Referenced From The Cholesterol Myths - The many critical scientists

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Amazing amount of articles and references at the links in this article! If

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Many Experts Have Debunked The Cholesterol - Heart Disease Myth -- by Dr.

Uffe Ravnskov

 

 

Referenced From

http://www.chelationtherapyonline.com/articles/p150.htm

 

The Cholesterol Myths

by Uffe Ravnskov, M.D., Ph.D.

http://www.ravnskov.nu/myth7.htm  

 

7. The many critical scientists

 

Those who propagate for a low-fat diet and cholesterol-lowering drugs claim

that there is general agreement about the diet-heart idea. Nothing could be

more wrong. Here follows, in alphabetic order, a selection of critical

scientists.

 

Mary Enig is an international expert in the field of lipid biochemistry, a

nutritionist and a Consulting Editor to a number of scientific publications,

among others the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. She is also the

President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association. She has published many

scientific papers on the subject of food, nutrition topics, food fats and oils,

several chapters on nutrition for books and a book about dietary fats, oils and

cholesterol (90a). Her main research has concerned the hazards associated with

eating too much trans fatty acids. In an interview she was asked if saturated

fats cause heart disease:  " The idea that saturated fats cause heart disease

is completely wrong, but the statement has been “published†so many times

over

the last three or more decades that it is very difficult to convince people

otherwise unless they are willing to take the time to read and learn what all

the economic and political factors were that produced the anti-saturated fat

agenda. " Read also hers and Sally Fallons paper The Oiling of America

 

Michael Gurr is an associate professor of biochemistry at the School of

Biological & Molecular Sciences in Oxford, editor-in-chief of Nutrition Research

Reviews and editor of three other scientific journals.Wrote Professor Gurr in

his conclusion of a large review on the diet-heart idea (91): â€The arguments

and

discussion of the scientific evidence presented in this review will not

convince those " experts " who have already made up their minds, for whatever

reason,

be it truly scientific or political, that a fatty diet is the cause of CHD

[coronary heart disease]. However, I hope that some readers, who were, perhaps,

unaware that the lipid hypothesis had any shortcomings, will have been

persuaded that the relationships between the fats we eat and the likelihood that

we

may die from a heart attack is by no means as simple as these simplistic

statements imply.â€

 

George Mann, now retired, was previously a professor in medicine and

biochemistry at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. From his studies of the

Masai

people (see section 3) he realized that diet couldn't possibly be the main cause

of high cholesterol and coronary heart disease. As long ago as 1977, in The New

England Journal of Medicine he published a strong argument against the

diet-heart idea citing the lack of relationship between dietary habits and blood

cholesterol, the lack of correlation between this century's trends in fat

consumption and death rates in the United States, and the disappointing outcome

of

the cholesterol lowering trials (92).

 

After the start of the cholesterol campaign eight years later Mann summarized

his criticism of the diet-heart idea in Nutrition Today (93). According to

Mann, the diet-heart idea is â€the greatest scientific deception of our

timesâ€.

Mann is especially critical of the cholesterol-lowering trials. â€Never in the

history of science have so many costly experiments failed so consistentlyâ€, he

declared.

 

Professor Mann also criticized the directors of the Lipid Research Clinics

trial (LRC), the fundament of the cholesterol campaign. The unsupportive results

from the LRC trial have not prevented them from â€bragging about this

cataclysmic break-throughâ€, he wrote. And, he continued: â€The managers at

the

National Institutes of Health have used Madison Avenue hype to sell this failed

trial

in the way the media people sell an underarm deodorant. The Bethesda

Consensus Panel ... has failed to acknowledge that the LRC trial, like so many

before

it, is saying firmly and loudly 'No, the diet you used is not an effective way

to manage cholesterolemia or prevent coronary heart disease and the drug you

so generously tested for a pharmaceutical house does not work either´.â€

 

People who are faced with the many distorted facts about diet, cholesterol

and heart disease often ask me why so many scientists unquestioningly accept the

diet-heart idea. Here is Professor Mann's comment: â€Fearing to lose their

soft money funding, the academicians who should speak up and stop this wasteful

anti science are strangely quiet. Their silence has delayed a solution for

coronary heart disease by a generation.â€

 

Professor Mann offers a little glimpse of hope at the end of his article in

Nutrition Today (93): â€Those who manipulate data do not appreciate that

understanding the nature of things cannot be permanently distorted - the true

explanations cannot be permanently ignored. Inexorably, truth is revealed and

deception is exposed. ...In due time truth will come out. This is the relieving

grace

in this sorry sequence.â€

 

Michael F. Oliver, a former professor and director of the Wynn Institute for

Metabolic Research, London was one of the first to demonstrate that, on

average, patients with coronary heart disease more often had abnomal levels of

various fats in the blood than control individuals did. Professor Oliver still

thinks that those with inherited diseases of cholesterol metabolism, or those at

a

very high risk for cardiovascular risk may benefit from cholesterol lowering,

but in several papers he has warned against campaigns for cholesterol

lowering in the general population: â€Doubts about the promotional nature of

these

campaigns are not popular. Doubters are scorned, although this does not matter.

But the issue is a very serious one if vast sums are spent and widespread

changes are made in the lifestyle of normal people when the accumulated evidence

is

that total mortality is unchanged or possibly even increased†(94).

 

Again and again, Professor Oliver has criticized those who think that the

increased mortality from non-medical causes seen in many trials is an effect of

chance. Rather, he thinks, the very lowering of blood cholesterol may be

dangerous: â€Very little is known about the long-term effects of lowering

cholesterol

concentrations on the composition of cell membranes†(95).

 

According to Oliver our bodies may regulate attempts to lower blood

cholesterol in most cases, but †...would such homoeostatic [regulatory]

mechanisms be

effective in all patients, at all times, and in all cells--particular cells in

which biologic function is impaired for other reasons? These doubts will not

go away for several more years?†(95)

 

Other critical papers by Professor Oliver

http://www.ravnskov.nu/weblit.htm#096

 

Edward R. Pinckney is an editor of four medical journals and former co-editor

of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. In 1973, together

with his wife, he published a book, called â€The Cholesterol Controversyâ€

(97)

which summarized all the inconsistencies of the cholesterol idea. Dr. Pinckney

describes all the factors that influence blood cholesterol in healthy people

and how difficult it is to get a reliable measure of the cholesterol level

because of the uncertainties of the analysis: â€The level of one's blood

cholesterol is, at best, nothing more than an extremely rough indication of a

great

many different disease conditions. At worst, it can be more the cause of stress

and the diseases that stress brings on. To alter one's life style as a

consequence of this particular laboratory test may well cause more trouble than

it

could relieve.â€

 

The start of chapter 1 in Pinckney´s book is worth citing: â€Your fear of

dying--if you happen to be one of the great many people who suffer from this

morbid preoccupation- may well have made you a victim of the cholesterol

controversy. For, if you have come to believe that you can ward off death from

heart

disease by altering the amount of cholesterol in your blood, whether by diet or

by drugs, you are following a regime that still has no basis in fact. Rather,

you as a consumer, have been taken in by certain commercial interests and

health groups who are more interested in your money than your life.â€

 

Raymond Reiser is a former professor of biochemistry at Texas A & M university.

In 1973 he criticized the recommendations for dietary treatment of high

cholesterol by declaring: â€The authority quoted by these authors for the

recommendation is not a primary source but another review similar to their own.

It is

this practice of referring to secondary or tertiary sources, each taking the

last on faith, which has led to the matter-of-fact acceptance of a phenomenon

that may not exist.†(98)

 

Here is another citation from Professor Reiser´s papers (99): â€One must be

bold indeed to attempt to persuade large segments of the populations of the

world to change their accustomed diets and to threaten important branches of

agriculture and agribusiness with the results of such uncontrolled, primitive,

trial and error type explorations. Certainly modern science is capable of better

research when so much is at stake.â€

 

Ray Rosenman is the retired Director of Cardiovascular Research in the Health

Sciences Program at SRI International in Menlo Park, California, and

associate chief of medicine, Mt Zion Hospital and Medical Center in San

Francisco.

Since 1950 he has been a cardiologist and a researcher. He has published four

books and many text chapters and journal articles about cardiovascular diseases.

His main interest has been the influence of neurogenic and psychological

factors on the blood lipids (100), but he has also written reviews critical of

the

diet-heart idea.

 

Here is the conclusion from his most recent review: â€These data lead to a

conclusion that neither diet, serum lipids, or their changes can explain wide

national and regional differences of IHD [coronary heart disease] rates, or the

variable 20th century rises and declines of CHD mortality. This conclusion is

supported by the results of many clinical trials which fail to provide adequate

evidence that lowering serum cholesterol, particularly by dietary changes, is

associated with a significant reduction of IHD mortality or improved

longevity. It is variously stated that the preventive effects of dietary and

drug

treatments have been exaggerated by a tendency in trial reports, reviews, and

other papers to cite and inflate supportive results, while suppressing

discordant

data, and many such examples are cited†(101).

 

Russell Smith was an American experimental psychologist with a strong

background in physiology, mathematics and engineering. No review written by the

proponents of the diet-heart idea are remotely comparable with Smith's books and

papers (102) when it comes to scientific depth and completeness. Smith's

summation is devastating for the diet-heart proponents: â€Although the public

generally perceives medical research as the highest order of precision, much of

the

epidemiologic research is, in fact, rather imprecise and understandably so

because it has been conducted principally by individuals with no formal

education

and little on-the-job training in the scientific method. Consequently, studies

are often poorly designed and data are often imappropriately analyzed and

interpreted. Moreover, biases are so commonplace, they appear to be the rule,

rather than the exception. It is virtually impossible not to recognize that many

researchers routinely manipulate and/or interpret their data to fit

preconceived hypotheses, rather than manipulate hypotheses to fit their data.

Much of the

literature, therefore, is nothing less than an affront to the discipline of

science.â€

 

Dr. Smith concludes: â€The current campaign to convince every American to

change his or her diet and, in many cases, to initiate drug " therapy " for life

is

based on fabrications, erroneous interpretations and/or gross exaggerations of

findings and, very importantly, the ignoring of massive amounts of

unsupportive data...It does not seem possible that objective scientists without

vested

interests could ever interpret the literature as supportive.â€

 

Dr. Smith is aware that he is up against some extremely powerful

institutions: â€The political and financial power of the NHLBI and AHA

team...is enormous

and without equal. And because the alliance has substantial credibility in the

eyes of the public and most practicing physicians, it has become a juggernaut,

able to use its power and prestige to suppress a great body of unsupportive

evidence and even defy the most fundamental tool of scientists, logic.â€

 

The scientists who have produced the misleading papers and reviews are, of

course, the first whom Smith faults. But he adds: â€Equally culpable are the

editors of the many journals who publish articles without regard to their

quality

or scientific import. It is depressing to know that billions of dollars and a

highly sophisticated medical research system are being wasted chasing

windmills.â€

 

William E. Stehbens is a professor at the Department of Pathology, Wellington

School of Medicine, and director of the Malaghan Institute of Medical

Research in Wellington, New Zealand. Based on his own studies and on extensive

reviews of the literature he has effectively demonstrated the many fallacies of

the

diet heart-idea. In a thorough review of the experimental studies he

concluded: â€Upon examination of this evidence and consideration of the

specific

criteria for the experimental production of atherosclerosis, any pathologist of

independent mind and free from preconceived ideas would conclude that human

atherosclerosis and the lesions induced by the dietary overload of cholesterol

and

fats are not one and the same disease†(103).

 

Professor Stehbens has also pointed out the weaknesses of the epidemiologic

studies that have used mortality statistics as proof for causality:

â€Continued,

unquestioned use of unreliable data has led to premature conclusions and the

sacrifice of truth. The degree of inaccuracy of vital statistics for CHD is of

such uncertain magnitude that, when superimposed on other deficiencies

already indicated, the concept of an epidemic rise and decline of CHD in many

countries must be regarded as unproven, and governmental or health policies

based on

unreliable data become untenable†(104).

 

According to Professor Stehbens atherosclerosis is due to wear and tear of

the arteries, not to too much cholesterol in the blood, and he has many good

arguments for this idea. The following words from a 1988 paper (105) summarize

Stehbens' view on the diet-heart idea:â€The perpetuation of the cholesterol

myth

and the alleged preventive measures are doing the dairy and meat industries of

this and other countries much harm quite apart from their potential to

endanger optimum nutrition levels and the health of the populace at large...It

is

essential to adhere to hard scientific facts and logic. Scientific evidence for

the role of dietary fat and hypercholesterolemia in the causation of

atherosclerosis is seriously lacking...The lipid hypothesis has enjoyed

undeserved

longevity and respectability. Readers should be aware of the unscientific nature

of claims used to support it and see it as little more than a pernicious bum

steer.â€

 

Other critical papers by Professor Stehbens

http://www.ravnskov.nu/weblit.htm#106

 

Lars Werkö was previously a professor of medicine at Sahlgren's Hospital,

Gothenburg, Sweden, later scientific director at the Astra Compagny, and is now

head of the Swedish Council on Technology Assessment in Health Care, a

governmental agency. Professor Werkö has been an opponent of diet-heart for

many

years. In 1976 he criticized the design in the large epidemiologic studies aimed

at

preventing coronary heart disease, most of all the Framingham study.

 

According to Professor Werkö (107) the dogm is based on questionable " facts "

rooted in hopes, wishful thinking and studies using selected materials: â€No

studies have proved anything, but instead of formulating new hypotheses

diet-heart supporters call the current one the most probable truth, and they

have

intervened in people's lives because they will not wait for the final proof.â€

 

Other critical papers by Professor Werkö

http://www.ravnskov.nu/weblit.htm#108

 

These were some of the most important criticists, but there are many more

(109) http://www.ravnskov.nu/weblit.htm#109

 

These were some of the most important criticists, but there are many more. Go

to THINCS, The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

http://www.thincs.org/

 

 

 

 

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