I was idly watching a programme on the Atkins diet last night which, to my surprise, was reasonably balanced. Yes folks, the Atkins diet has crossed the pond to reach the United Kingdom. Although, in reality, all it is doing is returning. After all we invented it nearly one hundred and fifty years ago.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

I have been aware of the ASCOT study [Anglo Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial] for some time. In fact, it seems to have been spewing out results for the past 500 years or so. Maybe not quite that long but, boy, it sometimes seems like it.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

Some time ago, I was looking through the latest definitions of various states of health. I can’t remember why. I think I was writing a paper on multiple sclerosis and trying to establish the various stages that you may progress through, from fully fit and able to bed bound and incapable of feeding yourself.

All types of health “states” were catalogued for all sorts of diseases. However, the really depressing definition was left to last. Someone with no disease or disability of any sort — the type of person you or I might call “healthy” — was defined as temporarily able. As if health is a strange abnormal state, which, happily, given a bit of time, will revert to the more normal human condition of illness.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

Refreshed from a holiday in France, I returned to work to find an e-mail informing me that a German study has concluded that Lipitor (atorvastatin) might not be as effective as the other statins, and might also have more side-effects.

Well, it must be true because it was a study done by the Institut fuer Qualitaet und Wirtschaftslichkeit im Gesundheitswesen. And there is no way on Earth you could argue with an institute as formidable sounding as that. An institute, I picture, entirely populated by white-haired professors all looking like a cross between Albert Einstein and Socrates.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

Finally, a sign that some ‘Opinion leaders’ may be finding themselves a trifle uncomfortable with the stench of corruption. Nose plugs only work for so long. Here is a clip from an article found in a newsletter sent out to pharmaceutical executives.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

It has long bothered me that there is a vast library of medical research out there that has become almost completely unreliable. Some time ago, I wrote that I had almost completely lost faith in the use of references, as you could always find as many references as you wanted to support almost any argument you cared to make.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

References are very much a double edged sword, or perhaps a bazooka. In the wrong hands they can do far more harm than good. And in the, essentially, unchecked system that we now have, one careless reference can end up taking on a life of its own. It gets stuck in the medical information ‘machine’ replicating itself like some malevolent computer virus, gradually infecting all data and turning it into useless mush.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

For those of us who enjoy the use of weasel words and non-scientific rubbish dressed up as fact, this is indeed a grand territory to explore…. 

I have written about hypertension a couple of times. So I thought that I should throw my hat into the ring about the controversy surrounding the ALLHAT trial. A trial which wins my official tortuous acronym award? ALLHAT stands for the Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering treatment to prevent Heart Attack Trial.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

I write this before I have read all the details on the new Heart Lung and Blood Institute guidelines on raised blood pressure [as of 2003]. But there has been enough information flying around to know what they are saying. Frankly, I knew what these guidelines were going to say before the committee met for the first time. Before, in fact, the members of the committee even knew they were going to be on the committee.

Now we are all to be officially ill.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

Let’s suppose that one day you went to the doctor and she decided to take your temperature, just to see what it was. To your surprise it was two degrees higher than normal. As we all know, a high temperature is associated with a higher than normal level of mortality, so the doctor decided to use a drug to get your temperature down, along with advice to wear less clothes and take cold baths.

Time passes and you have been on this drug for five years. The baths and chilly walks are getting to be a bit of a pain. On the bright side, at least the temperature is back to normal.

I think you would agree that such a scenario is, quite frankly, nuts.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

That’s because it’s merely a blood sugar measurement. A sign. An effect. Not a disease, or a cause. We have become mesmerized by blood sugar levels — we fight to get them down — we are happy when the level is lowered. Doctors claim when the blood sugar level falls below an arbitrary figure that the Type II Diabetes has been treated, even cured. But what exactly have we cured? 

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

Sometimes you read something of such blinding obviousness (if that is actually a word), that you wonder why anyone even bothered writing it at all. You know the sort of thing - ‘constant criticism of children does not lead to a sense of self-worth.’ ‘A centralized command economy does not create wealth for citizens.’

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

“Recent and soon to be published research reveals that soldiers who fought in theatres as diverse as Vietnam and Lebanon are not only more likely to die from an accident on their return, but are also twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease, diabetes and even cancer later in life.”

— New Scientist, Aug. 27, 2005

For some time now, I have been banging on about the fact that “stress” causes diabetes, heart disease and even cancer. Of course, my definition of stress, or a stressor, is any factor that can lead to a long-lasting dysfunction of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis (HPA-axis). This definition may seem — and probably is — a bit pedantic. But it does have the advantage of being reasonably accurate. That is more than can be said for the word “stress,” which can mean all things to all men.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

“The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today [ Oct 2005 ] decided to award The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2005 jointly to Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren for their discovery of ‘the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease’.”

It was good to see these two winning the Nobel Prize, with the key piece of following text appended.

“This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, who with tenacity and a prepared mind challenged prevailing dogmas.”

“Who with tenacity and a prepared mind challenged prevailing dogmas….” A few short words. As if the Second World War could be encapsulated thus, “In the Second World War, the Allies defeated Germany, Japan and a few other countries after a series of successful engagements.”

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

‘Pharmaceutical companies are being led by “dinosaurs who are committing financial suicide” by opposing US residents’ reimportation of lower-cost drugs from abroad, Peter Rost, a vice president of marketing at… Pfizer, said in a speech at the Minnesota Senior Federation Monday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

For some time now, I have been following the work of a UK parliamentary committee which has been looking into the activities of the pharmaceutical companies, and their influence over the healthcare system. Whilst this committee was sitting you could even watch the proceedings on television, although I wouldn’t recommend it - other than as a cure for insomnia.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

“Many a man stumbles across the truth, then picks himself up and hurries on as though nothing had happened.”

-- Winston Churchill

There are those of us, poor misguided fools, who believe that the main point of taking drugs is to prevent an early death. We are clearly wrong. The important thing is that you must not die of heart disease. For dying of heart disease is clearly much worse than dying of something else.

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

And what song do we expect the pharmaceutical company wishes to hear sung by international medical opinion leaders? In general it goes like this ‘Use more of the new expensive drugs. For they will make you well.’ To the tune of Amazing Grace.

How much money does it take to get an international opinion leader to sing for their supper? That depends. In the case of Dr Bryan Brewer, a leader at the National Institutes of Health, it took $57,000/year.

‘Brewer, as a leader at the NIH was part of a team that gave the nation new cholesterol guidelines that were expected to prompt millions more people to take the daily pill. He also has written favourably of a specific brand of cholesterol medication, Crestor, which recently proved controversial.

What doctors were not told for years is this. While making recommendations in the name of the NIH, Brewer was working for the companies that sell the drugs. Government and company records show that from 2001 to 2003, he accepted about $114,000 in consulting fees from four companies making or developing cholesterol medications, including $31,000 from the maker of Crestor (AstraZeneca)’

-- Los Angeles Times, Jan 11, 2005

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

The Zocor Debacle - I Told You So! But The Great Ship “Cholesterol-Lowering” Has Ripped Its Guts Out On The Harsh Rocks Of Evidence, But Still It Does Not Sink.

Oh, the joy. Just how annoying can I be now? After the PROVE-IT and REVERSE trials comes the A to Z trial, looking at aggressive high-dose Simvastatin treatment vs. low-dose. And I have just been proved right.

‘Munich, Germany - The Z phase of the Aggrastat to Zocor (A to Z) study has shown disappointing results...Treatment with high-dose simvastatin (Zocor®, Merck) failed to show a significant reduction in the primary composite end point of cardiovascular death, MI, readmission for ACS , or stroke. In addition, the high-dose statin regimen was associated with a higher rate of myopathy and rhabdomyolysis.’

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)

Some of you may observe the actions of the pharmaceutical industry and wonder why, from a PR perspective, it seems intent on taking dead aim somewhere between the second and third metacarpals (bones in the feet, in case you were wondering), then determinedly pulling the trigger. Not once, but time and time again. To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie The Terminator, “I use an Uzi nine millimetre.”

(This article was written by Malcolm Kendrick, MD, author of the wonderful, eye-opening, paradigm-shifting book The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It .)