Author Archives: Mark Schauss

About Mark Schauss

History was always a passion for me since I was a little kid. Even majored in it in college. Loved my Russian history professor, the late Dr. Paul Avrich who inspired this podcast. Also to my mother Alla who kept the Russian side of me going. Wish I had listened to her to learn Russian when I was younger.

Cholesterol Lowering Drugs are Worthless in Most Cases – Part One

Some of you may have noticed a lack of posts from me this week well I have a pretty good reason. My 86-year old father underwent triple-bypass surgery due to three 90%+ clogged arteries. Since this makes two parents out of two having this dangerous procedure, I wanted to research heart disease a bit. Then I saw an article in Business Week magazine while walking through the SeaTac Airport that made me smile as it was saying what I have been saying for years, which is, statin drugs really don’t prevent heart disease.  

Aside from the Vytorin®/Zetia® debacle, the whole idea of lowering cholesterol (LDL especially) to prevent heart disease is nothing less than a scam. In my upcoming book, Achieving Victory Over a Toxic World, I devote a few pages on the medical communities fascination with LDL and heart disease and how bogus the idea is. Well, the evidence is coming in that I was indeed right, as were a number of researchers I mentioned like Dr. Ufe Ravnskov and Dr. John Abramson.

When I make my comments at lectures around the world about the lack of a real link between LDL cholesterol and heart disease I get mixed reactions. Knowledgeable health care practitioners nod in agreement with big smiles; others grimace with a backdrop of anger and disbelief. Individuals look mystified, bewildered and highly skeptical. How can a guy with a doctorate in business be right when so many physicians who have studied heart disease be wrong? If you stay on the side that thinks statin drugs and lowering cholesterol are proven preventive treatments for coronary heart disease after reading this three-part blog, either you are in a major state of denial or you are on the payroll of a pharmaceutical company that is benefiting from the sale of these ill-conceived toxins.

An important concept to understand is a number called the NNT (Number Needed to Treat). This number tells us the number of people that must take a drug for one person to benefit. If a drug is perfect, than that number should be one, which means for every one person who takes the drug, one person will benefit from it and prevent or successfully treat the disease or syndrome.

For people taking an antibiotic cocktail to kill off the bacterium (H pylorii) that causes ulcers, the NNT is 1.1, which is pretty darn good.  For Lipitor®, whose sales last year for Pfizer was about 13 billion dollars, the NNT is between 16-23 for people who have had a heart attack or have definitive signs of heart disease. Not horrible, but an ok number.

So what does that number mean? To prevent one person having a heart event 16-23 people need to be taking the drug. To prevent a death, 48 people would have to take the drug for 5 years to save one life. But we are saving lives would (and is) the industry answer. Guess what? Change your lifestyle just a little bit (eat better, exercise more, stop smoking, etc) and you’ll do much better than that and you won’t have any nasty side effects.

For those of you with a risk factor like high blood pressure and no existing heart disease or heart attack history, the NNT goes to 75-200. If you have no risk factor except what the medical community would deem “high” cholesterol (over 220 mg/dl) the NNT is a ridiculous 500+ as there is no measurable reduction in deaths or serious events. Very little potential benefit, lots of profits for the pharmaceutical industry.

What about Zetia®? The NNT is an astounding 1000+. It is basically worthless. No benefits seen at all. The same can be said for the diabetes drug Avandia® which does lower blood glucose, but does not prevent any disease caused by diabetes.

“Lipitor® reduces the risk of heart attack by 36%… in patients with multiple risk factors for heart disease.” This is what Dr. Jarvik claims (as does Pfizer) in that insipid ad he appears on TV. Now let’s talk about the real numbers. In the clinical trial he mentions, three percent (3%) of the people taking placebo had a heart attack while two percent (2%) of the people taking Lipitor® had a heart attack. So, 99 people had to take Lipitor® for five years with no benefit for one person to gain a benefit over placebo to prevent a heart attack. I don’t know about you, but that isn’t a 36% improvement. Statistics lie when put into the hands of people with an agenda, especially a multi-billion dollar one.

Come back on Monday to find out how this is only the tip of the iceberg. On Tuesday I’ll be discussing the laboratory tests necessary to help prevent heart disease and help improve your overall cardiac health.

Seminars I Will Be Speaking At

Well, its almost time to get back on the road. I start on February 22nd in Seattle, WA for the American Academy of Neural Therapy, followed the next day in Las Vegas, NV which will kick off the Food First half day seminars. Robert Crayhon will be doing 12 of the seminars and I will be joing him at 4 of them. Here are a list of all of the cities this seminar will be coming to (I will be at the ones in bold):

Las Vegas, NV (February 23rd) — Orange, CT (March 1st) — Northampton, MA (March 13th) — Boston, MA (March 15th) — Princeton, NJ (March 22nd) — Denver, CO (March 29th) — San Francisco, CA (April 5th) — Los Angeles, CA (April 6th) — Stamford, CT (April 12-13), Philadelphia, PA (April 19th) — Tarrytown, NY (May 3rd) — Montreal, Quebec (May 10th) — Burlington, VT (June 7th)

Also, don’t forget Boulderfest 2008 which should be the best one ever held in Broomfield, Colorado. I, along with 15 other world class speakers will provide any and all healthcare practitioners who attend, clinically relevant information that you won’t find anywhere else.

April 26th and 27th, 2008 will be the first Healing Journey seminar in Boulder, Colorado which while I won’t be speaking at, is filled with phenomenal speakers. Go to one, go to all you can, it’s well worth it.

The Vytorin Scandal – Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Now with the scandal involving Scheering-Plough and Merck, two pharmaceutical giants becoming the biggest news story of the day I have to comment. Do you really think that the study that Vytorin is not beneficial is an isolated incident? If you do, you are sadly mistaken. When I worked for a company that sold clinical trial software to the pharmaceutical and medical device industry, I was involved in talking to a number of researchers employed by these companies and some of the things I heard made me realize that the focus of these companies was not your health but their profits.

Here are some of the details of the Vytorin story you may not know about.

  • The data that showed that Vytorin was not beneficial in the lowering of the risk of heart disease was known almost 2 years ago by people at Merck and Scheering-Plough.
  • The CEO of Merck ??? sold $29 million dollars worth of stock in her company last year, after she had to have known the results of the drug trial. 800,000 prescriptions a week are written for Vytorin which provides billions of dollars of profit to these two companies.
  • Worst of all, and something that Congress will be looking into is the fact that after the drug companies found out that Vytorin wasn’t showing up as well as expected they tried to manipulate the data to change the end points which would hopefully show the drug actually worked.

It is this last issue I have my greatest concerns about. When I taught a class to a medical device company in Cleveland, Ohio, I was asked by one of the primary investigators whether they could change the data once it was entered into the program. I made sure they understood that this would be illegal and immoral as well. Often times, I found out that many researchers (not all) in the pharmaceutical industry manipulate data end points and use other statistical machinations to create findings that are positive instead of properly studying results and reporting good and bad regardless of the financial ramifications.

With the recent research saying that there is no link between autism and thimerasol in mercury it was apparent that the researchers manipulated the end points to come up with a result they wanted to come up with. They claim that there was no relationship because there is no change in autism rates recently since thimerasol was removed from vaccines. Problem is that the number of years since the mercury laden vaccines have been removed are not sufficient to see a change in autism rates. Most autism is diagnosed at 4-5 but the removal of thimerasol was only done 2-3 years ago so how could they see a difference. This is known as changing the end point to create a result you want. It is immoral and dangerous.

It is time the FDA and our government do what they are charged with doing, protecting the citizens from dangerous drugs. The pharmaceutical industries money first attitude needs control and must be stopped. It is time for a major overhaul of the drug research and approval system.

Where do So-Called Experts and Politicians Get Their Funding? Here is a way to find out!

Ever wonder where so-called experts get their funding? What their conflicts of interest lie?  Well there is a website that can help ferret out the truth. It’s called SourceWatch and whenever I need to find out whether a scientist or researcher is giving an honest opinion or is just a shill for industry, I go there.

One of my previous posts I talked about Elizabeth Whelan, an industry shill who claims that we shouldn’t be concerned about environmental toxins in our blood. Turns out she gets a whole lot of funding from the very industries who pollute our environment. You can read it here from SourceWatch’s information about her.

When you read articles or see comments that hint of a conflict of interest on the part of the “expert”, check out their funding.

Antipsychotic Drugs – No Better Than Placebo for Some

In the January 5th, 2008 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet, researchers in the UK did a study to determine if the antipsychotic drugs haloperidol or risperidone were helpful in controlling the behavior of intellectually disabled people exhibiting aggressive behavior. After looking at the results the authors came up with a surprising finding, there were no benefits over placebo from either drug. In actuality, the placebo was more effective than the drugs at reducing aggressive behavior. The placebo showed no negative reactions or lowering of effect at any time during the trial which is quite significant.

So who would physicians prescribe this drug to that the study found no benefits for? Typically autistics and epileptic children who have had a significant number of seizures. Others might include those with Down’s syndrome as well.

The authors interpretation of the data was as follows: ” Antisychotic drugs should no longer be regarded as an acceptable routine treatment for aggressive challenging behavior in people with intellectual disability” Considering the significant side-effects these drugs pose, I would avoid using these drugs at all costs and would recommend anyone with intellectual disabilities be taken off the drug (carefully and with full physicians care).

Four Hundred Scientists Dispute Global Warming – Or Do They?

According to Senator James Inhofe (R – OK), there is no consensus among scientists about global warming. He even goes on to list 400 people he claims are prominent climate scientists. Well guess what?  Baloney. A number of the people on the list are weatherman on television, twenty percent of them are paid by the fossil fuel industry, seventy people on the list have no apparent experience in climate science and twenty of them are economists.

Don’t believe me?  Here is the list of the four hundred and thirteen people who signed this deceptive piece of paper. Even if there are 400 or so scientists who deny global warming, how about the 50,000 members of the American Geophysical Union who do? It is time to stop arguing with the idiots. I no longer believe that we need to prove ourselves to those people who would consistently deny what we know to be the truth. The earth is warming and man has a lot to do with it.

Want more information before making a decision whether to believe it or not? Go to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change and read the reports.

The deniers keep telling us that fighting global warming will cost jobs and hurt our economy. What utter nonsense. Imagine the jobs we can create if we mobilize our country to develop new technologies to decrease the need for fossil fuels. You know who’s economy will be hurt and whose jobs will be lost? Those executives of fossil fuel companies that rely on polluting our planet for their bloated salaries. The old boys club is hurt economically, not our nation. In truth, our economy will be hurt staying the course, innovation is the way our country became great, stagnation, which is what the current administration wants, is what will put us in the same category as the end of the Roman Empire.

We can only become great again by leading the world, not bleeding it. We have a chance to make a difference, let’s not screw it up.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time – Part Five

Tips for the caring in the world

Tip #21 – Buy organic whenever possible. In the ’60s, the world used 30 million tons of pesticides and fertilizers a year. In 2000, it went up to 140 million tons. Buying organic tells food producers that you don’t want that to continue. Organic foods are simply healthier than non-organic.

Tip #22 – Stop buying artificial air fresheners. They contain volitile chemicals like phthalates that are flat out bad for you and especially children. Use things like potpourri’s or the like. You can find lots of natural oils at the local health food store that work just as well as their chemical cousins.

Tip #23 – Lay off products made with palm oil. To make palm oil, vast areas of the rain forest are being cut down, especially in Indonesia for the palm plantations. Switch to better oils like olive, canola or sunflower instead.

Tip #24 – Switch to safe detergents – At the Schauss house, we use Ecos laundry detergent which we get at Costco. Many regular detergents contain environmentally unfriendly chemicals which ruin our waterways.

Tip #25 – Buy fish that are caught in environmentally safe ways. Overfishing is becoming a problem, farm bred fish contain lots of chemicals, and popular fish like tuna contains mercury. Buying sustainable and healthy fish is important. My favorites are Vital Choice out of Washington. Not only is their fish phenomenal, they are really nice people as well.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time – Part Four

More tips to make your world greener.

Tip #16- Dump the gas powered lawnmower. Gasoline powered mowers generate as much pollution per hour as 40 cars. Switch to an electric or better yet, get a manual reel mower.

Tip #17- Plant a tree. Seems simple but we all need to do it. Even if you don’t have land to plant a tree there are a number of organizations that can do it for you. Dell Computers has a website that allows you to make a donation to help plants trees. Their program is called “Plant a Tree for Me” and it allows you to see how little you need to donate to offset things like computers, printers and other computer related products.

Tip #18- Turn off the heat when washing clothes. Did you know there is no reason to use hot or even warm water when washing your clothes? You use 30% less energy when you wash in warm rather than hot and even more when you wash in cold water. To top it off, your clothes will last longer which is also good for the environment. You save lots of money and make the world a better place. Not bad eh?

Tip #19- Donate your old cellphones. At my house, the kids love playing with our old cell phones but for those of you without kids, or those with different tastes in toys, donate your old cell phones to charity because if you throw them out, they will leach toxic chemicals into the environment.

Tip #20 – Drop the pesticides. One of the worst things you can do to the environment is the use of pesticides. There are so many natural alternatives like putting bay leaves into your flour and cereals will repel weevils, ants hate peppermint and cucumber peel, and if you have mice, soak cotton balls in citronella or oil of peppermint and leave them in areas you notice they like to congregate.

Come back tomorrow for more tips.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time – Part Three

Here are more of my favorite ways to change our world.

Tip #11 – Invest in the rainforest. The United States is the richest country in the world and I am proud to say, the most giving. Still, every year we give gifts to our family members and friends and often times the gifts are used for a short time then either discarded or put away. Imagine a gift that will last a lifetime and make a difference. Go to the World Land Trust and buy an acre of the rainforest and you can do just that. Buy a half acre or an acre. Imagine 1/2 acre of land in lieu of 2 weeks worth of lattés.

Tip #12 – Don’t keep your cell phone charger plugged in. If you do, 95% of the energy it uses is wasted. Remember that what we want to do here is reduce waste first then consumption. I believe America can become energy self-sufficient if it cut back just one-quarter of its wasteful habits.

Tip #13 – Turn your office computer off each night. The amount of energy that a computer burns overnight when not being used is the equivalent of laser printing 800 pages  of documents. This adds up in one year to 1.9 tons of CO2 (which would cost you $10.45 to offset [Carbon Fund Offset Calculator]).

Tip #14 – Say no to junk mail. Aside from being horribly annoying, junk mail is horrible for the environment. Go to the Direct Marketing Association to opt out of receiving junk mail. It won’t eliminate it but it will lower it substantially which will in turn save trees.

Tip #15 – Turn off your screen and forget about the “screen saver”. Screen savers use almost as much energy as when you are using the screen. Turn off your screen if you will be away from your desk more than 1/2 an hour.

Come back tomorrow for 5 more tips.