The long running spat between senior statin advocate Professor Sir Rory Collins and the British Medical Journal has come to a very satisfactory conclusion. His demand – that two papers challenging his claims about the safety and effectiveness of statins – be withdrawn, has been rejected by a committee specially set up to consider it.
Instead the report, out today, makes several low key but sharp criticism of the way Sir Rory has been dealing with his data. (For more background details on what has been going on see here – Eminence medicine defends status quo and here – Statin debate the ultimate two minute guide)
Sir Rory had been particularly incensed that both the BMJ articles had challenged his claim that statins were effective in healthy patients and caused very few side effects. His specific complaint concerned a minor error in reporting the percentage of side effects contained in another article. This was rapidly corrected
The two authors he was attacking – Dr Aseem Malhotra and Dr John Abramson – had their own concerns about Sir Rory’s work. Notably that his conclusions were based on placebo controlled trials of the drugs run by the drugs companies that kept the data they had collected hidden.
The secret statin data
Since the published results of drug company trials are notoriously unreliable, it’s now widely agreed that independent researchers should be able to look over the data that had been collected on each patient.
The research centre that Sir Rory heads – the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists (CTT) in Oxford – holds the biggest collection of statin data in the world, but no one outside the organisation has been able to study it for 20 years – CTT the house of statin secrets. The committee’s report made it clear that this was no longer acceptable.
‘It is very clear,’ it said ‘that statin trial data is not available for assessment,’ going on to note that this ‘may contribute to uncertainty about the risks and benefits’ of the drugs. That was a damming point since the basis for Sir Rory’s demand for a retraction was that questioning his results from randomised controlled trials was killing people by stopping them taking the drugs. In the committee’s view the issue was still uncertain.
The report picked up on another example of Sir Rory’s eccentric approach to evidence and to normal scientific debate. It noted that despite being asked to write an article rebutting Malhotra and Abramson’s claims and to participate in the rapid responses to the articles, all his correspondence arrived marked ‘not for publication’. ‘This was unlikely’ the report drily observed ‘to promote open scientific dialogue.’
Evidence based medicine not delievering
But there is a much bigger issue here than Sir Rory’s ‘grand old man’ style. While he behaved as if the RCT was an unimpeachable source of information, what has emerged from this battle is that the evidence based medicine project is in intensive care if not already expired. Statins are the most widely prescribed drugs ever and quite possibly the subject of more RCTs than any other.
Yet here we are 20 years on and there is widespread agreement that we still don’t really know how effective they are at preventing heart attacks in healthy people – the group who get by far the most statin prescriptions – or what the true side-effect rate is. Part of the problem is the drug companies’ well-known habit of fiddling of statistics, hiding of unfavourable results, selecting trial subjects most likely to produce favourable results and so on.
The unreliability of RCT’s has recently been acknowledged by one of evidence based medicine’s most enthusiastic supporters – Dr Ben Goldacre. “…We lack reliable information from randomised controlled trial on common symptomatic side effects of statins,’ he wrote in a BMJ editorial last month.
This is something of a volte-face for Dr Goldacre since it was only a few months earlier that a research paper with his name on it concluded that statins didn’t really have any side effects at all; reports saying they did were largely due to a sort of reverse placebo effect – people expected pains and other problems so sure enough they felt them.
A tarnished gold standard
In fact Dr Goldacre has become something of a flip-flopper. It was only a year ago that he wrote a good book – Bad Pharma – that explained in great and forensic detail why results of commercial drug trials couldn’t be trusted because of drug company fiddling.
Yet his statin side effect trial was based on entirely on results from commercial trials. So Dr Goldacre who spent years jeering at any and all non-drug treatments for their lack of RCTs, now admits that even several dozen RCTs can’t decide on the effectiveness or safety of a single drug. It’s a gold standard that is looking fatally tarnished. The debate over how best to fix it wil be covered in another post.
RCT’s unreliablity is particularly unfortunate for patients on statins since waiting in the wings is a new generation of super statins that lower cholesterol even more powerfully and are expected to cost around 20.000 dollars a year – Beware new cholesterol drugs coming. How are we going to decide if they are worth it?
Meanwhile we may be on the verge of having a firm decision about one of statins’ long terms effects – type 2 diabetes. Nearly a thousand women have so far begun legal proceedings against the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, claiming that their best-selling cholesterol lowering statin Lipitor caused them to develop diabetes – Thousand woman lipitor lawsuit
If they win, and there is considerable evidence to suggest there is a link, then NICE’s decision to recommend the drugs for another four million people or so, along with Sir Rory’s iron clad confidence that there are no side-effects worth worrying about, will look careless, arrogant and dangerous.
Body of Evidence 
Jerome – fantastic summary of what’s happened in the Collins vs Malhotra/Abramson saga! Thank you on behalf of the many thousands of us who know that Sir Rory has been flogging a dead, statin-filled horse for years now, one that will surely soon be consigned to a deep hole in the ground!
Does anyone know how is Michael Mosely getting on with his statin regimen?
Michael Moseley has every opportunity, much greater than us mortals, to investigate and research Statin drugs. I noticed in the programme when he spoke with the GP he was quite flippant and rude but with Prof Collins he almost bent on his knees infront of him to kiss his hand. If Michael Moseley can be taken in by the man who appears to be in cahoots with the drug companies, what chance for us lowly beings?
Most research is paid for by Big Pharma.
Upton Sinclair’s famous dictum: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
That, or sometimes worse.
Statin drugs lowers bad as well as good cholesterol.
Side-Effects:diabetes, memory loss
Ref: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/28/us-fda-statins-idUSTRE81R1O220120228
Cholesterol is not bad it is vital to our body without we die. Our brain is made of it, our hormones are made of it, our cells are made of it for starters; why would we want to deplete our body of it? Cholesterol is good there is no ‘bad’ cholesterol – you’re being conned.
The cholesterol lie has bought billions of profit to drug and food companies and death and destruction to the public. One Statin drug marketed as the best of all will outdo all others blah blah blah…..it was withdrawn by the FDA and quietly taken off the market because it killed too many people and they couldnt hide the numbers. Rhabdomyolysis is what happens when the muscles fibres breakdown and cause kidney failure – this disease once very rare has seen the numbers rise since the introduction and widespread use of Statin Drugs…it is a fatal disorder people dont get better once they have it. Remember also if Statins damage muscle what is our heart? It is the most vital muscle in our body and Statins cause death through heart failure for this reason; the very disease it is meant to prevent!!!!! Heart failure sees the sufferer very slowly suffocate over days as their lungs are crushed by body fluid filling the cavity around due to a failure by the heart to push blood around the body and away from the lungs effectively, the lungs cannot expand or fill with oxygen death eventually is usually cardiac arrest; it is the most distressing way to die. Who are the clowns? Not, I fear, the drug companies, they can well afford a few court fines and puppets in jail they just buy more puppets.
Sir Rory Collins – Paid £91 million and won’t and make pubic the results – So nothing to hide? Or paid to hide the truth!!! Would anyone trust an individual that behaved like this? – And he’s still at it….See the BBC report today….. Seems like the actions of a paid puppet if ever there was one.
Answer the questions, share your evidence that proves beyond any doubt, or get out of the way and take your pieces of silver with you.
Maybe when the class action hits in the USA we’ll come after you again Sir Rory……
Two books worth reading but do not expect the pro-statinists to do anything – they are brilliant IGNORERS
Sinatra, Stephen; Bowden, Jonny (2012-10-15). The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won’t Prevent Heart Disease-and the Statin-Free Plan That Will (p. 9). Creative Publishing International. Kindle Edition.
de Lorgeril, Michel (2014-03-05). Cholesterol and statins: Sham science and bad medicine (Kindle Location 175). Thierry Souccar Publishnig. Kindle Edition.
Six months on simvastatin: from mountain hiking two hours a day, doing tai chi, swimming…to unable to walk further than around the block. Want some photographs of the myopathy statins can produce in such a short time? I’m happy to show before/after photographs.
What’s tragically worse is the remarkably inventive stories doctors have come up with to explain what happened to me–even though some of what I now know to have been statin effects started within weeks. I feel as though I’m living in a concentration camp in the midst of a genocide, while people in white coats are smiling and saying, oh don’t worry, they’re just going for a train ride and a nice shower.
One of the biggest ‘scams,’ no doubt well-intentioned by doctors, but part of the push from the pharmaceutical industry for profit-driven maybe medicine where people are medicated for diseases they do not have and may never get, may in a few years come to be seen as criminal malpractice.
Most of these drugs are sourced in generic theories, based on generic research into generic humans who do not exist, and as often as not, have been replaced by animals who have no real connection to human beings beyond very, very basic physiology. And when human beings are used for testing they are increasingly living in the Third World and with circumstances and physiology which is unlike that of most of the people who will be prescribed these drugs.
I could never understand why someone would take a drug based purely on fear and possibility, devoid of common sense or even an understanding of the complexity of each individual human organism. But people do.
The only thing I would say is that the human body is remarkable and it can heal anything. Your system will take time to recover and while it does ensure nutrition is optimal, natural, organic, varied and that you reduce as much as you can, any other medications you may take. Then give yourself time, plenty of rest and if you are open to such things, explore acupuncture or kinesiology or homeopathy or other non-harmful medical methodologies which support healing.
You write, “I could never understand why someone would take a drug based purely on fear and possibility, devoid of common sense or even an understanding of the complexity of each individual human organism. But people do.” Please, let’s not blame the victims here. How about in order to get life insurance, for example? How about if you’ve gotten multiple doctors who assure you that statins are safe and without them you’ll get ill or die much younger? How about if the Center for Disease Control gets its information from the American Heart Association and the AHA tells you that with your LDL level you should take statins? Of course those of us who’ve had horrid reactions now know. But lots of folks, maybe 90%, notice no serious adverse effects from statins. (And as we now know, receive no benefits either.) And the adverse effects aren’t reported, so really, how is one to know? I say this as someone who was at aged 68 on no medications at all. And who turned down statins for 5 (wonderful) years. But who gave in finally, with no clue at all that I could get a permanent, hugely disabling disease…in just six months, low-dose.
________________________________
I did not intend to blame the victim. It really was a scratch head kind of question.
And I had no idea you needed to take medication in order to get life insurance. That is shocking.
As to believing doctors well, given the track record of science/medicine why would one but then I do read and research a lot and I guess most people do not.
In truth I suspect most people like to be told what to do because then they take no responsibility and medicine is the new religion of the modern age along with science and doctors are the new priests etc. etc.
And yes it is hard, very hard to stand one’s ground and reject maybe medicine because of the pressure from society and doctors. Another reason to not go near a doctor unless you have a specific problem and then get three opinions at least, make sure you like your doctor and are on a similar wave-length and before doing anything Allopathic research and explore non-Allopathic medical methodologies which can cure and which do no harm.
One quarter of people in the US over 40 are on statins. The new “expert” panel guidelines would make that one half. Do you think many doctors can do their own research to learn that this is insane–let alone expect a patient to do his/her own research?
And again please, when you say: “I do read and research a lot and I guess most people do not” –can you see how this might be offensive? Even more so to someone who’s presently suffering horrid myopathy from a statin drug? I did quite a bit of reading before taking simvastatin. Most people with mainstream academic credentials who’ve done studies on statins have concluded that these drugs save lives. Yes, fine, now I understand that the studies are mostly financed by Big Pharma, that many of the “expert” guideline panel members have ties to Big Pharma. I now understand that the system is corrupt–but even with my own personal warning, with photographs, with data, most people still believe that statins aren’t dangerous. They tell me to let go of my conspiracy theory.
Almost all doctors I know still prescribe statins. Most refuse to recognize that what happened to me was caused by simvastatin. You’d be amazed at the stupid things they say in order to deny this reality right before their faces. My case isn’t reported to the FDA.
I’ve seen experts at Johns Hopkins and at Yale, so I know what’s happened. But how many people do you think have even heard of Cowboy Rory Collins Professor Sir? At least the BMJ stood up to him, but that victory is a rare event. Mostly the statin critics are depicted as kooks.
So tell me, what did you “read and research” that convinced you not to take a statin drug? Or were you never, perhaps, prescribed one?
Oh dear, I do apologise, I did not mean to be offensive it was really a statement of fact. Most people do not question science or medicine and take the time to research across the board and apply large amounts of common sense and logic.
And yes, I know that America is the most medicated society on the planet – the great laboratory for BigPharma and that they consume most of the worlds Pharmaceuticals including 80% of the world’s painkillers.
Doctors are caught in a system driven by the system of science which, for the moment is sourced in the delusional concept that this world and everything in it can be reduced to the mechanical and the material and that human beings are no more than machines and/or bags of chemicals. It is also a profit-driven industry as is the pharmaceutical industry and as, increasingly is science.
We also live in in age when medicine, because it is profit-driven, has become fear-driven, hence the development of maybe medicine where healthy people take drugs for diseases they do not have and may never get. It is a wonderful marketing ploy but unfortunately it turns people into lab-rats and destroys any ethics or integrity in science or medicine.
In terms of your research all I would say is that a good dose of common sense also needs to be applied and recognition of the fact that most research has been produced by those pushing the pill. As you now know. And what others think is their business – what matters is what you think and given the impact on your health, it matters even more.
My position is sourced in an instinctive cynicism about pretty much everything and a belief that the more natural something is, the less likely, if properly used, it will do harm and the more likely it will do goo.
For probably the first twenty years as an adult I was fairly conventional in terms of medical methodologies although I always believed in organic and natural foods, within reason, nothing fanatical about it, and that diet was our best medicine. I have always been wary of scientific expertise for anything which is not mechanical or ‘material’ and that includes the human body.
I have always asked questions and made up my own mind. When my children were little I would get a medical opinion if I was worried but usually throw away the scrip for antibiotics which actually destroy immune function and health in the doing. Antibiotics in my view are only to be used in life or death situations and were once invaluable on that count and now fairly useless because doctors have been irresponsible and so have scientists. The ‘craze’ for giving kids fluoride tablets in the 70’s seemed unnecessary and dangerous to me and so I rejected it out of hand.
Mostly my view has been common sense but, after a couple of decades, part of it spent writing a magazine for a large hospital, and seeing general failure on many counts and too much unnecessary intervention, I moved to a place where in matters of health, Allopathy came last, not first.
And if I needed to see a doctor I just said no to their advice, if it did not make sense to me. I said no to vaccinations in general but accepted Yellow Fever when we moved to Africa and I could not get into the country without the certificate. I said no to malaria medication and after fifteen years in malaria zones in India and Africa, have never had a problem. I said no to a surgeon who recommended surgery for fibroids because I knew that generally at menopause they disappear as hormone levels change. I told her I did not do maybe medicine. I have refused on the rare occasion they are offered to have any of the tests for cholesterol levels etc. I do not believe in checkups and don’t do them. I do not take any medication and would not unless it was crucial and even then I would look to Homeopathy and other medical methodologies to get off it as fast as possible.
Having said that, I would happily utilise Allopathic skills if needed – surgery to sew something back on or trauma. Although I would utilise Homeopathy and Acupuncture alongside them.
We are all different. For me it works for someone else it might not. If you feel better having the checkups and doing what the doctor says then go for it. If you don’ then do not go near them unless there is no choice.
Beyond surgery and trauma I believe Allopathic medicine does more harm than good and never more so than with the dispensing of pills. Which is why iatrogenic death is one of the big three killers in the US and rising everywhere and most of it from pharmaceuticals.
‘good’ not goo although it may be a Freudian slip.
Very well said, rosross, good of you not to knuckle under to the “blame the victim” smear. If one continues to invest with a broker that loses money year after year, it’s not controversial that sooner or later the foolish investor shares the blame. That doesn’t relieve the dishonest and/or incompetent broker of his culpability, it simply means that the “victim” shares the blame for trusting blindly and failing to do their own research after being burned. How is this situation different?
One only need look around at skyrocketing obesity levels to understand that the conventional medical wisdom regarding dietary choices is wrong. When is the “victim” on the hook to do their own research regarding alternate nutritional advice and try something else? Twenty pounds? Fifty pounds? A hundred pounds? Never? My threshold was forty pounds, fortunately I found low carb paleo and am now back at my high school weight despite being 52. Unsurprising in hindsight, I learned virtually everything I had been taught regarding how I should eat was processed food industry propaganda.
Do most folks really believe they require half a dozen pharmaceutical agents just to function? Good Lord, does that make any sense whatsoever? Isn’t it far more likely that most health problems result from not eating something you should be eating or eating (or being exposed to) something you shouldn’t be? The problem with that line of thinking is that there’s no money in it for the medical industry. People that refuse to even consider that possibility definitely share the blame, IMO. That goes particularly in this day and age where anyone can easily do their own research via the internet and don’t need to visit a university library to double-check what their doctor tells them.
Jeff C, after someone has actually been damaged by a drug, it’s insensitive, to say the least, to focus on the ways that it was their own fault. We live in a nasty world in which we are bombarded with things that kill us so that others can make money. I doubt that even one who feels so well-informed is well-informed enough to be avoiding all of them.
–For example, do you own a sofa or mattress or upholstered armchair? Does it contain fire-retardant chemicals? Highly carcinogenic! You should do your research before buying furniture.
–Does your car provide hands-free cellphone usage, as many cars now do? It’s just as dangerous to use hands-free as holding the phone in your hand (though only the latter is illegal). Get injured in a car crash? You shouldn’t have trusted your auto manufacturer and the installed hands-free system.
–Do you eat fish to stay healthy? Farm-raised salmon is high up there on causing cancer. Better find wild-caught, and since the labeling is so abstruse and deceptive, better become expert on all foods. You can’t trust the American Heart Association: even though it’s non-profit, it does take money to put its seal of approval on foods–some of which in the recent past have contained trans-fats.
In this environment of murder for money (hey, I worked in asbestos factory as a student: doctors on staff were paid to tell workers with severe asbestosis that they were fine), I didn’t just gobble a pill. I took very good care of my health. In the battlefield of trying to protect myself against greed, I did okay until I was almost 70. I resisted taking statin drugs for 5 years of having them prescribed to me. When I considered applying for life insurance, the issue of my “high” LDLs took on yet another aspect. And both my doctors (first and second opinion) were and, bizarre as it seems, still are convinced that statins are medicine’s blessing to the world, extremely safe, and responsible for the increased longevity of people in the US.
None of us is immune from getting damaged for profit. If you learn about one thing, you’ll miss another.
I was made to be frightened, at least to a degree, by very high LDL levels. I was assured that except in extraordinarily rare cases any side effects from statin drugs would disappear completely shortly after stopping the statin or lowering the dosage. This is untrue, but the two prescribing doctors fully believed what they said to me. They were on statins themselves. Not that this indicates much, but two of us in this mix went to Ivy League colleges in the US, and all of us have a great interest in staying healthy: we were neither stupid nor unmotivated.
Rather than blaming the victim for not having done enough research (which is impossible: cars, sofas, fish, drugs, foods, etc etc), why not focus on specific ways to change the system that causes these needless health disasters. Regarding toxic chemical fire retardants, take a look at the work done by Arlene Blum, for example.
Regarding statins…ah, more difficult. A $32 billion dollar business in the US alone. Adverse effects are not reported by physicians. I and others I know suffered almost instantaneous, permanent and incredibly debilitating muscle myopathy. As far as I know, even after a great deal of pressure, our cases are not reported by our doctors to the FDA. The best we can do is report the case ourselves to the FDA, which doesn’t carry the same weight. You perhaps can’t imagine how isolating this feels.
How can all this be? Are our physicians evil? My perhaps overly benign explanation is fairly well-expressed in this NY Times article of a few days ago: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/upshot/doctors-magical-thinking-about-conflicts-of-interest.html?smid=tw-share
Well said Jeff C.
Yes, what’s said is “blame the victim” and it is indeed well-said. I ate well, exercised, was actually very healthy. I researched, delayed taking a statin, got a second opinion. My doctors were ignorant (one group received, I later learned, over $350k in monies from Merck and Pfizer) and biased and gave incorrect answers to my questions.
I didn’t “invest with a broker year after year”. I took simvastatin for seven months, period. No other drugs. Even no almost no one knows that statins can do this kind of damage. That’s the point of this whole discussion, isn’t it? That the advise effects of statins are being buried.
My question now, is who are you? Some people get paid by pharmaceutical companies to jump into discussions like this.
http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2014/08/ctsu-funding-from-drug-companies/ This article shows the influence of drug companies and their puppets. This happened recently in the UK. It is a vile demonstration of how we the great public and tax payers are given no consideration and indeed can be dispensed with whilst someone fills their pockets for money. The process for healthcare in the UK used to be great but now it is full of rotten eggs. Money is God to many people and that is how drug companies thrive like flies in a bin they feed on garbage.
I took Statins for only 3-4 months and its damaged me for life- the effects and permanent and progressive. My mother took Statins and they shortened her life from heart failure.
The clever thing about Statins is for some the side effects don’t appear for some years but boy when they do…….. Even then Drs will disagree with you about side effects because they are taught their drug information by drug company reps!!!!!
I took Statins for only 3-4 months and its damaged me for life- the effects and permanent and progressive. Even then Drs will disagree with you about side effects because they are taught their drug information by drug company reps!!!!!
I’m really sorry that this has happened to you. I took simvastatin for just 7 months and now have a permanent neuromuscular disease. If I could post a photo or video here, I think it would look shocking to people. Right before simvastatin, I was training to trek to Everest Base Camp, so my legs were obviously fine.
So doctors (neuromuscular specialists) know immediately what’s happened to me. Other doctors have actually said such idiotic things as, “Well, you are getting older” when they looked at my legs. I’ve responded, “Would you care to arm wrestle? Does it strike you at all odd that my arms haven’t gotten older, just my legs?” Or in essence: are you stupid, blind, corrupt or just what? My own opinion is that these doctors have prescribed statins to so many patients (just as doctors used to bleed patients) that acknowledging this as error would be too emotionally devastating for them.
We have a group of statin-damaged people called SOS. You can reach us at Stopped_Our_Statins@yahoogroups.com. Believe me, there are a lot of us.
Mostly there is no treatment, but if we band together to get acknowledged, or if Jerome Burne or some other talented individual can help us, we might at least cause research to be done. My own symptoms are similar to ALS, and now that I know what to look for (from my experience and the descriptions from others) the adverse effects were detectable within weeks. Crazy as it seems to me, my doctors don’t even want to hear about the earliest signs of upcoming statin-caused disaster.
If your CPK levels are very high, there is a treatment at Johns Hopkins University that has really helped someone I know. In my own case, CPK levels never went above 4-500. This is high, but hers were over 9,000. Statins can cause bizarre and horrifying things to happen, probably depending upon ones particular DNA the doctors told me.
Anyway, it may help you to know that you’re not alone. The medical system is hugely driven and financed by Big Pharma, and that amount of money and greed is hard to combat. But hey, in the US our tax dollars still subsidize tobacco, so we know how evil some people are. And people have been gassed with poison gas.
For me, after the disease itself, what makes me feel sickened is watching my well-intentioned physician entertain drug reps in his office (for information, for “free” samples) and continuing to prescribe statins like candy.
Good luck. You’re not alone.
” I feel as though I’m living in a concentration camp in the midst of a genocide, while people in white coats are smiling and saying, oh don’t worry, they’re just going for a train ride and a nice shower.” , This is exactly how I feel, I am stealing it.
Howfussiner, this may not be at all relevant but it might be worth reading in regard to your decline in health. Yes, the statins might be a cause but if you were vaccinated around the same time, that might also be a cause or it could in fact be a combination of both if you were.
No, not vaccinated, but thanks for the thought. Statins, if you haven’t had a  previous cardiovascular event, do not lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. If you follow the BMJ scandal (“Sir Professor” Rory Collins and ilk) you’ll get an objective glimpse into the statin horror show. If the attached photos come through, you can see how statins change the lives of many people–most especially those who are very physically active. I was 69 on top of Poon Hill. Two years later, I’m a 100 year old man. David
________________________________
Doctor Goodline of spacedoc.com has put forth that the side effect of statins is accelerated aging. Very hard to prove but fits like a glove.
Dr Duane Graveline (I think). Spacedoc.com. A former astronaut, flight surgeon, family MD. Statin-devastated at about the same age I was two years ago. Obviously an outstanding individual.
You are right. I claim statin damage.
No, but thank you. No vaccinations. It’s pretty well-known that statins can cause myopathy all by themselves.
Very informative, thank you!