Category Archives: Controversial Issues

Statin Drugs, Dr. Jarvik and a Reality Check

A colleague of mine, Dr. Jeffrey Dach, wrote an eye opening article in his latest TrueMedMD newsletter about the use of Dr. Robert Jarvik as a spokesman for Lipitor. I got permission from him to reproduce his article in its entirety. If you would like to learn more about this excellent physician, go to his website at www.drdach.com

Lipitor, Jarvik and Cholesterol

Perhaps you have seen the Direct-to- Consumer TV and print advertisements with Robert Jarvik, the inventor of the Jarvik Heart, speaking on behalf of the Pfizer’s anti-cholesterol drug, Lipitor, the best selling statin drug, the best selling drug in the world, and most prescribed drug in the U.S. with 13 billion dollars in sales last year.

Jarvik is best known from the media circus surrounding the 1982 implantation of his Jarvik-7 into the Seattle dentist, Barney Clark. Although the artificial heart continued to beat in his chest, Barney died of multi-organ failure 112 days after the heart implantation operation, tethered to a dishwasher sized air compressor. The heart device acted as a blender which chewed up the blood cells. Recipients of the Jarvik-7 suffered horribly for months, finally succumbing to infections, strokes, convulsions and immune system failure.

During the ensuing media coverage, the New York Times dubbed the Jarvik Heart the “Dracula of Medical Technology”. Jarvik-7 patients had the Kevorkian option of assisted suicide, a small on-off button which allowed the mechanical heart to be stopped when too unbearable. About 90 people received the Jarvik-7 heart before it was banned.

Why would Pfizer select an MD like Jarvik as spokesman for their Direct to Consumer (DTC) campaign? Jarvik himself doesn’t have the strongest of professional credentials, he enrolled for the first two years of medical school at the University of Bologna in Italy, later returning for the MD degree at the University of Utah. Jarvik never did an internship or residency, and never actually practiced medicine. And the heart device had been invented by somebody else, Paul Winchell, the ventriloquist, who assigned his patent to the University of Utah.

Why does Jarvik’s “Dracula of Medical Technology” make him an expert on statin drugs? It really doesnt.

Eight controlled clinical trials have shown that statin drugs like Lipitor cause depletion of Coenzyme Q10, an important vitamin for cellular energy production. Heart muscle requires high levels of Co-Q10. Side effects of Co-Q10 deficiency include muscle wasting, muscle pain, heart failure, neuropathy, amnesia, and cognitive dysfunction. Muscle pain and statin-drug induced heart failure can be prevented by supplementing with Co-Enzyme Q10, found at your local health food store, an intervention considerably less expensive and less traumatic than an artificial heart operation followed by cardiac transplantation.

Perhaps Jarvik is not really the best choice for the Lipitor Ad campaign which has had mixed reviews. Instead of Jarvik, a more convincing yet unlikely spokesman would be the popular Duane Graveline MD MPH, a former NASA astronaut, and author who was started on Lipitor during an annual astronaut physical at the Johnson Space Center, and 6 weeks later had an episode of transient global amnesia, a form of sudden memory loss described in his book. Dr. Graveline points out that 50 percent of the dry weight of the cerebral cortex is made of cholesterol, an important substance for memory and cerebral function.

Graveline also points out that statins are useful for prevention of heart disease in patients who already have clogged arteries and pre-existing coronary artery disease, however this benefit is independent of how low the serum cholesterol goes in response to the statin drug.

Contrary to the findings in patients with known heart disease, no statin primary prevention study has ever shown a benefit in terms of all cause mortality in healthy men and women with only an elevated serum cholesterol, and no known coronary artery disease.

Patients with known heart disease are customarily placed on statin drugs by the medical system with no need for direct to consumer (DTC) advertising to this group. DTC ads for Lipitor are clearly directed at the larger group of untreated primary prevention patients, for which there has been no benefit in terms of all cause mortality in multiple statin drug studies.

The Japanese, J-Lit study actually showed higher mortality at the lowest serum cholesterol (both total and LDL-C), a paradox called the J-Shaped Curve. The highest mortality was found at the lowest total cholesterol of 160 mg/dl, and lowest mortality at serum cholesterol around 240 mg /ml, exactly the opposite one would expect if cholesterol lowering was beneficial for health. The authors state that the increased mortality at the lower cholesterol levels was due to increased cancer.

Another statin trial, CARE (Cholesterol And Recurrent Events), showed 1500 % increase in breast cancer among women in the statin treated group, explained as merely a statistical aberration. This is disputed by Uffe Ravnskov who feels that the difference is significant, and points to rodent studies showing statin drugs cause cancer in animals.

The Honolulu Heart Study of elderly patients showed the lowest serum cholesterol predicted the highest mortality in this patient group.

A study by Krumholz found lack of association between cholesterol and coronary heart disease mortality and morbidity in persons older than 70 years. Jenkins (BMJ) states that no statin drug study has ever shown an all cause mortality benefit for women.

The Jarvik-Lipitor Ad campaign is a perfect example of why prescription drug ads are dishonest, do not promote public health, increase unnecessary prescriptions, and can be harmful or deadly to patients. New Zealand and the US are the only two industrialized nations to allow direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs. Here in the USA, thirty nine public interest groups have proposed congressional legislation to ban DTC prescription drug ads.

Two more unlikely spokesmen for the Lipitor ad campaign include Mary Enig and Uffe Ravnskov. Should either one be selected as Lipitor spokesman, I myself would run down to the corner drug store to buy up the drug. It seems unlikey that even Pfizer’s deep pockets could ever induce them to recant their opposing position on the cholesterol theory of heart disease. Mary G. Enig writes, ”hypercholesterolemia is the health issue of the 21st century. It is actually an invented disease, a problem that emerged when health professionals learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood.

Uffe Ravnskov MD PhD, who opposes the Lipid Hypothesis, is spokesman for Thincs, The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics, and author of “The Cholesterol Myths, Exposing the Fallacy That Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease”. His controversial ideas have angered loyal cholesterol theory supporters in Finland who demonstrated by burning his book on live television.

How many people suffer from the adverse side effects of statin drugs? Will we ever know? People experiencing adverse side effects from statin drugs may share their experiences in discussion groups . One such group has 3800 messages.

For More Information Click Here: drdach.com or click here: TrueMed.com

Are We Winning the War on Cancer? Absolutely Not!

In a brilliant commentary in the December 16-22, 2006 issue of New Scientist, Dr. Ralph Moss, director of the online information service CancerDecisions.com, provides powerful evidence that the war on cancer is failing miserably despite the tens of billions of dollars spent over the past 35 years.

He writes that in 1971, Congress passed the National Cancer Act assuring the nation that cancer would be cured by 1976. Guess what?  We’ve had the same success here as we are having in Iraq.  In other words, we’ve failed.

Here are a couple of major points Dr. Moss makes:

  • The number of people diagnosed with cancer is roughly double from 1971.
  • Because of our improved diagnostic techniques, cancers are being caught earlier which is great but early detection has been known as a way to cure cancer for over 100 years so no real improvements have occurred.
  • Statistically, there have been games being played as if someone with late-stage cancer dies of pneumonia, that is what is listed as the cause of death and not cancer.
  • Males with elevated PSAs are being diagnosed with prostate cancer even if they may not have cancer. So the more people who are diagnosed without dying, the better the data looks
  • In 2002 cancer deaths in the U.S. numbered 557,272.  In 2003, it dropped to 556, 902, a decline of 370. As Dr. Moss says, “if progress continues at this rate, cancer deaths in the U.S. should be entirely eliminated by the year 3508, a little more than 1500 years.
  • The autopsy rate has declined from 45 percent several decades ago to 11 percent today so it is likely cancer mortality is vastly underestimated.

Bottom line is, we need a new approach to fighting the war against cancer.  The pathway we have taken is just not working. Yes, early detection is getting vastly better but once diagnosed with later stage cancers, all that money has really accomplished very little.

Supplements Aren’t Going Away

There are a few chicken little fear mongerers who are claiming that the Dietary Supplement and Non-Prescription Drug Consumer Protection Act (the “AER bill”), S. 3546, just passed by Congress, will somehow cut back on our ability to access nutritional supplements. These are the same crackpots who claimed Codex Alimentarus was going to do the same thing in January, July, August, September, October and December of 2004.  Guess what?  It didn’t happen.  The fear mongers are looking for handouts and attention and care little about the truth.

The utter stupidity of their claims sounds more like conspiratorial theorists who claim alien domination of world governments. They claim that because the Natural Products Association, uses the same law firm as a couple of pharmaceutical companies, that they are nothing more than a front for Big Pharma. So I guess if you use a lawyer from a firm that defended a murderer, you too are implicated in that crime.  Pretty pathetic argument wouldn’t you say?

The fact of the matter is, the nutritional supplement industry needed this bill to be passed to show that we can govern ourselves and protect the public from sham artists and other quacks in our industry. The bill simply states that in case of severe adverse reactions to supplements a reporting mechanism needs to be in place for the manufacturers of the products, not the retailers. For more details and the true story, go to the Natural Products Association website and learn what really is going on.

Big Changes Needed at the FDA

In the October 26, 2006 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (pg. 1821), authors Gregory D. Curfman, Stephen Morrissey and Jeffrey M. Drazen make some important points regarding changes needed at the Food and Drug Administration. Their concerns relate to the series of recalls of medications over the past five years that has caused many of us to question the drug approval process as well as the supposed follow-up procedures to track continued drug safety.

Two notable sugestions came from this brief (one page) report. First, to give the FDA greater authority to require post-approval adverse event tracking on any drug on the market. Secondly, to have “…a 2-year moratorium on direct-to-consumer advertising after a new presciption drug has been approved.”

While there are many other issues that need addressing, like the need to get BigPharma’s financial fingers out of the FDA, these are two excellent first steps in assuring drug safety in the U.S.A.

Back Posting Again

For those of you who wonder where I’ve been in recent weeks the answer is, all over the place.  On October 28, 2006 I was lecturing in Baden-Baden, Germany and my talk was called “Modern matrix medicine: toxic loads and excretion therapies.” The crowd of health care practitioners from around the world numbered between 350-400. I would like to thank Heel GMBH and the International Society for Homeopathy and Homotoxicology for inviting me to their annual event.

From there I went to the meeting of the American College for the Advancement of Medicine (ACAM) in Rancho Mirage, California and when I got back, it was into the hospital to get my Achillies tendon repaired along with removing a nasty bone spur.  While I expected to be down for a few days, little did I realize how much I would need the support of pain killers to deal with the aftermath of some pretty extensive surgery.

So, now that I’m somewhat recovered, my topics over the next few weeks will include the following topics:

  • The influence of BigPharma on patient advocacy groups
  • Recent research into treatment options and prostate cancer
  • Is angioplasty really that effective?  Or worse, can it be harmful?
  • Growing evidence on the effects of environmental toxins on obesity
  • Neurological damage caused by industrial chemicals
  • Obesity, an American phenomena or world-wide epidemic?
  • The development of a lab competency testing protocol
  • Books that inspire, educate and provoke thought
  • Resources to research environmental health issues
  • Trivia, opinions and straight from the hip comments

I am looking forward to the coming weeks of information sharing.

Banning Harry Potter – Legitimate Complaint or Not?

A Georgia Mother, Laura Mallory is seeking to have the Harry Potter book series banned because it promotes witchcraft and evil practices. Now I can see how a deeply religious person may be offended by the content of the book but being offended and demanding a book be banned begins to create a very slippery slope that is the opposite of what our country is all about which is tolerance (or at least that is my ideal of my country.

If we begin to ban a book because it offends a belief of ours, where do we stop?  If a book like Ann Coulter’s recent work offends me, and parts of it does, can I get it banned?  Some people find Shakespere offensive so out that goes? A better answer might be to educate our children at home about what we feel is right and wrong. Sit down and talk to your children about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. Banning books for religious reasons sets a very bad precedent that our country has to be wary of.

The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman

For those of you still not convinced of the sad state of our health care system, and for those of you who need more ammo when discussing the issue, out comes a book by a former executive of a major pharmaceutical company called: The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman. 

It does a great job in detailing the deceit and profiteering going on that has nothing to do with health but all to do with greed and money. To buy a copy, click on the image below. It’s around $10 from Amazon.

 

The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman

Build a waaay better mousetrap.

No this isn’t about building a better mouse trap but it is about catching a rat, advertising rats.  A new website developed by Edgar Dworsky, exposes the truth behind the little asterisk that shows up on an ever increasing percentage of ads now a days.  I love the sites name, mouseprint.org as it describes the size of the print being used by so many unscrupulous advertisers.

Here is a description of the site:

“mouse print” is the fine print in advertising, in a contract, or on a product label, often buried out of easy sight. In the worst cases, the mouse print changes the meaning of, or contradicts the primary claims or promises being made. Sometimes, the catch is not even disclosed.

The website, MousePrint.org, literally turns advertising on its head by focusing on an ad’s asterisked fine print footnote rather than the headline. The goal is to help educate the public about the catches or “gotchas” in disclaimers, and to encourage advertisers to abandon the motto, “the big print giveth, and the little print taketh away.”

MousePrint.org, like its sister sites, Consumer World and MrConsumer, are consumer education sites produced by consumer advocate, Edgar Dworsky.

Contact: edgar(at symbol)mouseprint.org

Zeolites – Cancer Cure? I don’t think so

Common FDA, start doing your job and get rid of all of those Waiora MLM distributors who are making outrageous claims about how their product, which is volcanic ash made up primarily out of aluminum silicate, cures cancer. They go on to cite a study, which no one has any details about or any way of verifying the claim, which makes a ridiculous statement telling us that the product cured cancer in a number of late-stage patients.

Instead of going after minor violators of their rules, the FDA and the FTC need to stop this type of deceitful marketing. To read a couple of good pieces of information about Natural Cellular Defense aka Zeolite, click here and then here.

Don’t waste your money on what amounts to ground up ash.

More bad news about perchlorates

Despite Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano saying that the Colorado River was safe and that the levels of perchlorates were ok, more data is out showing that even small quantities of this component of rocket fuel are harming the environment.

In the August 2006 issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, researchers found that the chemical masculinizes fish and causes lowered reproduction rates. While the doses used were far higher than EPA allowable amounts, they were still environmentally relevant as they were similar to contaminated sites around the U.S.

When are our government officials going to start protecting us and not protecting big business interests? Maybe when it’s too late.