below is the text of a letter that has been sent to every national daily newspaper in the UK.
I am writing to you to inform you of a health disaster that is about to affect millions of people in the United Kingdom. The issue concerns the liberal prescribing of the drug group known as statins. They are used to bring the cholesterol levels down, in patients who are considered to be at risk of suffering from heart disease. The medical evidence does not support the notion that lowering cholesterol is a ‘good’ thing. The peer-reviewed studies that have looked at the issue are clear that a lower cholesterol is associated with an earlier death than higher levels of cholesterol.
NICE (the National Institute for Clinical Health and Effectiveness) they have a new name and a new role, will report on statins in December 2007. The Department of Health are permitting NICE to set the national guidelines on statin prescribing, once it has reported. General Practitioners are now signing new contracts of employment that include the Quality and Outcomes Frameworks. (QOF) The QOF system of awarding points to GP's practices ensures that the practice can get paid extra money for meeting government targets.
The average extra earnings across the GP practices of the UK is a further £121,260 per practice, per annum. This is in addition to the average salary of £106,000. The extra cash to be earned by prescribing statins (the heart disease clinical domain which has 550 QOF points attached to it) is around £64,000 per practice per annum. To earn this money, the GP has to meet the government targets, which means putting more people on statin therapy. It is clear that no GP wants to be deprived of £64,000 extra, to be paid on top of the normal salary. They are going to be treating patients primarily because of the extra cash it will bring them.
Quite why we are paying GPs to do the very job that they are already receiving a 6 figure salary to carry out, is beyond my understanding. The new GP contracts will be used to enforce the guidelines from the government and independence of clinical judgement will become a thing of the past. The dangers of statins, that inhibit the production of some very important substances in the mevalonate metabolic pathway, are clear and and very well documented. My GP would not discuss his prescription with me other than to say, I fitted the government profile for treatment. The Framingham study was the study that underpinned the UK policy on statins, according to dialogue I have had with a member of staff at the Department of Health.
I will quote Dr William B Kannel, who was the study director (from 1966~1979) of The Framingham study, from page 36 of The News, Framingham-Natick, Friday October 30th 1970. This article appeared under the heading of 'Findings of the Framingham Diet Study Clarified'. The memorable quotation, 'Framingham - Although there is no discernible relationship between reported diet intake and serum cholesterol levels in the Framingham Diet study group, "it is incorrect to interpret this finding to mean that diet has no connection with blood cholesterol" Dr William B Kannel, director of the Framingham heart study has stated'.
This execrable piece of psuedo-science has inexplicably persisted and it still underpins our national policy on statin drug use. After studying 5,029 men and women for 22 years, NO DISCERNIBLE RELATIONSHIP was discovered between diet intake and serum cholesterol. Clearly, the corollary to the statement was a piece from the imagination of Professor Kannel. How have we, as a society, moved from that unequivocally stated finding in 1970, after a 22 year study period, to stating that high cholesterol is bad and a high fat diet is bad and statins are the saviours? This has never been proven. If you search the medical literature, you will find that a low cholesterol often presages the death of the person.
The UK charity, Heart UK, failed to answer any of my questions about statin therapy, despite being a charity that helps to educate people about their heart and their own cardiovascular health status. I have written several times to the Department of Health to alert them to the current problems and so far... absolutely no notice has been taken of my efforts to warn people of some serious problems with the current cholesterol hypothesis... e.g. High cholesterol is bad, therefore lower it by using statin drugs that cripple the ability of our cells to transfer energy and then go on to cause premature ageing and death.
The list of side effects for the statin group of drugs is huge and the effects are non-trivial. Look at this global e-petition... *http://www.gopetition.com/online/11757.html ...against the statin drug group) and read the heart rending and very distressing stories next to each of the signatures. Mouse over the ‘view’ field to see a pop-up window with up to a 500 word personal account of the tragedy that has befallen people using this class of drugs. There is a vast amount of medical evidence that shows that statins are not doing what is claimed for them and yet they are doing what the pharmaceutical companies and the healthcare provision agencies refuse to believe.
A disaster may be averted if the people were given the knowledge to be able to put searching questions to their GPs and hospital-based clinicians so as to permit them to be able to make their own choices. No-one wants to be medicated for life and certainly not with drugs that, inevitably, will end up destroying the poor unfortunate patient at the cellular level.
I am more than willing to point you in the direction of the wealth of medical evidence that supports my assertions
xrn
that there will be probably be little (thanks but no thanks?) or no response to this letter.
