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| They're not sweeties |
One of the big news stories last week featured reports
of a study by Imperial College, London, showing that statins have almost no
side-effects.
It came hot on the heels of a report from NICE – the
National Institute for Health and Excellence, which among other things,
provides guidelines on medical treatments in the UK – announcing that, in order
to reduce death from heart disease further, the threshold for prescribing
statins should be lowered from a 20% risk over 10 years to a 10% risk over the
same time.
Now: a disclaimer. I am not now nor ever have been a
scientist or medical expert. So what follows are merely the personal
conclusions of someone who might be judged to fall within the latest category
that NICE is talking of.
And after the disclaimer, a statement.
I have never had a cholesterol test (I haven’t been
near a doctor in years) and, on the basis of what I have read, I do not believe
that cholesterol is the big problem or that high cholesterol is the cause of
the UK’s rates of heart disease – and I would not willingly take statins myself.
Cholesterol is a vital building block in the body. Evidence suggests it is actually dangerous to drive it down – especially after the age of 50.
Mind most doctors have big doubts about the latest
NICE announcements. According to other research by Pulse, the GPs’ magazine, of 511 GPs polled on a variety of issues,
57% opposed the NICE proposal, and 55% would not take a statin or prescribe one
for a family member based on the new NICE-proposed lower threshold.
What we seem to be seeing is what Dr Phil Hammond – GP
and comedian (and do see him if you get the chance: he’s very good) – has
described as the “medicalisation” of society.
Statins have made vast
profits for Big Pharma over the years – due to patents and stuff running out,
those have reduced of late, so the NICE advice must be, err, nice for these
same corporates.
However, it’s worth
noting that eight out of the 12 members
of the NICE panel that recommended the change have declared ties to the
manufacturers, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca.
On only a very slightly
different note, a quick glance at thelist of the NHS website’s partners-in-public-health list – (hat tip to Zoë Harcombe o Zoë Harcombe) – gives an indicator of
just how much the country’s health has become utterly tied in with corporate
interests and, therefore, with the search for profits.
As I explained three years
ago, the current government decided to involve more Big Food representatives in
making public health policy – and one of the earliest examples of this sawgovernment health ‘advice’ effectively providing free advertising for branded, processed foods.
It’s not difficult to begin
to see where problems lie – or where they can be seen or suspected.
Last week’s research from
Imperial College was a meta-analysis: in other words, a meticulous survey of
previous surveys – in this case, 29 different studies.
But while the meta-analysis
itself had no corporate backers, who knows who backed all those other studies?
Not only do we know that
research is often produced that has been financially supported by the industry,
but it’s also known that Big Pharma is most secretive with trial data – it
doesn’t like sharing it with anyone, even in the medical profession – and there
are plenty of people around who will assert that the same companies skew trials
to start with by using ‘pre-trial trials’ to weed out anyone who obviously
shows signs of side effects.
So the ordinary GP has
little chance themselves of knowing all the details of any drug – they have to
rely on the companies who sell them, just as we have to rely on our doctors.
The thing with statins,
though, is that there is no substantial evidence for the big claim that levels
of cholesterol cause heart disease.
That myth came into being
because of the American researcher, Ancel Keyes.
After WWII, heart disease
among men in the US reached epidemic proportions.
Keyes thought he knew why –
that a diet rich in saturated fat caused high cholesterol caused heart disease
– and he set out to prove it.
After a small study in the
US, using men only, he looked further abroad and eventually produced what has
become known as the Seven Countries Study, which bore out his great theory.
The trouble is, Keyes
didn’t study seven countries. He studied 22 – and ditched most of the findings
because they did not tally with what he wanted to find.
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| This is not a natural product |
It ignores the French ‘Paradox’ – only a paradox if you believe Keyes – that sees the French eat more dairy produce than anyone else on Earth, never mind all that foie gras and duck confit, and yet still have far lower rates of heart disease than exist in the UK or US where the low-fat mantra has been so willingly churned out and gobbled up.
Yet Keyes’s work became the
foundation for the health and diet advice of the last 40 years: cut out fat and
fill up with starchy carbs.
It’s almost certainly been
a contributory factor in the rise of obesity, but on a positive note, it’s
provided Big Food with wonderful opportunities for creating and marketing as
healthy, artificial fats and fat substitutes.
We now have a position
where the British Heart Foundation has links not just with the NHS – see that
previous link – but also directly with Unilever, which produced Flora.
And Flora is now able to be
marketed as ‘heart healthy’ – watch out for the link between the foundation and
the product in advertising. Unilever is also on that list of NHS ‘partners’.
In recent months, an
increasingly desperate-sounding British Heart Foundation has taken to making
statements on health stories that have the ring of a siege mentality about
them.
When Sweden become the
first country in the West to ditch the low fat diet advice last October, the
foundation was sticking its fingers in its ears and claiming that low fat was
still best.
With each new piece of
research that is slowly rehabilitating natural saturated fats, it does the
same.
The cynic might speculate
on how, were it to do otherwise, that relationship with Unilever could become
strained.
An increasing number of
doctors are voicing concerns about medicalisation, just as increasing numbers
of doctors are also stepping away from the diet mantras of the last four
decades.
We’re starting to see the
issue of sugar being raised much more, in terms of the serious damage that high
consumption can do.
And it’s worth noting that,
in the case of sugar, much of it is hidden.
I was in M&S a few
weeks ago, looking for a yogurt for breakfast. I couldn’t find one that didn’t
have sugar in it – not least the ones that are sold on the basis that they are
‘low fat’; healthy, in other words.
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| This IS a natural product – and it will not harm you |
And then there’s
high-fructose corn syrup that manufacturers have taken to shoving into all
manner of processed foods to make them more palatable and to make the consumer
buy them again and again.
Again, this is not obviously
sweet foods we’re talking about. High-fructose corn syrup is used in breads,
cereals, breakfast bars, yogurts again and soups.
Who thinks of sugar in soup
or in bread? Cereals have been sold to the public for decades as a healthy
breakfast, and breakfast bars come into the same category.
This is what hidden sugars
means.
As an increasing number of
people raise the issue of these hidden sugars, and as an increasing number of
comparisons are made between the attitude of Big Food and that of Big Tobacco, the
industry is fighting back.
Those links with the likes
of the NHS and the British Heart Foundation should make us skeptical of any
defences of what has become the status quo on health and diet advice.
Just as those links between
NICE members and Big Pharma, and between Big Pharma and disease, should make us
equally skeptical.
What is needed is far
greater transparency in all these cases – and far better regulation, properly
enforced.
There’s nothing inherently
wrong with profits. But when the search for profits trumps people, then it’s a
sign that something is very wrong.
And what is also needed is
an honest and thorough approach to dealing with the problems caused by a
national approach to food that includes using takeaways and ping food to the
extent that the UK does, not taking time to eat properly, constant snacking,
the demise of cooking skills, a prevailing attitude of food as fuel, vast amounts of media space given over to faddy diets, new homes built without proper kitchens etc etc – and not just a rather lame sense of correcting it all my medicalising the populace.
That won’t be as easy as sticking
fingers in ears and endlessly intoning the low-fat mantra, irrespective of the body of evidence against it, but it would be a
damned sight more effective than the equivalent of the three little pigs
inviting the wolf to join them for dinner.
Further reading:
The Great Cholesterol Con
by Dr Malcolm Kendrick
Although now dead the Cholesterolosaurus will march on by Dr Malcolm Kenderick
Bad Pharma by Dr Ben
Goldacre
Bad Food Britain by Joanna
Blythman
Worth following on Twitter:
@KailashChandOBE
@JoannaBlythman
@bengoldacre
@DrAseemMalhotra
@zoeharcombe
@drbriffa
The above-mentioned may not agree with all I have written here, but are all very much worth reading and following on the matter raised in this post.
The above-mentioned may not agree with all I have written here, but are all very much worth reading and following on the matter raised in this post.
