilderness i.e. living my life the way I wished, and free of all meds, tests and interventions, I am in a stronger position to hold my own regarding pressure to reintroduce statins and b/p meds. Crumbs….I have survived 5 years without them, after being warned I was at risk of a cardiac event if I stopped them. I am supposed to be followed up by a great endocrinologist, but can I get past the gatekeeper? I.e. the research assistant who keeps repeating the same old mantra that made me opt out years ago. With a total cholesterol stabilised at 7.4 and an HbA1c pottering along nicely at 48, a lovely weight with my BMI hovering on 23, a waist measurement of midges under half my height….why is there the desire to put me under the stress of tests such as 24 hour b/p tapes, monitoring b/p 2 times, twice daily, liver scans, urine tests, blood tests etc when I have no symptoms whatsoever? I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but really, all seems OK ( unless I suffer from head-in-the-sand syndrome). With so many poorly people out there who need intensive interventions, I am beginning to think I am being used as a research object. Oh well, we all had to learn our specialities in our careers, but when the NHS is so strapped for cash, caused, we are told, by us old wrinklies living too long, I think I would like to grow old gracefully, and just visit the GP when I feel the need. Preventative medicine has got out of hand, and I believe it is at the behest of Big Pharma.
Back in the day, we had The Health of the Nation white paper, aimed at keeping the population fit and healthy, rather than entering the system at a late stage of illness. I think that was the seed corn for the medicalisation of so many people, and as such, has meant so many of us were over-medicalised, and subsequently became unwell caused by toxic combinations of drugs.
There’s a good PhD in there for someone! Oops! Maybe I have answered my own question.
Jennifer – oh yes, I feel,as they say, your pain. I’m 76! 76?😬 and the only medication I take is a minute dose of gliclazide to everso slightly give my pancreas a kick up the backside. LC works but not enough. I put off and put off my diabetic check because it stresses me and I know, I KNOW that my BG is good – I aim for an HbA1c of 40ish, I’m very lean, and, I love this expression, I’m fit as a butcher’ dog.
My ex-diabetic nurse, now retired, said to me over post tennis coffee yesterday that it’s best to stay as far away as possible from doctors unless you break something. No disrespect to our Dr. K, who is, I think, the exception that proves the rule. I’m tempted to move to Cheshire.
Resist all that pressure, my friend. Resist!
JanB: What on Earth is Gliclazide? I’m a mere lad of 70, so perhaps I don’t need it?
Hi Gary – it’s a sulphonylurea drug, the best treatment for Mody3 diabetes. According to Jenny Ruhl it’s not available in the US though others are. I only need a tiny amount because Mody3 makes one very sensitive to its effect but I tend to treat it like insulin and dose according to my BG levels.
I applaud your patience and persistence!
Barney Calman’s a cheeky little squit, eh? He has the temerity to request your views in a ‘right to reply’; you send him a considered well reasoned response which refutes his hatchet-job article. Which he ignores. Talk about misleading his readership. I note from the comments no-one believes him so ‘twas a bit of a home goal.
Ian – there is another very interesting introduction of bacteria that might be causing Alzheimer’s. The Goldman applanation tonometer. The tip touches the eye. If the tips are not correctly cleansed, bacteria can be passed; best to use disposable tips, or, a Reichert 7 type of IOP pressure check.
The Case for Transmissible Alzheimer’s Grows – Scientific American …up-to-date —-
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/the-case-for-transmissible-alzheimers-grows/
Feb 7, 2019 … What separates a lethal prion from a dementia-associated amyloid … In the case of Mad Cow Disease, it happened via contaminated beef.
There are several papers available covering this matter which is a matter of much discussion in the glaucoma circles. Fortunately the unit I attend uses the Reichert-7 type to check on IOPs.
Dr K, I am sorry to say that it seems the science may have to be fought out and won in a court of law; sadly, science has gone by the wayside. It may be a good thing too as the all Stats on Statins may have to be outed. You are in a good group of men and women trying to make the science clear, keep up the good work and get a good Barrister!
I admire your patience and humor in the shadows of such ugly attempts at threatening you Malcolm. I considered their letter a threat all the way through and frankly made me sick to my stomach. I find it completely incomprehensible that people writing with such venom have their words published anywhere. You definitely have our support!
Angela
I don’t know if you are able to answer this Dr K….
Are GPs significantly affected financially if they don’t write so many prescriptions?
They’ll do whatever it takes to keep their QOF money.
“A 2016 analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which tracks outbreaks and public health concerns, found fake news about statins may have prompted 200,000 patients in Britain alone to quit the drug over a single six-month”
Since it’s now 2019 we should be very quickly able to chart the carnage of all those extra deaths from CVD among that large number who stopped taking statins in the available UK statistics. Let’s have a look:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/adhocs/009367deathsfromdiseasesofthecardiovascularsystemandischaemicheartdisease2010to2017
Well that’s a little strange, no sudden increase here. After taking into account seasonal variations, there is just a gradual trend downwards from 2010 to 2017, with no “blip” to be seen…
But your problem (!) is that you are looking at things carefully and realistically.
As far as I can tell, real statistics are discounted. What matters to these people is how much mendacity they can get away with.
Thank heavens for real analytical skill as we see from Dr Kendrick.
Well done Dr Kendrick
Keep up the good fight, more and more people are coming around to the truth which means that the attacks will become more and more desperate until they admit defeat.
IT’S INCREDIBLE TO READ WHAT MAIL INTENDS TO PRINT.
WELL DONE FOR YOUR RESPONSE DR. KENDRICK!!
BW DR MLR
________________________________
From: Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Sent: Sunday, March 3, 2019 10:51 AM
To: moraglummy@hotmail.co.uk
Subject: [New post] Cholesterol Games
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “3rd March 2019 Mahatma Gandhi. ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’ A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on”
Respond to this post by replying above this line
New post on Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
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Cholesterol Games
by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
3rd March 2019
Mahatma Gandhi. ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’
A few days ago, the health editor of the Daily Mail wrote to me [and Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra]. I was informed that the Mail on Sunday was gong to attack us for daring to question the cholesterol hypothesis and the benefits of statins.
Below is the e-mail I received.
From: Barney Calman
Sent: 28 February 2019 16:53
To: malcolmken
Subject: MOS/Right to reply
Dear Dr Kendrick – The Mail on Sunday plans to publish an article this weekend on growing concerns about claims you and a number of other individuals have publicly made about statins, the role of cholesterol in heart disease, and the allegations that researchers into the drugs are financially conflicted due to payments made to the organisations they work for, and so the evidence they provide about the effectiveness of these medications, and their side effects, are in some way untrustworthy.
Over the past 30 years, more than 200,000 patients have been put through the most rigorous forms of clinical trials to produce definitive proof the tablets lower heart attack risk by up to 50 per cent, and a stroke by 30 per cent, and reduce the risk of death – from any cause.
In January, the editors-in-chief of all 30 major heart health medical journals – each a leading cardiologist – signed a joint open letter, warning: ‘Lives are at stake [due to the] wanton spread of medical misinformation. It is high time that this stopped.’
A 2016 analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which tracks outbreaks and public health concerns, found fake news about statins may have prompted 200,000 patients in Britain alone to quit the drug over a single six-month period following an article you wrote for the BMJ which claimed, incorrectly, that 20 per cent of statins patients quit the drug because of side effects.
They estimate that up for 2,000 heart attack and strokes could be a result of this. We would like to offer you the opportunity to respond to this and the following:
*In your latest book, A Statin Nation, you state: ‘People are being conned. The way to avoid heart disease… has nothing to do with lowering cholesterol.’ This is despite clinical trial evidence to the contrary, and despite no evidence that there is a con, which would imply that those who claim that lowering cholesterol can help lower the risk of heart disease know this is untrue and are deliberately misleading the public.
*It has been alleged that the potential consequences of claims you have made about statins and cholesterol, far outweigh that of the infamous MMR vaccine scandal with one researcher saying: ‘In terms of death and disability that could have been prevented, this could be far worse.’
*In our article, one leading cardiologist states that the facts you and others often cite about cholesterol and statins sound convincing but that in reality ‘they contain a grain of truth, mixed with speculation and opinion, which makes is very difficult for the public to know who to trust.’
*You often quote observational studies as proof of your claims about statins and cholesterol in articles and in media appearances which contradict findings of authoritative clinical trials, which you do not mention. This is misleading.
*
Hello,
While I share your views on cholesterol and statins I ‘m puzzled by your statement that “a lack of association does disprove causation”.
This does’nt sound logical to me.
Association being the result of confounding factors (baseline differences in the populations compared), I don’t see why if some can show an effect of , say, hypercholesterolemia, some others would’nt be able to mask such an effect.
Besides, formal mathematical logic says :
If A implies B,
then :
Non-B implies non A
Which is irrelevant here
A= no causation (hence Non-A is causation)
B= no association (thus Non-B is association)
If no causation (A) implies there is no association (B)
Then :
Association (Non-B) implies causation (non-A)
So formal logic does not support that “a lack of association does disprove causation”
Now , I keep ready to eat my hat.
Congratulations for your tenacity and rather laid back attitude.
I think I should say that a lack of association can disprove causation. You are right that many different factors are involved, which makes proving causality complex. Equally, a lack of association may be due to other factors. However, if your hypothesis is that a causes b, and I find a population that has a, and does not have b, this has disproved the association unless you can find a reason. The ball is back in your court.
Well , in the “Maths/ logic” view you need to be certain A causes B.
It cannot be a hypothesis or something not formally proven by an RCT for instance I’d guess.
In that case : ” if I find a population that has a, and does not have b, this has disproved the association unless you can find a reason. ”
Right: Non-B implies non-A
The reason why you cannot be certain is when there is no proof A causes B.
Now what do you put as A and B ? There’s the rub.
Dr Malcolm to serve ! 😉
The difficulty of proving causality in complex biological systems has been around for a long time. It is difficult to find absolutes. Koch had his postulates, Bradford Hill had his Canons for causation. I am more of a Popparian. If you cannot put forward your hypothesis in such a way that it cannot be disproved, then it is not science.
The problem with the cholesterol hypothesis is that it is endlessly adaptable, and endlessly adapts, with the use of ancillary ad-hoc hypotheses. At no point, as far as I have been able to establish, has anyone put forward the cholesterol hypothesis in a form that could be contradicted, or falsified. This reaches its pinnacle when people refer to heart disease as ‘multifactorial’. Which means that raised LDL/cholesterol is not even required for heart disease to develop. Equally, no-one will define what a raised LDL level actually is. You will find, if you look, that there is no longer a normal range for LDL. Which means that 100% of people have an LDL level that would benefit from being lowered. It is difficult to disprove a hypothesis that can do this.
I had a 6 heart bypass with cholesterol of 4 . An ex colleague has a score of 22 and he smokes yet he is free of CVD . As you say , find a reason . The maths do not add up . I hope it is a tasty hat .
A very interesting exercise in logic!
Dr Malcolm, how would you yourself properly word a cholesterol hypothesis in a form that could be contradicted, or falsified?
If that could be done, it might go a long way to resolving this monster… properly.
Sorry I forgot to click on this message yesterday. Unless I’m mistaken or cholesterol is obstructing my cerebral ventricles
I certainly agree with your last reply.
I think there is a “lapsus keyboardii” in :
“If you cannot put forward your hypothesis in such a way that it cannot be disproved, then it is not science.”
I think Karl Pooper’s falsification point is that
“If you put forward your hypothesis in such a way that it cannot be disproved, then it is not science.
or If you cannot put forward your hypothesis in such a way that it can be disproved, then it is not science.”
Or as stated there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
There’s a fantastic yet a bit “curmudgeonoïd” book by Dr Penston that addresses causality in an original manner : Stats.con
He has a webpage : http://jamespenston.com/
He hasn’t graced the BMJ with a letter since 2007. I hope he’s doing well.
Did you read it ? I think you’d love it.
About causation without correlation it seems it may happen but I fail to understand the demonstration in these sometimes overlapping short references (blogs)
https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/26300/does-causation-imply-correlation
https://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/causation-without-correlation-is-possible
https://www.christopherspenn.com/2018/08/can-causation-exist-without-correlation/
https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/causation-without-correlation-is-possible/
All the best to you and NHS ! Sorry to see you leaving (brexiting) .
Thank you Samir B and Dr Kendrick for an enlightening discussion and references.
Let’s say you see clouds and rain. You conclude, ‘Rain comes from clouds’.
Then you see clouds but no rain. Conclusion not invalidated.
Then you see rain but no clouds. Conclusion invalidated.
To amplify:
You see someone with high cholesterol have a heart attack. You conclude, ‘High cholesterol causes heart attacks’.
You see someone with high cholesterol but no heart attack. Conclusion not invalidated.
You see someone with low cholesterol have a heart attack. Conclusion invalidated.
But wait…
You say it’s multi-factorial. It’s more like a balance, with a heart in one pan, and a pile of pebbles in the other. The pebbles are marked Cholesterol, Smoking, Overweight, Stress, Blood Pressure, Age, Sex, Exertion, Genetic, Infection, etc etc.
When the pile of pebbles gets too heavy, the balance tips and you get a heart attack.
Now Sir Rory Collins will say, take a statin and it’s like taking the cholesterol pebble out of the pan, and you won’t get a heart attack.
Well, maybe. It depends how susceptible you are to cholesterol. Remember that many people have high cholesterol and don’t get heart attacks. If you’re one of those, taking a statin won’t help.
If the other factors combined are enough to give you a heart attack, taking a statin won’t help.
And the older you get, the heavier the Age pebble gets, so taking a statin will only help for a while. Eventually the other factors will overwhelm it. And in the meantime you get all the adverse effects of statins, plus you have to pay for them if you’re not on medical aid.
In my situation, the possible tiny benefits of statins are so small they are not worth taking.
Except, of course, you have to try and explain how a number of different, and unrelated factors, can all cause exactly the same disease to develop. How does age cause atherosclerotic plaque development, when no other factors are present – for example. An issue well described by David Grimes nearly twenty years ago
‘Our poor understanding of the nature of coronary heart disease explains why we lack a clearly expressed paradigm to explain it. All disease are explained on the basis of a paradigm, or model, which is an expression of present understanding even though it might be incomplete or wrong. Being able to develop a paradigm, to construct a model, implies a certain level of understanding; the absence of such a paradigm which would include most if not all known risk indicators, implies very little understanding.
In practice there is what can be regarded as a ‘flat paradigm’ for the development of coronary heart disease, in that it is thought to be due to the addition of a wide range of risk indicators. The flat paradigm of CHD means that it might appear to be due to genetic influences in one person, cigarette smoking in another, a faulty diet in another, a metabolic abnormality in another etc.. This contravenes traditional pathological teaching that a given disease has a specific cause, although a variety of factors might influence the natural history of the disease. In fact, the flat paradigm is simply a summation of observations and make no attempt to explain how the various factors might interact.’ Grimes D, Hindle E, Dyer T: ‘Respiratory infection and coronary heart disease: progression of a paradigm.’ Q J Med 2000: 93:375-383
I agree with Dr. Kendrick: The cholesterol hypothesis just keeps going and metastasizing, no matter what happens. First, total cholesterol (TC) was “bad”. Then when studies came along to say that wasn’t “bad”, LDL was “bad” and HDL was “good”. When that didn’t work, it became Lp(a), homocysteine, LDL-p (LDL particle count), light fluffy LDL or hard dense LDL or the TC/trigs ratio or another ratio or maybe just triglycerides in general…. It goes on and on and on.
You can’t disprove a hypothesis that keeps changing.
And anytime you select one of these as being the really bad actor, you can find studies indicating it’s not so bad. Lp(a) (lipoprotein A) is bad? Well, some with high Lp(a) have fewer cancers and less overall death.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3317664/
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/search/label/Lipoprotein%28a%29%3A%207-ketocholesterol%20and%20cancer
But high Lp(a) is apparently deadly for heart disease:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5087876/
So, is “high” (or “low”) Lp(a) good or bad? You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to answer that.
And it’s the same for any “bad” actor in the cholesterol hypothesis.
BobM. Well described.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Makes life interesting, if only to entertain us whilst we try to fathom the mysteries of life and death.
When is this gigantic scam going to stop?
When we, collectively, as the public needing genuine science-based-medicine (in addition to other kinds!), demand and facilitate and fund better research, designed to clearly address and test the obvious problems with the lipid hypothesis. Taubes has been leading the way.
Goran, there is worse to come. The future is a World Governing Power dominated by Pharma, Food industry and Vegans. World Health Organization is a first step. Check out WHO recommendations for a healthy diet. WORLD anything is bad news.
Goran,
Until the powers that be are the powers that were, nothing will change.
Göran, do you think anyone is looking out for us?
Some things have to happen –
CEOs of pharma on trial for genocide is the first.
Monsanto split up and board members on trial for crimes against humanity and nature and genocide (do you know if they are already – some say so).
Vaccine manufacturers (otherwise different) and perhaps distributors/promoters on trial for genocide /use of known biological weapons since 1962.
Mobile phone towers, wifi in schools – removed and companies /owners prosecuted for crimes against humanity and ignoring evidence for damage to living systems (since 1971 Naval report, incl. non thermal cellular damage) and causing actual bodily harm to people, including cancer.
Suppressed cancer cures allowed to be used in national health systems – e.g. Max Gerson clinic allowed back in USA, Hoxsey, B17, Rife treatments, Naessens treatment, Mistletoe, Cannabis, Natron, vitaminC, ketosis, other specific detox treatments with fasting sauna and chelation, herbal antifungal and anitretroviral etc etc etc you all know this list.
Pesticides such as glyphosate would have an international ban. Many processed foods would be regulated or banned. UN definition Genocide includes the intentional poisoning of a population.
Aeroplane exhaust might be once again just water and carbon dioxide and dissipate as they used to.
Something else that would happen if all the criminals go – a mature honest discussion about population control – neither denial nor secret Agenda21 genocide – but inclusive productive discussion – clearly the denial about so called Paleo diet etc and this whole cholesterol distraction is not really about fat, saturated or otherwise – it is about the fact that the toxic worthless food, dwarf wheat, GMO corn and soy, is the only way the elite believe or insist that the billions of worthless eaters, in their words, can be fed. Empty carbs, treat humans like farm animals.
We need to design a way to move back to something like hunting and gathering, small communities with some domesticated grass fed animals and wild game hunting, without needless suffering and without rushing. If we can not show the maturity do make the shift now, man made or natural disasters will simply do it for us – probably overnight.
It depends whether we are optimistic and chose the probability of a future utopia or hell, with intention that is through thoughts and actions.
I think that man made and natural disasters are already doing it and not overnight but gradually.
My Dad was prescribed statins at the age of 90 and takes them religiously, being compliant and non-questioning of doctors. Some of my intelligent friends have been conned by the statin myth and take them for high cholesterol. I am the idiot, according to them. I am amazed at the nonsense people are peddled and take in as the truth. Information is power!
As far as I am concerned the MSM, like the Government, is pantomiming a left/right approach, when in fact, the whole shebang are corrupt, infested with cultural Marxism and shills for all the globalist orthodoxy around, be it the idea of cholesterol heart disease, “healthy” carbohydrates and Anthropogenic Global Warming. All designed to make Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Agriculture and Big “Sustainable” Energy very rich at the expense of our taxes, whilst making sure we don’t all live long enough to draw our pensions.
In this instance, The Daily/Sunday Mail are wearing the drag of right-wing papers, but with a little inspection, despite a few guest editorials, they are pushing the Marxist culture-destroying narrative all the time.
I know someone who lived the first part of her life behind the Iron Curtain. She compares the MSM to the news outlets over there at the time she lived there. My hope is that if just one of the scams you refer to, ‘burst’ people may start to demand an open press again.
Sadly, I cannot convince my husband to stop taking Statins. He hasn’t got CVD. A scan of his heart and coronary arteries showed completely clear. Yet our GP states that his cholesterol levels (fluctuate between 4.7 and 7 depending on what he has eaten to some extent) are much too high. He was told that he must take Atorvastatin daily. The GP said that if it were him with my husband’s scores, he would take a statin. Oh that is alright then!!!
Where is the evidence. I have not seen anything that shows me increased life due to Statins. I have seen plenty of evidence that points to adverse effects, but my husband won’t listen to me.
Colettebytes
Amidst all of the compelling, nuanced evidence Dr Kendrick has presented, one point in particular jumped out at me and has stayed with me: that statins are associated with a hugely, massively, gigantically increased risk of developing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/motor neurone disease (I am never quite sure if the two are entirely synonymous).
Of the two most commonly prescribed statins, atorvastatin was associated with an increased relative risk of 17,000, simvastatin 23,000. Those odds are mind boggling.
Thankfully, ALS is rare, but nevertheless …
Thanks Aileen,
That is really worrying. I have tried to tell my husband, and for a while he listened to me. But our GP has dismissed the downside of Statins and convinced my husband that the risks are low and the benefits high. My husband now accuses me of fear mongering and spreading conspiracy theories. I have lost that battle. My oldest sister is also on Statins (and a smoker)… I cannot convince her either.
The Daily Mail has blood on its hands for its disinformation and attacks on people like Dr Kendrick. How dare they play with our lives without proper research and balanced reporting. Now, thousands of people will not believe the mounting evidence against prescribing Statins to prevent CVD.
Colettebytes, oh goodness, what was I thinking? I should have said increased risk of 1,600% for Atorvastatin and 2,200% for simvastatin (odds ratios 17 and 23). Still horrifying.
Probably as well I’m not a journalist. Clearly wouldn’t be very good at fact checking!
I tend to get labelled a conspiracy theorist too, though not on this particular issue. It’s a good way to shut down a conversation I suppose.
David Bailey’s suggestions are very sensible and hopefully your husband will remain well.
Reading the comments at the end of the Mail article, I think they may have misjudged their audience somewhat. I hope the main effect of the article will be to signpost people towards Malcolm, Zoe and Aseem.
Colettbytes,
Obviously your husband would be better off not taking statins, but if he insists, I suggest you both keep an eye out for the main side effects – cramps and other peculiar muscle/joint pains, and/or mental deterioration. I think if any of these start, the vital thing is to test if it is the statin by stopping the things for 2 – 3 weeks. If things start to go right – you know the problem is the statins.
I suspect I recovered intact because I didn’t persevere with the statin once the symptoms kicked in.
Your husband should also bear in mind that exercise is very good for the heart, and he won’t get much exercise while suffering statin muscle side effects!
Thanks for that David. It’s very kind of you to share.
My husband insists his aches and sometimes fatigue, are nothing to do with Statins. He is a fit person, and can outwalk me on long walks (6 miles or longer), often waiting for me to catch up. As for mental deterioration, I have noticed that he asks me the same thing a lot, but says that it he is just making sure that I haven’t changed my mind.
When someone is in denial, or does the exact opposite of what you think (because that has always been his way), one finds one’s self in the position of a ‘silent witness. ‘
My husband eats far too much meat, bread and snacks and not enough veggies or fruit, yet he cooks wonderfully balanced veggie dishes for me (I am a Vegan by choice with normal blood work and normal blood pressure). He drinks too much alcohol too… More than average. So it is difficult to point at causes or finger point at one thing. It is a combination. I have tried for years to get him to eat healthy and he insists that he already does. Losing battle for me but I do try.
You are confusing too many issues.here with your comment. “Too much meat” , “Too much carbs”, “Taking statins”.
Forget the meat issue : the research on this is largely bunk and driven by veganist organisations. That’s not an insult directed at you. It’s simply a fact.
“Too much Carbs” : Yes too many carbs, especially in their highly processed forms, is a debilitating diet.. But whether your partner can reduce his carb intake is up to him. A diet with more saturated fats in it usually also leads to a lower carb intake…
Taking prescribed Statins : This is dopey ! Change quacks immediately !
Balance is everything. And if someone is eating only meat and potatoes but no veggies, they are not eating a balanced diet. Nor will a Vegan eating crisps, cakes, bread, cereals and a few fruits here and there, be in good health. Quite bad diets in both cases. Nutrients come from variety. People are all different and respond differently to food intake. No one formula works any more than a little 10 mg pill is going to stop people from dying.
I think it is terrible that an authority can dictate what we do. For my husband, if he refuses to take his statin and perhaps has a heart event requiring hospitalisation while he is travelling, the insurance company will find grounds not to pay out on his travel insurance, despite the fact that he has ever had a heart problem, and has clear arteries. Because he is also on a blood pressure control medication, they already argue that they should not cover him despite the fact that both drugs have been prescribed as preventatives. It is frustrating. I can see why lots of people prefer not to go to see doctors at all. They end up penalised in one way or another and choice or consent is removed.
I would endorse what Bill has said about meat, and here is an example of so-called research that the WHO has used to justify its position:
http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/meat-and-cancer/
Regarding alcohol, the evidence also seems skewed unless the person is in danger of becoming addicted to alcohol, in which case it is best to avoid alcohol.
Despite this book’s chatty style, it reviews a lot of actual research (with references), and I think you will find it an eye opener. Regular moderate drinking seems to be positively beneficial! The book seems written in the Kendrickian style – humerous, but scrupulous with the facts that matter.
It sounds from what you say, as though you fear your huspand is already showing signs of statin side effects, so I think just getting him to take a short statin pause will settle the matter.
BTW, my nasty statin muscle cramps took 3 years to begin. At the time, I was convinced I had Post Polio Syndrome, because the problem was confined to my polio leg. I was sent to a polio specialist, but fortunately I suggested to my doctor that in the mean time, it might be best to stop my statins just to avoid any confusion. By the time I attended my appointment, I was already considerably improved.For reasons that now seem obscure, I stopped and started the statins 3 times before I realised that even though the idea of taking statins had seemed so clever – you simply take one pill every evening and live longer – they were seriously messing my life up.
If people fool about with statins too long, they can get permanently damaged:
https://www.askapatient.com/viewrating.asp?drug=19766&name=ZOCOR
Just click to select whatever statin your husband is on, or which is being proposed as an alternative.
Thanks David,
Yes, and I agree with you. My husband drinks a lot, wine and whisky but other stuff too. I won’t say how much, but if I drank it, I would be in a permanent coma. It is too much, but he can, and does take a break (to let his liver recover – it gets fatty from time to time). He is not an alcoholic in the usual sense, but he can out drink just about anyone. He is not honest with anyone about how much he does drink.
He has had a statin pause for about eight months after 2 years on. He’s been taking them again since December. I notice subtle differences, but he does not. He says (and I have read some of the responses here to him) that if he sees muscle wasting or feels unwell, he will stop. That is the best that I can do.
I am Vegan because I want to be. It suits me and I feel that fewer animals have to die if I don’t eat them. Research shows that homosapiens have adapted to be able to survive on a variety of diets and availability of food. I do not think that the fad diets (low carb, ketogenic, low fat, high fat, potato Atkins, Mediterranean, and in and on) are exact formulas for anything other than a sudden weight loss due to the body shock of sudden change. In every case, there is a levelling out and then realisation that more nutrients are required. That can be true of Veganism too. But I am careful and have maintained my weight, and kept an eye on protein intake. It is easy for me to find alternatives to meat.
My biggest problem with meat is the advent of factory farming. I don’t like the idea of it, the cruelty of crowding animals into situations where they are a commodity that is forced to grow larger than its bones can carry or pumped full of antibiotics to keep it alive until slaughter. The humanity of food production has crossed some invisible barrier, where cheap food is more important than making sure an animal is not suffering. Call me sentimental or foolish, but honestly, I don’t miss meat and I feel OK after 6 years of not eating animal and the last three with no dairy either. My doctor hasn’t argued as all my health checks are normal. I guess I might be a living Guinea Pig for Veganism, but at least it’s my choice and no one is insisting that I take any medication.
PS… I will certainly read through that link David. I keep an open mind on most things as there is too much disinformation flying around.
We sometimes don’t know what to believe and end up in a limbo of just doing what we have always done as we feel OK! Nothing wrong with that either. 😊
PPS I do not eat many simple carbs (no bread or pastas or cakes, pastries). I stick with leafy greens, root vegetables, legumes, whole grains (some) etc. I think processed carbs are quite bad for us. Dr Kendrick does too. Nothing wrong with fats… Just mine are plant based. 😉
Off-topic here, but just a quick mention that the BBC web site currently has an article on how low-carbohydrate diets have cured type-2 diabetes in a number of people.
That won’t come as news to anyone, but what on earth is happening when such common-sense lifestyle changes, advocated by Dr Kendrick (and many others), need a news-splash to tell us?
Good Lord, it might even get on the front page of the Daily Mail at this rate!
If it is the one I read it doesn’t mention low-carb but rather low-calorie which doesn’t work long term because it persists with a glucose based diet keeping you hooked to ‘cancer food’.
There was a recent BBC TV programme with Dr Xand van Tulleken, “The Truth about Carbs” which featured GP Dr David Unwin’s patients who have been using a ‘low-carb’ diet regime to reverse their type 2 diabetes. Maybe it was that?
Carbs aren’t a problem as a ‘Complex Carbohydrates Group.’ They are essential for fibre, amino acids, & vitamins in terms of nuts, legumes root vegetables, leafy greens, fruits and berries.
It is the deadly consumption of too many simple carbs that hurt us. They come in highly processed (nutrient stripped) breads, cakes, pastries, pastas and sauces and junk snacks, that we add to the diet with copious amounts of added sugar and often, too much salt.
Simple Carbs are always in a form that you wouldn’t recognise as the original plant or grain. Cereals, especially fortified with vitamins and lots of sugar are big offenders. Everyone would be better off with a bowl of whole grain oatmeal, topped with some fresh berries, than with a bowl full of fruit loops, cheerios, rice krispies, or whatever processed, fortified cereal is on the shelf. These foods are so empty of nutrients, they would actually cause people to suffer from nutritional deficiency induced disease like scurvy or beri beri, if it was all they ever ate. They are fortified largely as a response to a nutritional deficiency in the population that occurred due to post war food scarcity. Milk, juices and processed cereals were fortified in an effort to give growing kids some kind of a balanced growth advantage in an era of no fresh fruit, vegetables or meat, egg and butter products.
When food scarcity was no longer problematic, nothing changed except that farmers were expected to produce their meat and plant crops cheaply so that it could be processed into ‘convenience’ foods that consumers now demanded. It is so much easier to shake a few flakes out of a cardboard box and splosh on some pasteurised milk, that to spend time cooking something from scratch.
We need to wake up to the
complex, amino acid rich, whole food options (and learn how to cook them effectively for best digestion) and stop eating the addictive, sweet junk put out by companies who just produce what people will buy at low cost to consumer, and high profit for the company.
‘Low Carb diets’ should really be renamed ‘Low Processed Food’ diets. It would be a more accurate description of what is required. There is so much misleading information to the public. No wonder we are all confused and irritated by the ‘first it was good for you, and now it is bad for you dilemmas.’
It is why people tend to do nothing at all and just pulling food off supermarket shelves without a second thought as to whether it might hurt them.
The Mail on Sunday accuses you of telling lies and yet they are quite prepared to destroy you without checking their information. I witnessed the destruction of a colleague’s career by a totally fabricated story published in the press (but she was one loan individual) However it is not all bad! We first heard about you, Dr Kendrick, when the Daily Mail published an article headed “The Great Cholesterol Con” From reading that article. we purchased your books and have found your outstanding commitment, hours of investigation and your position compelling . As you were bold enough to take on the establishment you knew that you would have to fight. The Sunday Mail’s poorly researched article will reach a great many readers and will cause the issue to be raised around the nation’s breakfast tables. Their help in increasing awareness is another round for you in the fight. Many members of the general public realise that much of the information fed to them is incorrect. e.g. advice about healthy diets is shot through with flaws, and changes much like the level of hemlines. We wish you and your fellow warriors success and we hope that you know that we appreciate the enormous effort that you all contribute to the battle. You will succeed.
Yes, I thought there might possibly be a positive outcome from the MOS article Maggie. Most people have access to the internet and might just think “who is this Kendrick chap, they’re slamming?” and look him up. I fail to see how anyone with a grain of common sense can read what Malcolm says and not be impressed by his logic, his argument and his passion, as well as his humour. I hope the newspaper rues the day they allowed the article to be written.
My opinion is….
Humans have been around for many years and survived without popping pills or listening to quacks.
Companies making money from selling all kinds of drugs which may or may not have any beneficial effect. Others flogging books and DVDs etc. yelling that the drugs don’t work they just make you worse.. or do nothing at all. Each visible side genuinely believing what they are saying is right. Who knows the truth? The important thing is that some serious money is being made either side of the argument so who really cares.
People are scared of death, so these kind of newspaper articles will do wonders for getting more on to statins if there’s the slightest chance they’ll keep you from the grave just that little bit longer. Doesn’t matter who is right or wrong just as long as you think you will keep on living.
In my opinion, to get get your message across, what you should do, Doc, is consider advising your publishers to try and get newspaper articles written about how statins are great and how wrong and terrible you are for doubting it. The classic red team vs. the blue team. I think it would be quite easy to do as I’d have thought book and newspaper publishers were quite close bedfellows.
If it works, the drug companies can watch sales increase as the live forever generation guzzles the pills to try and live forever, newspaper publishers can watch their online click counts increase and advertising revenues increase, book publishers the book sales increase. You can just lie back and watch the money roll in.
We usually have sensible comments on this blog Mr Chug. Pity about yours. As Dr Ken Berry says, our aim is to live a long life feeling fit and healthy – then die. Because we most certainly will, as Dr K says, die eventually. We just want to be fit in the meantime.
As you say this is “Your opinion”. Well I have an opinion about that : It’s a dopey opinion Chug.
Statins are prescribed by ignorant doctors in the febrile belief that statins will lower cholesterol and ths reduce heart attacks. They do indeed lower cholesterol. But there is no publicly available evidence that this lower heart attacks. Meanwhile Statins make life worse for many people via their side effects.
If you are not willing to research and form an informed opinion on this, bets you chug off..
Hi I read the Daily Mail piece. Kendrick can you give us some details where you work?
I looked you up it does indeed say you are “Registered with a licence to practise; this doctor is on the GP Register”, there is now doubt you are registered with a license for the NHS. The confusion seems to be trying to track down where you actually work.
I looked up the East Cheshire NHS Trust . They appear to run the Congleton War Memorial Hospital, Knutsford and District Community Hospital and Macclesfield District General Hospital, in Cheshire. A paper you co-wrote lists you work there. A Google search for your name and Macclesfield District General Hospital reveals a paper you wrote: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010401.info
“East Cheshire Trust, Macclesfield District General Hospital, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England”. So do you actually work at East Cheshire Trust, Macclesfield District General Hospital? Why is there virtually no online documentation for this? I think this is why Barney Calman has got confused.
I think I have been more than open about exactly who I am, and what I do. However, there does come a point where I am simply not going to respond to questions like this. I shall turn this around. If you can find any evidence that I do not work for East Cheshire Trust then let everyone know – and good luck with that. I have told you, and everyone else, where I work. East Cheshire Trust and Central Cheshire Integrate Community Partnership. Are suggesting that I am making this up, if so, why? I don’t think Barney Calman got confused, he was just trying to do a hatchet job and backed off on that particular point when I threatened him with libel.
By the way, I do know where East Cheshire NHS trust is, and what hospitals they run. But thanks for letting my know – in case I forgot where I currently work.
And who might you be, and why are you trying to track down where I actually work. Of what possibly interest is it to you? It sounds rather sinister.
Yes! When I read his comment, I too was outraged. Is this ‘Jamie Veal’ bad meat?
Possibly the best answer to this question would be MYOB. Why on earth do you need to know.
Jamie,
Perhaps it is worth pointing out that Malcolm Kendrick is not the only medically qualified person attacking statins.
Take for example, the cardiologist Aseem Malhotra – who wrote on a related aspect of this scandal in the Daily Mail quite recently:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6535725/Cardiologist-slams-incorrect-diet-advice-World-Health-Organization.html
Furthermore, I am pretty sure anyone who claimed falsely to be a medical Dr on the internet (or in many other places) would end up in court. Dr Kendrick is far too well known to escape that fate, and if he broke the law he has plenty of enemies who would ensure he was prosecuted.
I think the point about the Mail is that it lets people on both sides air their views, rather than backing one side or the other. In many ways, that is good strategy, other newspapers are far more likely to take sides on issues and close down debate – often the wronf way.
You might want to look at the comments following the Mail article – many were reporting horrible statin side effects – mostly reversed when they stopped the treatment. I am only here because I had a similar experience – again fortunately reversible – but some people never recover completely.
If you want to claim that all the people who described their statin problems are ‘fake’, then just take a few walks in the countryside, or participate in any other exercise activity where people in the age range 55 – 75 go, and ask them about their statin experiences. Not everyone gets problems, but a hell of a lot do!
Hi Dearest Veal. Sorry both you and Calman seem to be confused. Although in Calmans case, it’s probably that he has no idea what he’s talking about, and just copying the trash he printed verbatim from the masters he’s so eager to please, in hope of gathering some brownie points.
Jamie Veal: *Dr* Kendrick to you.
Agreed, Valda. I was struck by and offended by his rudeness.
I can’t be certain, but this rude question might be asked by Darryl L. Smith, digging for possible dirt. With the name, etc., he could then search for anything that might look negative. This is what the Smith brothers do with their RationalWiki articles.
If they can’t find anything, they will create it (and they have managed to suck newspapers into publishing their cherry-picked, out-of-context allegations, which, of course, they then cite back in the articles as proof of whatever. The current Darryl account is href=”http://coldfusioncommunity.net/anglo-pyramidologist/darryl-l-smith/skeptic-from-britain/john66/”>John66, and the evidence just keeps piling up as to his identity. At one point, he claimed to be supported by “a major skeptic organization,” but it is not known if this is accurate. He could have been banned on Wikipedia if he had continue. (He is already banned, but often his socks go undetected for a long time). Jimbo Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, voting to keep the article on Fat Head, href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArticles_for_deletion%2FFat_Head&type=revision&diff=874783223&oldid=874773432″>made a comment pointing out the obvious about him. (POV means “Point of View” and a POV pusher will be someone attemtping to make the encyclopedia represent their point of view, not neutral reporting of information from reliable sources.
the proposer is a serial namechanger and POV pusher who has now apparently left the project . . . there seems to be no reason for deletion other than the POV pushing of the proposer.
(Rational Wiki is dominated by that Point of View, which is juvenile, snarky, toxic atheist, with blind belief in “mainstream science,” the opposite of rational skepticism. Darryl is 29.)
The Daily Mail article may lift you above the notability threshhold for Wikipedia, Dr. Kendrick, but I would not rush to have a Wikipedia article! In spite of what Wales noticed, in spite of how obvious it was, the “skeptical” faction on Wikipedia is very strong, and very active.
They will attempt to push the article, if it is restored, toward criticism, to create the impression of quackery, etc. They have done it many times, and they often succeed.
If anyone wants to do something about this, contact me privately, which can be done through a comment on my blog (ask for privacy and the comment will not be published, but supply a real email address and email addresses are not published anyway.
Jamie Veal appears to be an Australian racing driver. Why would he want to know about a UK doctor? (sarcasm)
“Jamie Veal” is very unlikely to be “an Australian racing driver.” Rather, he is someone investigating Dr Kendrick, the creator and maintainer of the article on Dr Kendrick on RationalWiki, and he is known to real-life harass his targets. He (or his brother) would, for example, send complaint mails to employers, “information” to newspapers, etc., and he has done this with many. He lives in the U.K. He uses many different names for comments on blogs, and he has continued to do that (on this very page.)
An excellent and witty response which zi expects tied the DM reporters in knots but what a waste of your time.
I’m looking forward to reading your next book and thank you for your blogs which make this topic accessible to non medic but interested folk.
As Gloria Gaynor sung, I will survive. And I feel sure that you, Zoe and Aseem, a handsome group of talented crusaders will do in this and succeed in overcoming the skullduggery.
Dr.Kendrick,
If the data that they are keeping to themselves actually proved their hypothesis, do you suppose that they would refuse to share it?
Leading question M’lud.
Shouldn’t that be M’lady?
M’Ludy?
😂
This some old research (2009), but I find the conclusion they come to interesting.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/majority-of-hospitalized-heart-75668
“A new national study has shown that nearly 75 percent of patients hospitalized for a heart attack had cholesterol levels that would indicate they were not at high risk fora cardiovascular event, based on current national cholesterol guidelines.
Specifically, these patients had low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels that met current guidelines, and close to half had LDL levels classified in guidelines as optimal (less than 100 mg/dL).
“Almost 75 percent of heart attack patients fell within recommended targets for LDL cholesterol, demonstrating that the current guidelines may not be low enough to cut heart attack risk in most who could benefit,” said Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, Eliot CordayProfessor ofCardiovascular Medicine and Science at theDavid Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study’s principal investigator.”
My take on it would be not that we need to lower LDL levels or raise HDL levels more, but that we should look for a different cause of heart attacks. But there’s none so blind as those who won’t see.
Interesting indeed Hugh Mannity, and the investigators noted confounding factors:
The study also showed that HDL cholesterol, or “good cholesterol,” levels have dropped in patients hospitalized for heart attack over the past few years, possibly due to increasing rates of obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes.
yet they still recommended adjusting guidelines in favour of selling more statins without investigating whether any of those confounding factors could be the real cause of the hospitalisations. There is also the question of funding sources:
The study was sponsored by the Get with the Guidelines program, which is supported by the American Heart Association in part through an unrestricted education grant from the Merck Schering Plough Partnership.
Fonarow has conducted research for GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer and serves a consultant and has received honorarium from Abbott, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer and Schering Plough companies. He is also chair of the Get with the Guidelines steering committee.
That must be why someone’s doctor said LDL should be zero. That way, all heart attacks will be caused by high LDL.
Indeed. You got it.
The Daily Mail has just published another article about statins – this time explaining the fact that statins increase the risk of diabetes!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6778357/Patients-taking-statins-face-higher-risk-type-2-diabetes.html
As I said earlier, they seem to avoid really taking sides in these debates, but publish both sides of the story.
I’m not sure they do. It seems they just publish anything that they think will get noticed.
I see today that there’s a push to get even more of us taking blood-pressure lowering pills. I wish the state would just ease off, and instead persuade people to eat fewer carbs, exercise more and take a couple of grammes of Vitamin C every day. That would be more useful.
Well I’d rather have a newspaper that publishes both sides rather than a rag like The Guardian that simply takes side s on a whole range of issues.
Some weeks ago it was mentioned here that Donald Trump was a statin user. The following article is no surprise as a result. https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2019/mar/07/tim-apple-donald-trump-gets-name-of-tech-giants-ceo-wrong-video
Well Jerome,
MSM and the globalists want to see Trump dead rather than alive. Since BigPharma for sure is a part of that team statins may be part of the assassination plan.
I would think that his dire diet of fast food and diet sodas would be quite effective without the assistance of statins!
Frederica,
Well before my MI I lived in the US for a year and devoured all the junk food together with my favorite drink Diet Coke (there were handy 24 packs!). During that year I gained 10 kg, five of which I though lost upon returning to Sweden. How little I knew about food and health at that time.
Dr Kendrick, I hope you’re proud of me! On Wednesday morning I explained the difference between ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ risk to a practice nurse. This is one of the results of reading ‘Doctoring Data’, an excellent book.
The nurse is sceptical about statins and has clear doubts about standard dietary advice to diabetics. I pointed her towards Dr Unwin’s work, the Public Health Collaboration website to find her local ambassodor, and loaned her ‘Diabetes Unpacked’ by Zoe Harcombe et al.
Maybe I’ve been lucky, but I keep meeting sceptical and open minded nurses, although they are usually experienced staff. What was mad, bad and dangerous five years ago is now entering the mainstream.
There’s much to do, but I congratulate everyone who has bravely stood up and played their part in fighting the still dominant nonsense. The Mail on Sunday will get on board when it suits them. They may well have increased your readership with their shoddy ‘useful idiot’ journalism.
Good work. I like it
About a year ago I did a ‘yellow card report’ (adverse drug reaction report, for the non medics) on a sad case of a woman’s presenting in her mid forties with metastatic cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer). She had been on Atorvastatin 80 mg daily for FH, (I think she is a heterozygote) for 10 years. I thought that this was a datum worth adding to the data base, so I sent it off. As happens every time, I got a letter from the pharmacology Prof at our local medical school, thanking me for my contribution, and ending with the comment that this was not a known side effect of statins. He didn’t actually say ‘so we will be ignoring it’ but that was the sense I got from the tone of the letter, as also happened, when, fifteen years earlier, I reported two cases of short term memory loss and confusion which went completely when the patients stopped the statins. In one of the patients his diabetes also improved, by the way.
Yes, it is difficult to prove that statins have adverse effects when the adverse effect reporting system rejects adverse reports.
I had to check, but it is a rare cancer ususally seen in over 65’s (20 years older) – and it connects to the liver – so if that isn’t a valid adverse report, what is? I wonder if the association between statins and T2D was delayed by a similar process.
Malcolm, have you seen any literature on the ultimate destination of statins?
Are we taking them, whether we want to or not?
If the poor sods take their meds, over the next hours they are passing a spectrum of metabolites – some active, and water treatment agencies don’t seem to be taking special measures, nor testing.
We have probably all heard about getting second hand pharma from the water supply, especially hormones.
But what about active metabolites of other peoples crestor and lipitor? Are drinking, cooking, washing and bathing in second hand statins?
What can you advise people about it? Whose taking the piss?
“All statins but pravastatin show highly active metabolites, the pharmacological activity depending on the kinetic profile of both parent compound and active metabolites. Pravastatin has the lowest protein binding (50% vs. > 90%) and is eliminated by both metabolism and renal excretion. Atorvastatin shows the longest terminal half-life (11-14 h vs. 1-3 h).”
From the abstract:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12949632
Annoyingly, according to some study, our cheap home filters are just full of bacteria
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8740859 …
And,
Brita, on their website literature, seem to be silent on pharma residue,
but,
more expensive filter companies are more forthright on the issue
https://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/blog/category/pharmaceutical-drugs/
I wonder what boiling statins in a kettle does?
So many questions and no answers.
p.s. if you search for “statins water supply” on youtube, you get to this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmBnaJIQdUw
I cant decide if that is funny or disturbing.
CBS short
Auf Deutsch, Planet Wissen
Dr Richi,
I tend to be very wary of studies that rely on modern machines that detect chemicals at phenomenally low concentrations. I think this technology is amazing, but has developed faster than our ability to understand what the results mean.
For example, traces of various recreational drugs can be found on bank notes, but does that stop us using them?
Glad to see Rob Verkerk supporting you all – https://www.anhinternational.org/news/the-deadly-price-of-denial-from-statins-to-low-carb/?utm_source=The+Alliance+for+Natural+Health&utm_campaign=4babbc2054-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_03_06_09_52&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_aea8a87544-4babbc2054-85008341&fbclid=IwAR0mGMSed718BcsTPXuARkNr9ayW6dqzIeIFWFXAuCQDGtiVokSNluTtJHU
In our “mad corrupt world” I today I find comfort every day in reading one or a couple of pages of Schopenhauer’s philosophy and where I find e.g.:
“On the other hand, the more obstinately an error has been held, the more mortifying does the convincing proof subsequently become. With a system that is overthrown, as with a beaten army, the most prudent is he who runs away from it first.”
“The World as Will and Representation”, volume two, Chapter. XIX, “On the Primacy of the Will in Self-Consciousness”, E.F.J. Payne’s translation, p. 218.
Some accounts appeared on RationalWiki that might have come from this community.
Liberosaurus_Rex
Defemation rex
K. Peters BSc(Hons)
(it is also possible that these were a troll, a long-term enemy of the Smith brothers, but if anyone reading this was one of these accounts, please do contact me by comment href=”http://coldfusioncommunity.net”>on my blog, Private information will be kept private.)
WordPress is at it again, no posts notified for a few days
no that’s me skiing with no internet available
So pleased for you. Though I miss the ‘ping, ping, ping’ of incoming mails from the blog I like to think that you’re hard at work ENJOYING YOURSELF when all goes quiet. You work so hard for us and deserve time out. (I was going to say ‘a good break’ but that’s hardly appropriate for a skiing holiday.)
JanB: Pleases me, too! I had a bit of an adventure myself, the past two days. Went camping with a new tent to see the super bloom (which we have in California deserts when there are October rains). A cold wind came up pretty fierce yesterday afternoon as I was peeling my eggs for supper (no cooking fires allowed). So I put on every spare garment and climbed into the pickup. I had brought “Doctoring Data” along in case I had time for reading. Boy did I ever, and what a comfort it was! By bedtime it was too cold to even consider taking off shoes or anything else to climb in the sleeping bag, So I more or less slept in my truck; rather slept and read. This morning ice on the tent; ice on the windshield, and me half frozen. But I survived, and the hills were incredibly beautiful once the sun burned off the weather.
Gary – I think ☀️☀️☀️ Says it all. 👏
No internet! 🤯 Good job you’re “old(er)” Malcolm, or you’d be suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms! lol
AhNotepad: You’re on their bad list. Did you do something naughty?
I wonder why they are so keen to ruin your reputation? Are they receiving funds from Big Pharma?
mistymole: The Medical cartel operates in every country. Profits are their main motive, but population reduction through the miracles of modern medicine animates them as well. John Rappaport re-published today an interview he conducted in 2002 with an anonymous member of the inner circle of vaccine development, who ultimately quit his job in disgust. A powerful indictment of what they are doing with drugs and vaccines; they employ the same tactics with both. Worth a read. Governments have no qualms about using their police powers-for example the FBI-to make life difficult for anyone who steps out of line.
WordPress Ha! It still won’t send subscribe approval
Dr. Maryanne Demasi received the same criticisms in Australia after her Catalyst program about statins and it was removed. Same tactics, saying she was a mass murderer. She said that until they reveal their trial data from the studies, and open it to discussion, real analysis can’t take place… recent study headlines in the New York Times this week claims statins can cause diabetes – why? You only have to google the link between co enzyme Q10 and insulin resistance. Statins block coenzyme Q10. And statins work by lowering inflammation, cholesterol has never been proven to be associated with heart attacks or stroke. It helps those who have had a heart attack. That is proven. The rest isn’t, but the trial data from statins studies is sealed so how can anyone prove they don’t cause side effects?
Hi Lee: a mechanism how statins could lower inflammation is due to the fact that statins have antibiotic properties. Less bugs is less inflammation? Unfortunately statins also disrupt calcium channels in cells. There is a recent warning about problems when combining antibiotics with calcium channel blockers. Also antibiotics (statins) negatively affect mitochondria and the gut microbiome.
Does’nt Nitric oxide in statins reduce arterial inflammation ?
If I need nitric oxide, I’d rather drink beetroot juice – fewer nasty side effects
Hi Jerome Savage: Statins do a lot of things, some good and some bad. Increasing NO is good up to a point. Statin deniers should go easy on the Viagra.
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0074-02762005000900002
ABSTRACT
Nitric oxide (NO) plays an important role in mediating many aspects of inflammatory responses. NO is an effector molecule of cellular injury, and can act as an anti-oxidant. It can modulate the release of various inflammatory mediators from a wide range of cells participating in inflammatory responses (e.g., leukocytes, macrophages, mast cells, endothelial cells, and platelets). It can modulate blood flow, adhesion of leukocytes to the vascular endothelium and the activity of numerous enzymes, all of which can have an impact on inflammatory responses. In recent years, NO-releasing drugs have been developed, usually as derivatives of other drugs, which exhibit very powerful anti-inflammatory effects.
https://www.scripps.edu/newsandviews/e_20081020/getzoff.html
“While NO overproduction by one enzyme, known as inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), can cause rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, stroke, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, and other conditions, too little NO production by the related isozymes is linked to everything from hypertension to impotence. In fact, the popular impotence drug Viagra works by inducing increased NO production. “
Andy – Earlier Kendrick dispatches have indicated that NO is released from bone marrow during exercise. We might expect that such NO production would of a quantity suitable for the human body. Hence I avoid NO supplements.
Jerome
thanks for that recall of what I read earlier, but because of age, had forgotten!
Searched it and found numerous articles, like this one:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4678076/
and many similar.
NO production isn’t everything though, look et Kentrob’s post earlier today.
Our friend–Fibrinogen
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190308133336.htm
The liver is the only organ in the body that can regenerate. But some patients who undergo a liver resection, a surgery that removes a diseased portion of the organ, end up needing a transplant because the renewal process doesn’t work.
A new Michigan State University study, published in the journal Blood, shows that the blood-clotting protein fibrinogen may hold the key as to why this happens.
“We discovered that fibrinogen accumulates within the remaining liver quickly after surgery and tells platelets to act as first responders, triggering the earliest phase of regeneration,” said James Luyendyk, a professor of pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine. “But if fibrinogen or platelets are inhibited, then regeneration is delayed.”……………
errett: Thanks for that. I know we’ve covered this ground before, but I’ve forgotten. What would inhibit fibrinogen and platelets? Methinks you’re going to say statins. By the way, is this really true, that the liver is the only human organ that regenerates?
Okay guys, you can stop worrying about HDL, LDL, trigs, CAC scores, blood pressure, blah-de-blah, etc. What really matters is fitness.
Higher fitness level can determine longer lifespan after age 70
On average, participants were 75 years old when they underwent the stress test. Researchers tracked the patients for an average of just under 10 years, during which time 39 percent of them died. Over this period, the researchers found higher fitness was associated with significantly increased rates of survival. The most fit individuals were more than twice as likely to be alive 10 years later compared with the least fit individuals.
In contrast, a patient’s total number of cardiovascular risk factors was not associated with their risk of death and patients with zero risk factors had essentially the same likelihood of dying as those with three or more risk factors.
It has long been known that exercise tolerance is the best measure of near-term survival.
To be fair though, isn’t that study really saying that if your body hasn’t been broken down by disease by the age of 75, your body is likely to last a fair bit longer!
Some at least of the people who don’t take exercise, can’t for various reasons.
David, you make a persuasive point. But surely a sick, unfit person would have several risk factors? The article says risk factors are irrelevant compared to fitness. Also, for equally healthy persons, the fit will outlive the unfit. Trust the Wombles:
Standing on your tiptoes
Running on the spot
Exercise is good for you
Laziness is not
Martin, is this a joke? I cant tell if you are seriously referring to this or mocking it – because
if you have the objective mechanistic causes – not only isnt ill defined “exercise” going to help, its going to hasten the demise.
Exercise per se, for example, cant:
clean arteries – by removing, lead, fluorine, aluminium, pesticides, oxidised and glycated protein and damaged and denatured glycoprotein. Agreed it can switch on genes to do a lot of good and incidentally take care of part of these toxins – certainly move lymph around and the toxins out of the body – sweating too is still underestimated as detox pathway.
However
It cant restore – the (compromised) antioxidant system, high homocystein and renew mitochondria under a high carb load and lack of B vitamins, cant protect against living by a “cell phone tower” and WIFI exposure (Magda Havas – Trent Ontario, Martin Pall – Washington State, Devra Davis, Martin Blank)…
exercise induced stress is going to raise cortisol, dampen immune response and allow dormant and endogenous retroviruses to become active, allow things like Lyme disease to eat into new areas, cause cravings for more refined carbs in most people with distorted microbiomes and dysbiosis of the stomach. It wont fix the microbiome or help you eat the prebiotics that would.
Anyway no need to answer, the paper might point out something obvious – but most of us would probably want all the info on what threatens us and what to do about it.
Exercise/benefit graph isn’t linear but U shaped as most other things. However, exercise, together with calorie restriction and certain stressors (sauna, cold exposure) have been consistently shown to benefit health.
Dr Richi
whether exercise is good or bad, depends on how you view it. If I feel better afterwards, and I see friends/colleagues who are couch potatoes falling by the wayside, then I feel comforted in my view.
On this blog, many make references to philosophers such as Karl Popper, who have drawn their attention to logical thought. I myself am an avid follower of Mary Midgeley, sadly deceased, who comforts the above view. Make your own mind up.
I knew an 80-year-old, very fit and still working as a lecturer, who claimed his female relatives had ‘all died of knitting’. He explained that they sat all day long in comfortable chairs, hunched over their knitting and gossiping among each other, and hardly moved, and went to an early grave.
He also used to say that depression was mostly due to a lack of fitness. As someone who experienced low-grade depression most of my life, and who was surprised to learn that not everyone contemplated suicide several times a day, but who is now over it, I think there’s a lot of truth in his assertion.
Yes, lots of evidence that exercise does wonders for your mental health.
Martin Back: Thanks. Real wisdom there.
If the old ladies mentioned by Martin Back still did most of their own household chores before they sat down with their friends to knit and gossip, (and drink tea, what my late Glaswegian mother-in-law called a “Tea Jenny”), I suggest they probably got at least as much exercise as the average man of the same age. Provided they were reasonably happy, why worry. Surely better than being stuck in an old folks’ home with no-one one knows, until one’s eventual demise.
shirley3349: Reasonable points; however, I think the point of Martin’s comment was more about long periods of inactivity, sitting, especially away from the sunshine and fresh air. Knitting as a social activity cannot be bad for health, but withdrawal from physical activity outside, I’m certain, is. And mixing with young people from time to time, I think, is healthful, too.
Shirley, repeated lifting of a pint mug is much more exercise than you might think ;o)
Bit late to the party…. Two observations.
1) ‘Denier’ – I just hate the way that word is currently used, as if it proves anything. For example, Einstein would have been a ‘science denier’. Why use ‘denier’ if your article makes valid points anyway?
2) The comments below the article were overwhelmingly against it. Given the usual readership of the Daily Mail, I’m not sure what I think of that. I’ll be charitable and say that’s probably good.
Re 2. That’s what I might call a back handed compliment. As you have observed, It seems that some DM readers do have one or two brain cells to rub together.
Re 1. Does that make you a ‘Not all DM readers are idiots’ denier? 🤣
It makes me a denier denier! 😀
The Daily Mail is not an intellectual paper, but maybe as a result, it doesn’t lock into one position or another. I feel you get a much wider selection of factual news from the DM than you do from the BBC or particularly the Guardian. In these times when media like to censor what might be ‘bad for you’ – such as unauthorised medical advice – I’d rather read the DM.
The comments about statin articles are mostly on our side. If you have been given pills by the doctor that aren’t meant to solve an immediate problem, and they actually make you sick – well you do want to shout about it.
People follow links nowadays, rather than being loyal readers of any particular newspaper, so I don’t think the concept of “usual readership of the Daily Mail” makes a great deal of sense.
David Bailey they call it the Daily Fail, so do worry about what they publish! We should be more concerned about the vegans on Wikipedia and RationalWiki attacking anyone who doubts the cholesterol hypothesis. It is the vegans funding this attack.
Doe not one else keep reading the word “denier” as “denier” – the measurement of the thickness of stockings? I don’t think adding -ier to den to mean someone who denies something is a real word.
It is probably only women of a certain age who would understand your comment about ‘denier’ Kathy (I am one of them!). I imagine it wouldnt even occur to most men. I looked it up because I thought the spelling looked odd too, but apparently that’s the way you spell it. Denyer looks wrong too🤭.
This is pretty funny. I have worked extensively with yarns and fibers, and “denier” (pronounced den-yer, accent on the first syllable) is a measure of the weight of a fiber or yarn, the mass in grams of 900 meters of the fiber or yarn. This article is incorrect, it does not come from “density” and “linear,” someone just made that up. The Sun also gets it wrong, but they are closer, they claim that “Denier refers to the thickness of the yarns used to knit a pair of tights. The higher the denier, the thicker the fabric.” You would think they would try looking the word up in a dictionary!
This is the reality: denier refers only to the mass of the fiber per a standard length. Given a particular material, such as nylon, it will have a certain density, so the higher the denier, the thicker the fiber. A different material might be lighter or denser. (We sold stainless steel yarn, amazing stuff. Very fine fibers, but very dense.) But the thickness of the fabric depends not only on the “thickness” of the yarns, but also what in weaving is called the “sett” or the number of yarns per inch. One might take a heavier fiber and create a woven or knitted structure that was still see-through, for example, by spreading out the yarns so that there are gaps between them.
The Britannica gets it right.
A relevant point here is how supposedly reliable sources can be far off. (Tjhere were many other pages on denier with hosiery which were incorrect, including from “experts.”)
In the world of stockings and tights, denier is pronounced, of course, in the French way, with three syllables, the main stress on the first, the secondary stress on the last. At 15 d. or below, they snag and ladder the first time worn, at 30 d. or more, they may last longer but are not half as elegant.
Dr Kendrick, I am in the process of doing a bit of research on the history of individuals who doubt the cholesterol hypothesis (referred to as “cholesterol denialists” by critics). Do you know who the very first researchers were to doubt the cholesterol hypothesis? Or can you suggest any early publications? This is something that has not really been looked into. I might publish an article on it. I am more interested in the historical aspects of this, not the recent developments. I guess I am more interested in a list or timeline or the very first cholesterol doubters.
I looked on Amazon for books, there is a book called “The Cholesterol Conspiracy” by Russell L. Smith, published in 1991. This is the first book I could find on this topic published in the early 1990s. Have you read that book? It appears to be making the same arguments as yourself.
There is also a book from 2000 by Kilmer McCully “The Heart Revolution: The Extraordinary Discovery That Finally Laid the Cholesterol Myth to Rest”, he was the first to propose the homocysteine theory of cardiovascular disease. Do you know of any other early books preferably from the 90s that doubt the cholesterol hypothesis? This may make an interesting future blog post for you. I would like to see the history of this covered. If you search for “cholesterol myth” on Google Books or Amazon, many new books are using that title.
Regards.
Tom
This is the earliest one I read (The Cholesterol Myths):
http://www.ravnskov.nu/my-books/
By Uffe Ravnskov MD PhD
This was my first introduction to this area.
David Bailey as you are an admin on the Skeptiko podcast could you ask Alex the owner if you could interview Malcolm Kendrick? I think this would be a great way to promote Kendrick’s ideas and get publicity for the statin debate.
I noticed Dr. Rupert Sheldrake was interviewed in 2019 https://skeptiko.com/1-how-controversial-science-is-debated/
Sheldrake was also interviewed in 2013 when the Wiki fiddling thing was going on regarding his article. The pseudo-skeptics on Wikipedia removed the fact he is a chemist from his lead on his Wikipedia article. To this day the militant skeptics still remove mention of that. They say that he ceased being a chemist because he published pseudoscience.
It is the vegan activists who deleted Kendrick’s Wikipedia article. The skeptic community on Wikipedia is backed by vegans. These people are not really skeptics, they are vegan activists. Vegan doctors on Wikipedia rarely have any criticisms on their articles but if you check any of the low-carbers they are dismissed as quacks. Tom Naughton was right, it is vegans behind the so called skeptic movement on Wikipedia.
As with the Waller MU Joel comment, this waves a Smith troll flag. Darryl Smith, for his sock names, often impersonates a figure in paranormal circles, as here. The story that the “vegan activists” deleted the Kendrick Wikipedia article was spread by Smith socks in December, attacking someone from Wikipedia, allegedly vegan, who had criticized him. So he created suspicion and attack on a whole group of people not actually involved. I documented this at the time on Skeptic from Britain and subpages.
1. The Wikipedia article was deleted because of inadequate sourcing. As someone who knows Wikipedia policies on that, I saw the deletion itself as routine. (Recent newspaper articles may have made Dr. Kendrick more notable, but I do not recommend rushing to have a Wikipedia article!) However the allegations of the nominator were not normal– and that would be irrelevant to the deletion decision.
2. There was discussion with Jimbo Wales in various places where, somewhat tone-deaf, he defended Wikipedia. He is unfortunately naive about what actually happens on the project, and is not paying that much attention. He did write about Skeptic from Britain (“MatthewManchester1994”) in the deletion discussion for Fat Head, saying the obvious about him, “a serial namechanger and POV pusher.” SfB was retiring because he knew that his days were numbered, and so, in his last edit, he confirmed the claims that he was “MCE,” a vegan as a means of harassing an enemy. But the real MCE is not a vegan, that was obsolete information, and the connection between vegan activism and the Wikipedia skeptical community is very weak, if it exists at all. SfB is very unlikely to be vegan; I’ve followed about eight years of his writing and there is no hint of it.
3. This is an an attempt to stir up misplaced enmity. There may be a problem with behind-the-scenes “skeptical” coordination, but this would be noise covering it up, salting it with red herrings.
I have seen the Smiths do this many times, in many contexts. I’m a real person, I’m easy to contact. (through a comment on my blog, coldfusioncommunity.net and I can follow up with phone or other direct communication.)
“Waller MU Joel” is an account name waving a “Smith” flag. There is apparently a real person behind impersonations, and it is not impossible that this is the real person. If he wants to be verified, he may contact me through a comment on my blog, and I will do what it takes. Many Smith socks promote an apparent agenda opposite to their actual intentions and positions.
So, now, on the hypothesis that this is a Smith sock, what could the motivation be? It could be to lead Kendrick supporters and others who might read this to encourage Skeptiko to interview Kendrick. From the point of view of a Smith, this would then give them more ammunition against Kendrick, if he accepts, because, among his target audience, any association with Skeptiko is considered proof of lunatic pseudoscience. My advice is to consider the ups and downs of this.
Skeptiko’s main page
RW article on Skeptiko’s founder
Examples of Smith RatWiki socks
It is possible the first (“Waller Joel”) is the real person, but not likely. The others are obvious impersonation trolling. That this account, here, has MU in the name is strong evidence of “Smith.” The connection would be entirely through John66, i.e., Darryl Smith.
Dr Kendrick, the field of cholesterol and statin skepticism needs a public relations strategy,hopefully involving experts in that field (not merely in medicine or medical science).
Penetrating what Taubes has called an “information cascade” can be very difficult. It can take years, and if the attempt falls into “conspiracy theory” — regardless of whether there is a conspiracy or not — it gets more difficult. Meanwhile, I suspect that a Skeptiko interview could cause more harm than good. This is not a criticism of Skeptico, only a realization of the effect of likely mudslinging and the provision of evidence for it. The audience to reach with medical skepticism is (1) scientists, (2) professionals, i.e., cardiologists, etc. (3) policy-makers, i.e., politicians or political advisors, and (4) the general public. Skeptico’s audience is not any of these categories. If Skeptico wants to help, they can do so with links and articles that do not appear to connect Kendrick with Skeptico, but merely represent Skeptico supporting Kendrick. These articles should be explicit at the top that they are not approved by Kendrick.
(Unless, of course, Dr Kendrick decides to endorse Skeptiko and their causes.)
Genuine skeptics abstain from premature conclusions, and understand, then, conclusions they do develop as based on preponderance of evidence, in their assessment, never utterly final, but, then, at best, approximations of reality, open to new evidence.
I just Googled your name Abd Lomax you appear to be a bit of a nutcase, banned all over the place for harassment issues. Why is every single comment you do on Kendrick’s blog is about an imaginary person called “Smith”? It needs to stop dude. Not healthy. Just stop and chill out.
https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Abd_Ul-Rahman_Lomax
Abd Lomax, You should assume good faith when it comes to other people commenting here.
Run a Google search on “Waller Joel”. Waller Joel who also uses the username “MU” is a spiritualist medium and poster on the Skeptiko forum. Ask David Bailey the admin, he knows who MU is. These Smith people that you have an agenda against are not in their 60s. They are not Waller Joel.
There is a radio interview here with Waller Joel. You have obviously confused peoples identities. You should assume good faith about people posting online. Not everything is a conspiracy theory out to get Kendrick. I believe the Skeptiko suggestion with a good suggestion.
https://podtail.com/podcast/seek-reality-with-roberta-grimes/waller-joel-talks-about-physical-mediumship-11-22-/
Btw I am a Skeptiko poster. You should sign up to the forum, it is a very open place to discuss controversial research issues in science. Regards.
Mr Abd Lomax why are most of your posts on here attacking other people? – RationalWiki is a biased skeptic website written by extreme left-wingers, you should stop linking to it! Why link to it when you have your own entry? https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Abd_ul-Rahman_Lomax
You are trying to link the owner of the Skeptiko website with pseudoscience but your statements are incorrect. Please check their recent podcasts. Michael Shermer a noted skeptic was interviewed by Alex Tsakiris! The Skeptiko podcast is not a pseudoscientific podcast. Speak to David Bailey, he comments here. I am sure he would endorse Kendrick appearing on Skeptiko.
For a list of the recent guests http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/forums/discuss-the-show/
I personally would like to see Dr. Kendrick on more podcasts. It is not a crime or trolling to suggest such a thing. Waller Joel also known as “MU” is a regular poster on Skeptiko. He is a close friend of Alex Tsakiris.
Anyone can join the forum and ask Alex anything they like.
The latest article by a Prof Kausik Ray in the DM advocating a new statin but “without the side effects” prompted me to check his profile whereupon I came across a reference to the MoS article and the so called denyers.
Got a bit mad & attempted to post a message outlining why I strongly disagreed with him.
My perfectly good email address was refused so I re-post it here,
“Dear Sir,
I went off statins in 2010. Over the past 5 years I have slowly come back to normal. I am a trained accountant who insists on evidence before i come to any conclusions. I blame statins for very significant neurological issues up to and after I stopped. I blame statins for significant liver damage, probably permanent. I also at one time suffered muscle cramps. The fact that these cramps stopped post statin use may be a coincidence, I certainly don’t at this time associate the severe leg cramps with statin use but I could be wrong. As for the so called “statin denyers” can i say that the work of Dr Kendrick a qualified medical practitioner, is impeccably researched and referenced. The work of Zoe Holcomb, appears to have the same characteristics. You on the other hand appear to be a denyer of the severely disabling side effects of the massively profitable statin, a product which is called in to doubt by far too many studies and a growing number of mefical non beneficiaries of the statin producers & promoters.
Shame on you. Must do better.”
Responses to.that same DM article are equally derogatory of the the statin. But one comment is observational !
“remember to always take pill A in the morning, and mid morning take pill B to counter the effects of pill A, then at lunch time take 2 pill C to counter the effects of pill B, and before evening meal take pill D to counter effects of C, then when you go to bed take pill E to prepare you for taking pill A in the morning”
I emailed the Guardian newspaper. They are more balanced than the Daily Mail, and more respectable. They may publish an article on the statin debate this year! 🙂
The DM has already published another article about statins – about the fact that statins increase the risk of T2 diabetes. There was a time when newspapers would champion particular medical causes, and use their investigatory resources to try and determine the truth. Sadly, that time has passed for the time being, and possibly the best you can hope for is that a newspaper reports a range of views about a subject.
I think it’s pretty well established fact that the Daily/Sunday Mail publishes anything as long as it catches the eye and sells papers! They believe nothing. They don’t care about anything as long as it sells papers. Of course they all do it, to varying degrees. The online version attracts a huge variety of readers across the whole spectrum of intelligence. Me for one! lol. I love their simple daily crossword/giant Saturday crossword and Pitcherwits(I’m trying to dodge Alzheimer’s 🤯). Most of all, I can keep reminding myself of the declining state of the world, echoed in the vicious daily diatribes on a diversity of subjects. Having said that, the attack on Dr. K and colleagues attracted an unusual amount of support in the comments. So it proves he’s doing something right!
Joyce: That is what I so sorely miss since cancelling the newspaper-the giant Saturday crossword puzzle. The most difficult of all, but a great pleasure to solve, finding the first of the full-width answers being the key for me.
p.s. of course the support I mentioned above was FOR Dr. K and co. Just to be clear. 👍🏻
Just like cholesterol and statins another of the big myth blood pressure treatment is also being question.
Control of blood pressure and risk of mortality in a cohort of older adults: the Berlin Initiative Study
Published:
25 February 2019
https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/eurheartj/ehz071/5364611?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Abstract
Aims
To assess whether blood pressure (BP) values below 140/90 mmHg during antihypertensive treatment are associated with a decreased risk of all-cause mortality in community-dwelling older adults.
Conclusion
Blood pressure values below 140/90 mmHg during antihypertensive treatment may be associated with an increased risk of mortality in octogenarians or elderly patients with previous cardiovascular events.
Another supplement supporting vascular integrity vs cholesterol myth
Mesoglycan: Clinical Evidences for Use in Vascular Diseases
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijvm/2010/390643/
Does Kendrick have a YouTube channel? He is the sort of guy I would like to see in videos. Make a series on YouTube. You should do an online video debate with some of those vegans. Joel Kahn M.D. has often criticized those who doubt the cholesterol hypothesis on YouTube. He would be the perfect person to debate.
He isn’t a good person to debate. His debate with Chris Kresser on Joe Rogan podcast was full of mistakes.
I dare say that if Joel Hahn, M.D. were to join this blog, he would end up having a written debate with Dr Kendrick – about the scientific evidence for the cholesterol hypothesis. It is notable that very few supporters of the mainstream view have chosen to argue their case here – I wonder why!
The morality of being vegan, and the scientific evidence for dietary advice are surely utterly different subjects.
Even if the best medical advice became to eat 3 steaks a week, that would not stop vegans foregoing that advice on moral grounds – even if it their diet was not as good for them.
Just found this very interesting article by Nathan Cofnes of Balliol College Oxford, published online on 23.02.18 at https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2018.1437024 (I cannot find in the WordPress instructions, how to post a link that will open directly.) the title of the article is “Is Vegetarianism Healthy for Children?” in the journal “Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition.”
The paragraph, which particularly interested me, is the one immediately following the introduction, which discusses Vegetarianism during Pregnancy. He defines a vegetarian as a woman who does not eat meat, poultry or any fish or seafood. He notes that several researchers have found that during times of environmental stress, especially food shortages, the ratio of boys to girls born, normally about 105 boys to 100 girls, falls. The usual reason given for this is an increased incidence of the spontaneous abortion of male foetuses.
He then discusses a paper published in 2000 in the journal “The Practising Midwife” by P. Hudson and R. Buckley, which reports on some research done in the UK. They found that in a sample of just under 6000 women giving birth in one UK hospital, just 5% were vegetarian, of whom almost all were white. Of the children born to these mothers, the ratio of boys to girls was 106 to 100 among omnivores, but was only 81.5 to 100 among vegetarians. These figures seemed frankly incredible and definitely aroused my curiosity. However, the original paper is only available behind a fairly expensive paywall and seems to have been neglected by other researchers into the effects of vegetarian diets on foetal development.
My gut feeling is that this research should be repeated as a matter of urgency, and if verified, young people should be made aware of this effect on the sex ratio when starting their families.
shirley3349: I recall from “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration,” Dr. Price stated that one of the groups he met and studied (I believe it was the Torres Strait Islanders) told him they made their dietary choices in order to produce “perfect babies.” Sure seems the height of folly to go on any sort of fad diet during pregnancy.
I am convinced that statin denialism is pseudoscience, it does not make testable predictions. On RationalWiki (I am a contributor) we have recently created an article on Statin Denialism, it is only in the early stages of creation, but any suggestions welcome. Lomax is banned from editing our website because of abuse but anyone can sign up and post/and or make suggestions if you are civil. DuceMoosolini
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Statin_denialism
My testable hypothesis is that lowering LDL has no impact on CVD deaths. Several experiments have been done which confirm this hypothesis. The only agents that have lowered the rate of CVD death, whilst lowering LDL, are statins, and I would put forward the secondary hypothesis that they work by increasing NO synthesis.
This would be supported by the fact that raised LDL is not a risk factor for stroke, yet statins reduce the rate of stroke death (in high risk patients). As rasied LDL is not a risk factor for stroke, lowering it cannot have any impact on CVD death, therefore statins must be working through another mechanisms – increased NO synthesis. Now, your turn.
I am just typing this whilst waiting for the cable car to get running and the avalanche risk has reduced.
P.S. Please stop using the term statin denialism. It sets the argument in a very negative way. Accusing someone of denialism is basically dismissing any discussion/argument before it even starts. I would remind you that the last paper I co-authored in this area was the most downloaded paper of the last year.
Dr K. I like to watch the numbers following your blog clock up by the thousand…slowly but surely, and now nearing 6,000. However, I find myself spending more time than I wish trawling through long-winded piffle. When the numbers were smaller, I think the quality of comments was superior. Some are hardly relevant to the original theme of your blog, and the authors could well find a more appropriate place for their (often) weird trains of thought.
I miss the comments of the sensible commentators ( i.e. because I agreed with them, ha ha) you had up until a couple of years ago, who seem to have drifted away.
I am still exercising my brain plodding through A Statin Nation, and recommend it to those who need a handy and accessible ‘go-to’ reference for all, and more, that we have learned from your blog.
The real “DuceMoosolini” — i.e., the RatWiki account — was asked if this was him, and he denied it. I have covered the massive socking on this blog today, at skeptic from britain/comment-trolling/#Ongoing
so as to not continue filling up this blog with irrelevancies.
“Drmalcolmkendrick.org has received an estimated 42,100 visits over the last 30 days.”
https://www.trafficestimate.com/drmalcolmkendrick.org
Impressive, Malcolm!
Excellent!
Malcolm,
How about simply blocking posts containing certain rude and idiotic expressions such as ‘denialism’. This would force the skeptics to formulate what it is they really want to say (if anything), and would probably help to lower the blood pressure of many here!
The term “Denialism” is a smear. Its obvious association with ‘holocaust denialism’ (an actual evil) is intended to paralyse discussion of any controversial topic. The science is not settled, and ‘denialism’ accusations will not make it settled – it will just make debate dangerous to those who dissent from the prevailing view.
Valda Redfern: And dissenting from the prevailing view is becoming a dangerous thing, at least in the U.S. Amazon is now banning books. Does Jeff Bezos care about any of the disputes in science? Not a chance. He wishes dominance of all commerce, and is now getting into the pharmaceutical business. We live in exceedingly worrisome times, as industry has captured government most everywhere. The most dangerous of those industries is pharmaceuticals.
Malcolm.
Goran.
Gary.
Any skeptic here.
This manifesto by a segment of Establishment Medicine could be a decent step forward.
I, for one, would like to see your evaluation upon close study of this. I believe that they’ve chosen the right general direction – to their cost: labelled nihilist.
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(19)30167-6/fulltext
JD Patten: Thank you for that link. Eminently sensible. I would suspect that most of us here are medical conservatives. Cost/benefit analyses for medical interventions would be hell on profits, but good for the health of us mortals. The 3.5 trillion we currently spend is growing rapidly, while the overall health of Americans is in decline.
That is an utterly brilliant article, The Case for Being a Medical Conservative, in the American Journal of Medicine, I highly recommend it. Thanks. Now, what is missing, that would make a difference. There are heavily funded advocates for questionable “progress.” Who stands for the public interest and that of the professionals who serve them? Taubes had a very positive idea with NuSI, and obtained millions of dollars in funding. But what is needed may be billions, not millions, and even more important would be sober analysis, trustworthy-by-design. Is that possible? How will we know?
This is John66 from RationalWiki. Abd Lomax has been impersonating various RationalWiki admins from our website such as DuceMoosolini here. He then “blogs” on the impersonations blaming them on someone else, especially me. He was banned for impersonating people on Wikipedia and now he is doing it again.
He has confused my identity with someone else innocent. I have never edited Wikipedia. I am not a vegan activist. It seems I cannot go a single day now editing RationalWiki without Abd writing thousands of words about every edit I make on his blog, this is not normal behavior. The whole thing is creeping me out. Other admins from RationalWiki have also received much harassment from Abd.
Abd Lomax was banned from RationalWiki and Wikipedia for these sort of issues in the past. If you see any other comments from Lomax on RationalWiki please ignore them or do not publish them. He is trying to start a flame war between people on here and RationalWiki. I have nothing personal against anyone on here, nor does anyone from our website. I do not want to be involved in his petty internet feuds. Regards. John66
It is unlikely that anyone here would be looking at RationalWiki, given the treatment handed out to Dr Kendrick by John66. Mr Lomax seems to be a decent chap doing a difficult job trying to rid the internet this pest, his willingness to be contacted is in stark contrast to all the other new commenters here who only serve to get in the way of the science. And if you really are John66 and not some impersonator then you were Skeptic from Britain, which makes you doubly unwelcome here. Regards. Not.
There is a response to this and verifiable documentation of recent events on RatWiki relevant to the socking here, at <a href="http://coldfusioncommunity.net/anglo-pyramidologist/darryl-l-smith/skeptic-from-britain/comment-trolling/verifier/"Verifier. John66 immediately blocked Verifier, who had asked DuceMoosolini if the comment here was from him, claiming this was me, with no evidence other than that question. This alone should create some doubt about his story. The timing shows that he created the avalanche of socks that followed, impersonating Verifier, creating extensive disruption, the purpose of which was to hide that original question and block as well as to defame me. Verifier offered validation, perhaps we will hear about that.
(And thanks, PeteM, for the kind words. I became involved with the troll here when he attacked a student at Wikiversity, I exposed the impersonation socking involved, arranging for proof (through checkuser, which can look at internet access) and he then, of course, went after me. That is a long term pattern, this has been going on, I found, for as much as seven years.) I follow this blog because the topic is of intense interest to me, being almost 75, with a diagnosed cardiac blockage. It is ironic that a community supposedly dedicated to the ideals of RationalWiki becomes so easily corrupted, to the point that scientific skepticism is attacked as “denialism” and reasoned and civil discourse is disallowed. But that’s what I have seen over and over.)
Sorry, the URL is http://coldfusioncommunity.net/anglo-pyramidologist/darryl-l-smith/skeptic-from-britain/comment-trolling/verifier/
JD,
To me, medicin today is a fraud in the hands of Big Pharma whatever way one may twist it.
I see a new ‘miracle pill’ to lower LDL has appeared. ‘Bempedoic acid’, whatever that might be.
How about the medical research guys doing some real science so we all get a better understanding of the role lipids play in our body, instead of discovering ‘solutions’ for problems that may not exist?
“My testable hypothesis is that lowering LDL has no impact on CVD deaths”
Yet according to Barney Calman and basically nearly all of the medical community the opposite is happening. You may have a few studies that support your position, but the majority of studies contradict your hypothesis and show the opposite (I could sit on pubmed all day listing papers that contradict your view). You appear to be looking for anomalies that contradict the cholesterol hypothesis, mostly from a meta-analysis position. You remind me of a parapsychologist trying to prove paranormal powers exist by looking for anomalies in a meta-analysis. Basically you find a tiny percentage of evidence that supports your hypothesis based from anomalies that we do not understand but you ignore the bulk of robust evidence that contradicts it. It is not rational. The reason it sells is because people want to believe what you are saying.
There are hundreds of papers out there that show lowering LDL does have an impact on CVD and CVD death. As I said your tactic is to find a minority of studies that contradict the above but ignore hundreds of studies that demonstrate a link. I do not think this is honest science. It is pseudoscience.
You say there are hundreds of studies. Please mention one
I have seen a few studies that show a link.
They all show that higher LDL in elderly people is protective though!
Ikanreed
I think you will find that Barney Calman is not a member of the medical community.
I mark you 3 out of 10 for your trolling
Kendrick is a qualified GP but he is not a cardiologist. He would not be able to debate someone like Rory Collins. They are too knowledgeable out of his league.
I personally spoke to Joel Kahn and he said Kendrick is flat-out wrong about everything!
Now people talk about Chris Kresser owning Kahn in a debate but that is not true. Chris Kresser is an acupuncturist and anti-vaxxer, not a scientist. Search his debate with Kahn on YouTube it was later exposed that Kresser had misrepresented several papers. It is rare to find a cholesterol denialist who is actually a qualified cardiologist. Rory Collins has advised medical professionals not to give statin denialists a public platform.
This is like the alleged creation/evolution “controversy”. There really is no controversy, it is just a way that woo-believers are seeking a platform to promote their views. Evolution is true. The cholesterol hypothesis is true. Giving denialists a platform to debate is creating a false balance. But if Kendrick was to debate a qualified cardiologist, he would easily lose the debate. It is like asking an amateur runner to win an Olympics race.
I have debated with qualified cardiologists on many occasion. At one time I was asked to a debate with Rory Collins, but he withdrew.
At some point, I suppose, you may present a fact – of some sort. Until then, do not expect me to put up any more of your posts, which are purely ad-hominem attacks, which become rather tiresome.
Dr. Kendrick, it is useful for my purposes to know what this troll is doing. I enumerated and examine 9 troll comments in the last few days.
It is of value to me to have the content and timing of these posts, I use it to extend evidence of identity (which can matter legally). As well, reactions of the troll on RationalWiki are gradually becoming so obvious that one of the Smith brothers has been banned, and the other, the troll attacking you and “denialists,” is skating on thin ice.
Yet your blog would have lost no value for the readers if you had not approved any of them, and would be more useful for most of us without the noise.
I believe you have my email address, but if not, you can contact me as I have described (such as by a comment on that linked page). It would help track and identify this troll if you were to forward to me comments you receive that you suspect are from him. I know the skeptical community and do not assume someone is Darryl just because he or she claims to be or is a skeptic. I would not publish these without your permission. Please consider it. I know your time is valuable. I hope to hear from you in any case.
Not true. Kahn was losing that debate all over the place. Kresser is scientific in his thinking. Kahn is an ideologue.
Hey dude ! Are you are qualified veganist ? Or just a quack vegan ?
I added this account to the list of trolls, with analysis. One of the troll comments came from “DuceMoosolini,” and he was asked on RatWiki if it was him, and he denied it, and then the one asking the question was blocked by the actual troll master. So much for the claim that you can edit RW if you are civil. (This is covered on the linked page.) Nothing this troll writes can be trusted.
These pesky vegans have been insufficiently cowed ;o)
Vegan dude: in 1984 his would be considered doubledoublegood duckspeak from the Ministry of Health (MINIhealth) and the Ministry of Truth (MINItruth.
Vegan Dude. Anyone capable of obtaining 3 good A Levels(especially in the good old days when they meant exactly what they said), can aspire to a career in medicine. Whether or not they succeed depends on a lot of things. What I am really saying is; intelligence is not measured only by reaching the pinnacle of your chosen profession. You insult Dr. Malcolm Kendrick by assuming he is incapable of debating with Collins. They are not debating how many sutures it takes to close a wound after heart surgery, they are debating what does or does not cause heart disease. Frankly, I would not dream of asking Collins how to treat “Cellulitis in Lymphoedema” for instance, because I honestly doubt he’d have a clue. (Sadly not all G.P.s know either). I on the other hand could tell you just about everything you need to know about this chronic incurable condition. No one knows everything. Some think they do, and some think that their heroes do(that’ll be Rory I’m talking about, in case you haven’t kept up). I’ve no doubt you could point me in the way of a good organic farm shop. We all have our uses. Get back to your carrots, you’re playing in the big boys playground and you just finished in last place in your Olympic race.) p.s. you also need to apply for a refund from your Charm School. You failed “good manners” miserably!
Everyone is free to comment as they see fit, but replying to Vegan dude and the other trolls is very unlikely to generate value. Think of the welfare of the community. Vegan dude is not vegan, he’s lying. There is a lot more activity in the last day, I’ll be documenting it on my blog, but these are quite obviously all John66, the author of the Kendrick article (and many others on related topics), on RationalWiki, and who was also Skeptic from Britain. It’s all incredibly complicated. If anyone wants to know more, please don’t ask here, comment on the blog. Thanks.
Here they go again…
https://www.foxnews.com/health/eggs-linked-to-increased-cholesterol-risk-of-heart-disease-in-new-study
Here they go again…
https://www.foxnews.com/health/eggs-linked-to-increased-cholesterol-risk-of-heart-disease-in-new-study
Here they go again…
https://www.foxnews.com/health/eggs-linked-to-increased-cholesterol-risk-of-heart-disease-in-new-study
Sorry Dr Kendrick, and the many people who have made insightful contributions to these comments, often backed up by references, but I shall have to stop reading them for a while. It’s too tiresome sifting the gems from the dross and my time will be better spent finishing reading ‘Statin Nation’. The science gets in the way of the jokes at times but it is a well referenced objective scientific book. I am ashamed to admit that I did not notice it’s appearance when it was first published but a GP tipped me off about it and I am now halfway through.
And sometimes JohnC, the odd humorous comment helps those of us out there who are utterly confused by the myriad of opposing information fired at us daily by “experts”. I also find that after battling cancer and heart disease over the past 16 years(I’m still here! 👋) the only thing that doesn’t have me tearing my hair and sinking into utter bewilderment, is a bloody good laugh. Life is for living. For me that means being pretty sensible with a touch of madness thrown in to make life worthwhile. Laugh or Cry….we all die….eventually.
Martin Back
I enjoyed your introductory comments to the fitness levels link you provided on March 10.
Here is someone who would disagree with those findings – a musician called Big Narstie. A monthly UK music mag has a feature in which musicians are asked to give their 10 Commandments for life.
Big Narstie’s 8th Commandment is called “Health is Wealth” and he says:
“Looking after health is important…in the last couple of years I’ve known a lot of fitness guys – don’t smoke, don’t drink, go to the gym 4 days a week – who’ve collapsed from heart attacks and died. RIP. I smoke, I drink, I party, I eat the whole shebang and I’m still here.”
Well, Charles Gale – a robust social life is supposed to be good for your health and well-being.
It sounds lie your medical advisor Mr Narstie is seeking a musician’s death — a drug binge followed by drowning in your own vomit ;o)
I had one good buddy who was a serious marathon runner. He even went to Greece to run from Marathon to Athens, the presumed origin of the race. He’s dead now. But he was a pilot and died when his plane crashed.
When I join the pension queue and see the shuffling, decrepit people my own age, I am very grateful my car packed up a few years ago and forced me to walk in order to get anywhere. At the time I was distressed because I couldn’t afford to have it fixed, but now I believe it was God’s way of keeping me alive. The 30 min or so walk to the shops and back several times a week is enough for reasonable health; no need for gym and jogging, although I do some calisthenics occasionally.
Have you ever seen wild animals doing aerobics or Pilates, or jogging round the veldt? They don’t run unless they absolutely have to, unless they are young and playing, or occasionally to stretch their legs when older. Exercise is good for you, sure, but there’s no need to overdo it.
I agree with you about what wild animals do! I liken myself to our cat, who sits around doing not very much, or sleeps – and occasionally runs up trees and chases after leaves or something that might be food. She is not overweight and doesn’t appear to have any resultant health problems!!
Hi Charles. After years and years of Athletics club membership, (40 actually), I can tell you that all those totally mad(joking) club runners are by and large all still present and correct! (Truth!). However, I can’t say the same for their backs, hips and knees, which in most cases are well and truly shot! The moral is MODERATION I think. No club 10 (miles) 3/4 times a week. They are totally addicted to miles. A lovely crowd who just can’t ‘do’ moderation! The opposite side of the coin seems to be some of the heart attack/bypass patients who are living in mortal fear of death.They are literally terrified to do anything in case it raises their heartbeat. I’ve tried telling them it’s a BIG muscle and needs “exercise”. Their response is usually a smile and the “who are you kidding” look lol. I’ve always exercised, and still got cancer/had a cardiac arrest. Having said that, being supremely fit(not now!) helped me no end with ten months of Neo adjuvant Chemo/Surgery/Adjuvant Chemo/Radiotherapy. I’d never knock exercise…in moderation.
Vegan dude/Dr Kendrick/Joyce
I was gritting my teeth at the prospect of more HPA-axis disruption following Vegan dudes comment.
Thank heavens for Dr Kendrick’s “present a fact” comment, which seems to me to be the way forward in these matters. If not, good bye.
Joyce – speaking of HPA-axis disruption, both your comments today (1) “the odd humorous comment” and (2) “get back to your carrots” were just what the doctor ordered.
Loved them!
It can be interesting watching the different drug commercials here in America. Well, not all that exciting to watch, but they are common any more educating Americans about different medicines that are available.
Saw a new drug commercial the other day. It was new to me at least. i forget the name of the drug. The commercial was about preventing a heart attack. The commercial said that it was still possible to have a heart attack even with having low cholesterol levels and after taking blood thinners. The commercial then talks about how studies have found their drug lowers the chances of a heart attack and extends life. It doesn’t talk about how it does that, other than if I recall correctly it mentions something about diabetes.
Anyway, could be good to see in a round about way I thought, American’s learning that there are other ideas for the cause of heart disease.
Well, from the 13th to date, WordPress hasn’t sent me anything, s here is another attempt at prompting it to pull its finger out. It was getting worse until abdlomax told me it was my fault and that it couldn’t know who I was unless I set up an account. So I set up an account and it got much worse. So I deleted the account. I now have to use another email address. The first email address requires I log into my account, which I deleted, then it tells me I can’t log into a deleted account. Go figure.
Don’t take it personally AhNotepad, It’s be “since the twelfth of never” since they sent me any mail! Long since given up trying to reactivate the account. Take my advice, just bookmark the blog and take yourself there whenever you want. Works for me. The wonders of the internet eh? I love it and hate it in equal measures! 🤯
I never said it was your fault. I wrote that we didn’t have enough information to help. Now, it seems you are surprised that you cannot log in to an account you deleted. You may have a cookie in your system, and the software tries to log you into that. But you deleted that account.You may need to delete the cookie, there will generally be a browser tool to do that. Then you might need to create a new account, with a new password. You might or might not be able to use the same name. It can be very frustrating, to be sure.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fda-approves-new-cholesterol-lowering-drug/
What is this new thing?
Rick
Evolocumab was the last ‘new thing’ as far as I know. The trial results I have seen show it as being very effective indeed in lowering LDL. No corresponding reduction in mortality rates though. (No surprise!)
Bempedoic acid appears to be the new ‘new thing’. I have no other knowledge of this at all.
This is what you get when older drugs fall out of patent protection.
Rick Ohlendorf: You can read all about these two new miracle drugs in “A Statin Nation.” The FDA does no independent testing of drugs, so if a manufacturer says an RCT showed a benefit, however weak, they say ,”Sold!”
Thanks for the reply.
Dr Kendrick predicted this or similar development once statins went out of patent.
At a guess, maybe year and half ago.
Martin Back/Joyce – exercise in moderation.
I agree.
I recall many years ago (no idea where now or how to find it) reading in a newspaper an article on geriatric athletes still competing in their 60s, 70s and 80s.
They were trying to figure out how they did it. Was it diet? Were they good at sports at school? Were they professional sports people as adults? Genes? And so on.
I seem to recall the answer was none of the above but they had kept moderately active throughout their lives…not burning themselves out by age 30 like soccer players…and keeping things ticking over, getting the balance right between rest and exercise.
Good luck man! Keep fighting!
Mmmm… Me thinks they picked on the wrong guy.
My family doctor seems hesitant in revealing my cholesterol readings. Does not even reply to my request. Would you say that is suspicious? I do not want to ingest statins. As it is I’m more forgetful than ever and the last prescription was for Mar-Ezetimibe 10mg which is supposed to be the least worse statin on the market. Any opinion, suggestion?Thank you and very best regards.Anna GualandrisToronto, Ontario, Canada