There must have been a full moon out when the author of today's Annals of Internal Medicine wrote his paper on recommendations for diabetics. Either that or he sold out long ago to the drug companies. Isn't it bad enough that the statins are the number one selling drugs on the planet and that Lipitor is cranking in $10 BILLION, yes billion, not million folks, every year? Now these greedy drug companies want even more money.
Please understand that I am a great fan of capitalism and I don't begrudge any company from making a profit, or even massively huge profits, but I have major objections to any person or company selling a solution that does not authentically benefit the end user. And when it comes to statin drugs that clearly is the case.
The "experts" are now saying that no matter how low your cholesterol count if you are a diabetic then you should take cholesterol-lowering drugs. They are completely ignorant of the well documented dangers of having too low of a cholesterol level.
What is concerning though is that this is not a lunatic doctor saying this but this advice now is part of the official practice guidelines of the American College of Physicians, a major doctors' group which represents more than 100,000 internists. It is difficult for me to understand how this group could get away with such reprehensible misguided recommendations. After I take a few deep breaths though and relax, I understand that any drug company that makes $10 billion a year has access to the most brilliant marketers on the planet and is easily able to influence journals that publish studies that support such nonsense recommendations.
New cholesterol guidelines were issued three years ago that would qualify 36 million people to be on these drugs. Now they want to put the 17 million U.S. diabetics on the drug. Once they get this approved they will clearly push the recommendations to the pre-diabetics, which is another 16 million. So they will be pushing nearly over 65 million people to take their expensive solution. They are making ten billion dollars on one drug when only 15 million "qualify" to be on this drug, now they will have 65 million "qualifying". Do the math, if they can convince the doctors and the public of this ridiculous recommendation, it means another $30 BILLION in their pockets. And folks that is just for Pfizer, it doesn't include the numbers for the others:
- Lipitor (atorvastatin) - Pfizer
- Zocor (simvastatin) - Merck
- Pravachol (pravastatin) - Bristol-Myers Squibb
- Lescol (fluvastatin) - Novartis
- Mevacor (lovastatin) - Merck
Fortunately I am starting to make a dent here. If you go to Google and you type in "statins" you will nearly 200,000 links, but mine is #2, right after the NIH site so, click on my statin article page and you learn the science behind why I am so distressed about this topic. The bottom line is that treating high cholesterol is one of the absolute easiest things to do in natural medicine. Avoiding grains and sugars, exercising and eating a metabolic appropriate diet is the key to normalizing cholesterol in all but one or two people out of 1,000 who have a genetic problem with LDL receptors.
Annals Internal Medicine April 20, 2004;140: 644-649
ABC News April 20, 2004