It's not just smoking. It's diet and drugs that make Doctors and scientists studying them rich. As always,
follow the money.
“The American Medical Association at first opposed the
commercialization of the lipid hypothesis,” Enig reports, “ and warned
that “the anti-fat, anti-cholesterol fad is not just foolish and
futile. . . it also carries some risk.” The American Heart Association,
however, was committed. In 1961 the AHA published its first dietary
guidelines aimed at the public.”
No doubt many researchers at the AHA were sincere. But it is worth
noting that ultimately the AHA would find a way to turn the War Against
Cholesterol into a profitable cottage industry.
You’ve probably seen the AHA’s “heart check” logo on numerous food
products. No surprise, they don’t give them out for free. Food
manufacturers pay a first-year fee of $7,500 per product, with
subsequent renewals priced at $4,500 according to Steve Millay, a
biostatician, lawyer and adjunct scholar at the conservative Cato
Institute, who posted about this
on “junk science” in 2001.
“There’s gold in the AHA’s credibility,” Milloy observed. “Several
hundred products now carry the heart-check logo. You do the math.
Adding insult to injury, consumers pay up for the more expensive brands
that can afford to dance with the AHA. Pricey Tropicana grapefruit
juice is ‘heart healthy’ but supermarket bargain brand grapefruit juice
isn’t?”
It wasn’t until 1987, when Merck produced the first statin, that the
pharmaceutical industry began to get in on the action. But when it
joined the party, it began to spread the money around, not only by
advertising, but by paying well-placed cardiologists “consulting fees.”
Which led to
this:
“The letter we sent to the NHLBI also called for an independent panel
to review the evidence,” Goozner notes, “since the NLHBI panel that
made the recommendations had been dominated by physicians with ties to
statin manufacturers.” Indeed, the National Institutes of Health later
admitted that eight of the nine experts on the panel had received
financing from one or more of the companies that make statins. (None
of the panelists had publicly disclosed their ties to manufacturers
when they made their recommendations.)
Just how much “financing” were the panelists receiving? According to
the LA Times,
from 2001 to 2003 Dr Bryan Brewer, a leader at the National Institutes
of Health, and “part of the team that gave the nation new cholesterol
guidelines in 2004” had accepted “about $114,000 in consulting fees
from four companies making or developing the cholesterol-lowering
drugs.
But “this is relative peanuts compared to Dr P. Trey Sunderland III, a
senior psychiatric researcher at the NIH, who took $508,500 in fees
from Pfizer, Inc. whilst collaborating with them, and endorsing their
drug [Lipitor],” says Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, who is a member of
The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics (THINCS)– a growing group of scientists, physicians, other academicians and science writers from various countries.
Dr. Abramson, who is a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School,
charges that the study that accompanied the updated 2004 guidelines
“knowingly misrepresented the results of the clinical trials that they
supposedly relied upon to formulate their recommendations. The problem
is that the experts claimed to rely on scientific evidence, but they
act as if empowered to ignore the evidence when it is not consistent
with their beliefs.”
This is a serious allegation. Keep in mind that statins are the most
popular drugs in the history of human medicine. World-wide sales
totaled $33 billion in 2007. More than 18 million American now take
them.
Nevertheless, “medical research suggests that only about 40 percent to
50 percent of that number are likely to benefit,” says Abramson. “The
other 8 or 9 million are exposed to the risks that come with taking
statins –which can include severe muscle pain, memory loss, sexual
dysfunction — and one study shows increased risk of cancer in the
elderly– but there are no studies to show that the drugs will protect
these patients against fatal heart attacks.”