CNN reports on the statin pushers and their drive to “qualify” a diverse population around the world to take daily statins.
“This will make the case that statins should be used more broadly, in more countries around the world, and in a more diverse population of people,” CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said.
Gupta also noted that in the United States, there is no longer a specific blood cholesterol or lipid level that is targeted, routine blood testing is no longer recommended,and the overall group of patients being recommended statins has increased. In addition to people who have known heart disease, very high cholesterol or are diabetics, the list of people now being recommended statins was widened to include people older than 40 who have a 7.5% or higher risk of heart attack or stroke within 10 years.
The study authors believe this represents a very simple approach to treatment around the world: 10mg of statins without the need for routine blood tests or clinic visits, he said.
Oh, and this should be noted: “The trial was funded by Canadian Institutes of Health and Research and AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company that makes the statin Crestor, which was used in the study, among other drugs.”
Dr. Brownstein, MD, at the Center for Holistic Medicine in southeastern Michigan (where I am a patient/customer), is always on the ball deconstructing each of these pro-statin media hosannas with common sense. And he clarifies this one by explaining how these studies are skewed by interpreting the data in terms of relative risk, not absolute risk.
Several years ago I predicted that the medical-pharmaceutical-government complex would eventually lower the parameters for statin use to the point where they are as common as aspirin across the broader population. The new guidelines from 2014 “increase the number of Americans eligible for statins from about 40 million to 60 million people.” What I wonder is how long it will take for the use of “everyday” pharmaceuticals such as statins to become so normalized that they become mandatory under the guise of “saving us” from horrible medical risks. Perhaps when the masses become further desensitized to the point of full compliance, the anti-statin’ers will become the new “anti-vaxxers.”
Recall the “chewing gum” statement from Merck’s CEO Henry Gadsden, when he told Fortune magazine it was a shame that the company’s products could only be limited to “sick people.” As cited in the book Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients, by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels:
Suggesting he’d rather Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley’s, Gadsden said it had long been his dream to make drugs for healthy people. Because then, Merck would be able to “sell to everyone.”
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