Pharmaceutical Crimes Continue Unpunished as Cholesterol Drug Lawsuits Stall

The statin or cholesterol reduction drug push has been tagged as the biggest medical scam of all time by medical practitioners who know better and are not afraid of being sued or harassed by drug makers. Despite several peer reviewed published studies that show both the ineffectiveness and dangers of statin drugs, they continue to dominate the pharmaceutical drug market. Cholesterol reducing statin drugs are prescribed unnecessarily and often with serious side effects, even as the whole theory of cholesterol causing heart attacks is proving false. For the thousands of victims filing lawsuits against Lipitor, the top selling cholesterol lowering statin drug of all time, a serious setback was suffered recently when U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel dismissed almost all of the 2800 cases being heard in his court.

Cholesterol Lowering Statin Drugs Increase Progression of Coronary Artery Calcification

Statins are the most profitable medications produced by the Big Pharma Cartel. A report from the National Center for Health Statistics claims that 50% of men age 65-74, and nearly 40% of women over the age of 75 take a statin medication. A 2011 study found over 32 million Americans were taking a statin drug. If that many people are prescribed a drug, one would assume that the drug is effective at treating or preventing something. How effective are statin medications? Not very. This class of medications fails nearly 99% of those who take them. Cardiologists order coronary artery calcium scores to assess how much calcium is deposited in the coronary arteries. This test is done with a computerized tomography (CT) scan. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “Coronary calcium scores are the most sensitive approaches to detecting coronary calcification from atherosclerosis before symptoms develop.” In other words, the higher the coronary artery calcium score, the more risk there is for having a heart attack. An article in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology investigated whether the use of stains influences the progression of coronary artery calcification during five years of follow-up in subjects who took a statin medication and compared them to subjects who did not take a statin drug. The scientists reported that subjects who took statins for five years, when compared to those that took a placebo, were found to have a 2-fold increase in coronary artery calcification progression.

Study: Statin Cholesterol-lowering Drug Use Linked to Increase in Parkinson’s Disease

New findings from a large national claims database show the use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs to be associated with an increased risk for Parkinson's disease (PD), contrary to previous research suggesting the drugs have a protective effect for PD.

Study: High Cholesterol Does not Cause Heart Disease- Treating with Statins a “Waste of Time”

Cholesterol does not cause heart disease in the elderly and trying to reduce it with drugs like statins is a waste of time, an international group of experts has claimed. A review of research involving nearly 70,000 people found there was no link between what has traditionally been considered “bad” cholesterol and the premature deaths of over 60-year-olds from cardiovascular disease. Published in the BMJ Open journal, the new study found that 92 percent of people with a high cholesterol level lived longer. The authors have called for a re-evaluation of the guidelines for the prevention of cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis, a hardening and narrowing of the arteries, because “the benefits from statin treatment have been exaggerated”.

Easy to Use Effective Natural Heart Health Remedies

Health Impact has presented a great deal of material thoroughly explaining the dangers of statin drugs and the wrong information that has been publicized regarding saturated fats and cholesterol over the years. In a nutshell, the cholesterol-saturated fat lipid theory of heart disease is false, and not supported by science. Statin drugs are harmful, and cholesterol is necessary for brain and hormone health. If you're convinced that modern medical heart health dogma misses the mark, you should know about inexpensive and effective natural solutions, starting with the least known suppressed protocol.

Statin Scam and the Cholesterol Myth: Know the Truth

Statin drugs that reduce cholesterol in the body are much more harmful than beneficial, even though they do lower cholesterol readings. There is much clinical evidence that lowering cholesterol is not only unnecessary, but it is seriously damaging to overall health. This is worth repeating even as much as Health Impact News has covered cholesterol and statin issues in the past. Many others, even alternative health sites and practitioners, still continue to perpetuate the cholesterol myth that promotes the scam of dangerous and highly profitable statin drugs. Epidemiological studies tracking elderly people over time have concluded that people with high cholesterol live longer than those with low cholesterol. So there is no need to take a pharmaceutical with dangerous side effects to lower cholesterol.

Take a Cholesterol-lowering Drug for Six Years and You Might Live an Extra 4 Days

Statins are the most profitable drugs in the history of the Big Pharma Cartel. In the U.S., the most stunning statistic about statin drugs is that nearly one-third of adult Americans currently take a statin medication. And, if the Powers-That-Be have their way, all Americans over the age of 50 would be prescribed a statin drug. Why do so many people take a statin drug? Statins are prescribed for elevated cholesterol levels with the idea that statin use will lower the mortality from heart disease. What most health care providers and patients don’t know is that twenty years of research has failed to show that statin use significantly lowers the risk of dying from heart disease. A recent British Medical Journal study looked at the mortality benefit from taking a statin medication for two to six years. They reported that if you are taking a statin medication for two to six years to prevent your first heart attack—this is referred to as primary prevention—your death will be postponed by an average of 3.2 days. If you have already suffered a heart attack and are taking a statin to prevent another cardiac event—this is referred to as secondary prevention—your death will be postponed an average of 4.1 days.

Statin Nation: The Great Cholesterol Cover-up Part II

For many decades, the idea that saturated fats caused heart disease reigned supreme, and diets shifted sharply away from saturated animal fats such as butter and lard, toward partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and margarine. However, as people abandoned saturated fats and replaced them with trans fats, rates of heart disease continued on a steady upward climb. And, the more aggressive the recommendations for low-fat diets, the worse this trend became. Last year, butter consumption in the US reached a 40-year peak, and the resurgence of butter has been attributed to a shift in consumer preferences away from processed foods and back toward natural foods. This is a positive trend, showing that the old myth claiming that saturated fat is bad for you is finally starting to crumble. People are also starting to recognize that refined sugar is far worse for your heart than dietary fat was, and processed low-fat foods are typically loaded with sugar. According to the film, the long held view that saturated fats and cholesterol caused heart disease came under closer scrutiny in the 1990s, when researchers like Kurt Ellison with the Boston University started taking notice of what became known as the French Paradox. The French eat a lot more fat than many other nations, yet they don't have higher rates of heart disease. For example, in the UK people on average eat 13.5 percent of their total calories as saturated fat, whereas the French eat 15.5 percent saturated fat, yet their rate of heart disease deaths is about one-third of that in the UK — just 22 heart disease deaths per 100,000 compared to 63 per 100,000 in the UK.

Cholesterol-lowering Statins: One of the Greatest Failures of Modern Medicine

Let’s look at statin guidelines. The new guidelines recommend nearly half of Americans over the age of 40—more than 50 million people—may qualify for taking a statin drug in order to lower their heart attack risk. I have written in my blog posts, newsletter, and in my book, The Statin Disaster, that statin drugs fail nearly 99% who take them—they neither prevent heart attacks nor have they been shown to help people live longer. Where is the evidence that statins help lower coronary calcium levels? There isn’t any. In fact, the opposite is true: research has shown that statin use actually increases the deposition of calcium in coronary arteries. Yes, you read that right. In fact, researchers reported, “…coronary artery calcium progression was fastest among participants using statins…” This wasn’t the only study to report that fact. Other researchers have concluded, “Independent of their plaque-regressive effects, statins promote coronary atheroma calcification.” Folks, evidence-based medicine should be used and embraced. It is too bad that conventional medicine fails to use it when it comes to statins (as well as many other drug therapies). The evidence behind the statin studies should expose statins as one of the greatest failures in modern medicine.

Dr. Brownstein: $14,000 For New Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs? We Must Be Out Of Our Minds!

The best metric for measuring the effectiveness of a drug is the NNT or the number of patients needed to be treated with the drug to prevent 1 clinically significant endpoint. In the case of statins and presumably in the case of the new class of drug to lower cholesterol the NNT for primary prevention is between 100-500!! I would not want to take an expensive dangerous drug that is likely to increase my incidence of diabetes (which in and of itself increased heart attacks), heart failure, dementia, muscle aches, fatigue, and oxidative stress as a result of lower vitamin D and coenzyme Q10. For what? To lower my chances of an MI or stroke by less than 1%? I would rather take up jogging and eat better. I would rather bet on black. The statin drugs have been a disaster as they don’t work in the majority of people who take them. Now, we want to spend over $14,000 per year in a new class of cholesterol-lowering drugs? We must be out of our minds.