High Cholestrol can be Good

How Medical ‘Science’ Proves that Black Is White

July 24, 2013

The corruption of medical science continues apace. Dr. Malcolm Kendrick shows how one study draws a conclusion that’s the exact opposite of what its data documents. Apparently, it doesn’t matter how many tricks and twists are applied, as long as the conclusion states what the pharmaceutical corporation wants.

Man Faking Hiding His Eyes

Photo by Cayusa

by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick

Last week I was going through some old files, and presentations, in a vague effort to clean up my computer. Whilst looking a one of many thousands of studies I had filed away I came across this paper: ‘Clarifying the direct relation between total cholesterol levels and death from coronary heart disease in older persons1.’

I read it, and immediately recalled why I kept it. For it came to the following, final, conclusion:

 ‘Elevated total cholesterol level is a risk factor for death from coronary heart disease in older adults.’

I remember when I first read this paper a few years ago. My initial thought was to doubt that it could be true. Most of the evidence I had seen strongly suggested that, in the elderly, a high cholesterol level was actually protective against Coronary Heart Disease (CHD).

However, when a bunch of investigators state unequivocally that elevated cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. So I read the damned thing. Always a potentially dangerous waste of precious brainpower.

Now, I am not going to dissect all the data in detail here, but one sentence that jumped out of the paper was the following:

‘Persons (Over 65) with the lowest total cholesterol levels ≤4.15 mmol/L had the highest rate of death from coronary heart disease, whereas those with elevated total cholesterol levels ≥ or = 6.20 mmol/L seemed to have a lower risk for death from coronary heart disease. ‘

Now, I can hardly blame you if you struggled to fit those two quotes together. On one hand, the conclusion of the paper was that .. ‘Elevated total cholesterol level is a risk factor for death from coronary heart disease in older adults.’ On the other hand, the authors reported that those with the lowest total cholesterol levels had the highest rate of CHD; whilst those with the highest cholesterol levels had the lowest rate of CHD.

Taken at face value, this paper seems to be contradicting itself … utterly. However, the key word here, as you may have already noted, is seemed. As in … those with elevated total cholesterol levels ≥ or = 6.20 mmol/L seemed to have a lower risk for death from coronary heart disease. ‘

Now you may think that this is a strange word to use in a scientific paper. Surely those with elevated total cholesterol levels either did, or did not, have a lower risk of death from CHD? Dying is not really something you can fake, and once a cause of death has been recorded it cannot be changed at a later date. So how can someone seem to die of something – yet not die of it?

The answer is that you take the bare statistics, then you stretch them and bend them until you get the answer you want. Firstly, you adjust your figures for established risk factors for coronary heart disease – which may be justified (or may not be). Then you adjust for markers of poor health – which most certainly is not justified – as you have no idea if you are looking at cause, effect, or association.

Then, when this doesn’t provide the answer you want, you exclude a whole bunch of deaths, for reasons that are complete nonsense. I quote:

After adjustment for established risk factors for coronary heart disease and markers of poor health and exclusion of 44 deaths from coronary heart disease that occurred within the first year, [my bold text]elevated total cholesterol levels predicted increased risk for death from coronary heart disease, and the risk for death from coronary heart disease decreased as cholesterol levels decreased.

Why did they exclude 44 deaths within the first year?  Well, they decided that having a low cholesterol level was a marker for poor health, and so it was the poor health that killed them within the first year.

The reason why they believed they could do this is that, a number of years ago, a man called Iribarren decreed that the raised mortality always seen in those with low cholesterol levels is because people with low cholesterol have underlying diseases. And it is these underlying diseases that kill them. (What, even dying from CHD. And how, exactly does CHD cause a low cholesterol levels … one might ask).

In truth, there has never been a scrap of evidence to support Iribarren’s made-up ad-hoc hypothesis. [A bottle of champagne for anyone who can find any evidence]. However, it is now so widely believed to be true, that no-one questions it.

Anyway, without chasing down too many completely made-up ad-hoc hypotheses, the bottom line is that this paper stands a perfect example of how you can take a result you don’t like and turn it through one hundred and eighty degrees. At which point you have a conclusion that you do like.

Young researcher: (Bright and innocent)  ‘Look, this is really interesting, elderly people with low cholesterol levels are at greater risk of dying of heart disease.’

Professor: (Smoothly threatening) ‘I think you will find … if you were to look more carefully, that this is not what you actually found … Is it? By the way, how is your latest grant application going?’

Young researcher: (Flushing red at realising his blunder) ‘Yes, by golly, how silly of me. I think I really found that elderly people with high cholesterol levels are at a greater risk of dying of heart disease.’

Professor: ‘Yes, excellent. Be a good lad, find a good statistician to make sure the figures make sense, and write it up.’

For those who wonder at my almost absolute cynicism with regard to the current state of Evidence Based Medicine, I offer this paper as a further example of the way that facts are beaten into submission until they fit with current medical scientific dogma.

As a final sign off I would advise that any paper that has the word ‘clarifying’ in its title, should be treated with the utmost suspicion. I think George Orwell would know exactly what the word clarifying means in this context. Facts do not need clarification.

You can watch Dr. Kendrick discussing cholesterol and heart disease here.

1: Corti MC et al: Clarifying the direct relation between total cholesterol levels and death from coronary heart disease in older persons. Ann Intern Med. 1997 May 15;126(10):753-60

from:    http://gaia-health.com/gaia-blog/2013-07-24/how-medical-science-proves-that-black-is-white/

Cancer Studies Funded by

Industry-backed studies more prominent at meetings

By Genevra Pittman

NEW YORK | Tue Jun 18, 2013 3:11pm EDT

(Reuters Health) – Studies that are funded by pharmaceutical companies or involve industry-backed scientists tend to be more prominent at cancer meetings than independent studies, a new report suggests.

“Figuring out the reasons behind these findings is critical,” said Dr. Beverly Moy, who led the analysis at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston.

She and her colleagues also found the proportion of presentations with a financial conflict of interest increased between the 2006 and 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meetings.

“As long as the studies are done well, I don’t think there’s any objection to them becoming more prominent,” Moy told Reuters Health.

However, she added, past evidence suggests industry-funded research is more likely to be published if it’s positive – in favor of a product or pill – than if it’s negative, a phenomenon known as publication bias.

So it’s important to make sure relationships between scientists and companies stay “productive,” she said, rather than become untrustworthy.

The researchers analyzed conflicts of interest, ratings and conference prominence for more than 20,700 scientific abstracts, or research summaries, presented at ASCO meetings in 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Over those years, the proportion of studies reporting a financial conflict of interest rose from 33 percent to 38 percent. Their abstracts were rated as slightly better quality by peer reviewers, on average: 2.76 on a scale from 1 to 5, where lower is better, versus 3.01 for studies without a link to industry.

Abstracts tied to pharmaceutical companies were also more likely to have their own session at a conference, or to be presented during a talk or poster discussion. For example, the ratio of industry-supported to non-supported studies was twice as high among oral presentations as among general posters, which receive less attention.

The findings appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which is published by ASCO.

“With the increase in these relationships, we really need to figure out how to manage them,” Moy said. It’s possible, she said, that such academic-industry teams “yield an alliance that produces better research.”

Alternatively, companies might seek out the most prominent researchers for partnerships, or vice-versa.

“I think a lot of the work that gets a high profile is, of necessity, work that has a relationship with industry. They are, after all, providers of most of the ‘breakthrough’ drugs,” said Dr. David Johnson, chair of internal medicine at the UT Southwestern School of Medicine in Dallas.

But the study does serve as a caution as well, said Johnson, who has studied conflicts of interest in medical research but wasn’t involved in this analysis.

“It again points out that there is this potential for greater and greater influence in the relationship of industry and the direction that biomedical research takes, and we have to constantly be on guard,” he told Reuters Health.

“I think there is a pretty clear influence that industry has on research that’s not always bad, but it’s not always good either … We just have to be really, really cautious.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/128Yg4U Journal of Clinical Oncology, online June 17, 2013.

from:    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/18/us-health-industry-study-idUSBRE95H16R20130618