I am member of an email group of scientists, medical practitioners, and some other experts from all over the world–you would likely know most of the names if I listed them. Today I received an email communication that I felt I must share. With the permission of the author, I am copy-pasting it here for those of you interested in the whole truth about statins, research, and academic publications associated with such work. The topic is about misinformation–nothing new to the readers of my pages.

The Letter

Subject: About medical misinformation

There is much evidence that the cholesterol campaign may be the main cause of the crises in the health care system in many countries; not only because of the obesity and diabetes epidemics that started shortly after American authorities without any scientific support had introduced the high-carb low-fat diet at the early eighties, but also because millions of patients and healthy people all over the world have been prescribed a drug with minimal benefit, if any at all, and with many serious side effects.

As you know from my November newsletter, we have recently published a review of all the falsifications of the cholesterol hypothesis in the journal Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology. According to Taylor & Francis who publish more than a hundred scientific journals, more than 10,000 open access papers were published during the year 2018. Our paper is placed on the top of their list of the ten most downloaded papers.

Hitherto our paper has not been commented in any of the major medical journals. Instead, editors of Circulation wrote that they together with the editors of 16 other cardiology journals have published an article in which they claim that the benefit of statin treatment have been proved by “robust scientific advances, published in the pages of our journals” and that it has “fostered significant improvements that benefit individuals and society.”

But the authors are dissatisfied because their “prodigious tool chest” has been questioned by “medical misinformation hyped through the internet, television, chat rooms, and social media. In many instances, celebrities, activists, and politicians convey false information”.

We consider it highly unlikely that the editors of seventeen major cardiologic journals shouldn’t have observed a paper, which today has been downloaded by more than 70,000 readers.

“By coincidence”, the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists Collaboration (CTT) have published an article in the current issue of Lancet entitled “Efficacy and safety of statin therapy in older people: a meta-analysis of individual participant data from 28 randomised controlled trials“. Here they suggest that up to 8,000 lives can be saved annually in the U.K. if everyone over the age of 75 receives statin therapy. CTT has previously published a 2010 Lancet paper touting the “Efficacy and safety of more intensive lowering of LDL cholesterol: a meta-analysis of data from 170 000 participants in 26 randomised trials”, so the present article is largely a rehash of old data that is not available to anyone else for verification.

As many cardiovascular events may heal with minimal sequels or none at all, mortality is a more important outcome. In the recent CCT paper the authors claim that the result was a 12% reduction of coronary mortality. However, according to webfigure 6 in the appendix (a section that very few read), the reduction of coronary and all-cause mortality was only 0.2% per year. In webfigure 6 the total number of death per year among the oldest was 850 (4.1%) in the statin groups and 869 (4.3%) in the control/less groups. This means that the number of participants in each group must have been 19,767 and 20,209, respectively, and the total number 49,834. Thus, as the difference between the two groups was only 19 deaths, it means that you have to treat 1040 patients for a year to prevent one death.

How many of these patients may suffer from serious side effects is debatable. According to the statin reports it is less than 0.1%, but this is highly incredible, because in most statin trials the authors have excluded those who suffered from side effects in a short run-in period before the trial started. Many independent authors have documented much higher numbers, and in the IDEAL trial, where a low statin dose was compared with a high dose and where no run-in period was included, almost 50% in each group suffered from serious side effects. This is not mentioned in the abstract or in the text; only in a table (table 4). Furthermore, when you download this paper, the tables are not included.

More comments to the Lancet paper have been published by Zoë Harcombe, and Malcolm Kendrick, two of our THINCS members.

A relevant question: Who are misinforming?

PS: This letter has been sent to more than 1500 scientists, colleagues and wise laypeople

Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD,
Spokesman of THINCS, The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

(Emphasis in the quoted email are mine)

Back to NNT & NNH

You may recall an article I recently wrote about statins where I gave a significantly lower (better) NNT (number needed to treat) than what this letter suggests. In this letter the NNT is 1040, meaning, for one person to gain any benefit from taking statins, 1040 will take statins for one year with no benefit. And according to this letter, 50% of the people taking statins suffer some form of harm, making the NNH (number needed to harm) into 0.5, a huge number, suggesting that half of all people taking statins will suffer some harm.

This letter is a great addition to my article, and suggests very serious allegations of misuse of data, misrepresentation of findings, and misleading millions of people about their need for taking statins or getting harmed by statins.

In sum: please consider all information before you make a decision whether or not you will take statins.

Disclaimer:

I am not an MD and am not making any recommendations, not giving any advice, and am not diagnosing anyone by writing this article and forwarding this email. This article contains my thoughts, my opinion, my views, and should not be used as a basis for your decision. Consult your physician before you make any changes to your medicines. Any harm that may accrue to anyone as a result of this article is not the responsibility of this blog or the author. Neither the blog nor the author can be held liable.

Comments are welcome, as always, and are moderated for appropriateness.

Angela