50% of peer reviewed articles may be not true…How’s that possible? You pay $ and the articles with the results you would like them to be get cooked for you in the most prestigious science journals in the world.
In the video there is also an interesting bit on the cholesterol lowering statins issue in France…Big Pharma demands to put statins in the water…or people will die…
Everybody lies…
Full transcript of the video:
“Evidence-based medicine is actually so corrupt as to be useless or harmful,” Marcia Angell wrote in 2009. The statement was less a revelation than something many already knew, but it made waves because of its source. Angell, a medical insider, had spent two decades as the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Jason Fung is also a medical insider who has become wary of scientific research that purports to be “evidence based.” A well-known nephrologist and author, Fung often speaks about Type-2 diabetes reversal and the metabolic effects of intermittent fasting, but in this presentation from Dec. 15, 2018, he turns his focus toward the many ways the foundations of evidence-based medicine have become corrupted by financial conflicts of interest.
The first conflicts of interest he highlights pertain to the corruption of doctors. Practicing physicians who accept gifts from Big Pharma are 225-335% more likely to prescribe drugs from the gift-giving company than those who do not, Fung explains.
The corruption of doctors in prestigious universities is even worse, he claims. “There’s a clear correlation: The more prestigious a doctor, the more money they’re getting from the pharmaceutical.” Anecdotally, he says, this means you may be better off seeking medical advice from a family physician than from a Harvard professor; the former probably just accepted a $10 pen from Big Pharma while the latter is on the take for $500,000. “It just is a terrible system,” he says. “Yet, these people are the people that are in the newspaper. They’re the ones that are teaching medical students, are the ones who are teaching the — the dietitians, the pharmacist — everybody.”
The most insidious corruption affects the published research on particular drugs. Fung highlights the influence industry can have when it finds a medical journal editor willing to take its money. Another problem arises in the form of industry-funded medical research. This conflict of interest leads to the selective publication of positive trials, which can skew the science on particular drugs and lead to unnecessary or even dangerous overprescription. Fung notes how statin prescriptions illustrate the scope of this particular problem.
“We accept this of drug companies … but the problem is that people die,” Fung says. He later adds: “You can make arguments that sugar is a health food, that opioids are good for you … but it harms patients, and we always have to remember that at the end of the day, this is not why we became doctors. The reason we became doctors was to help people, but we’re not until we kind of set those same rules as everybody else.”
To read a full transcription of the presentation, click here.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/crossfitpubliccontent/Dr_Jason_Fung_DDC_ConflictsOfInterest.pdf
Marcia Angell:
“ It is time for the scientific community to stop giving alternative medicine a free ride… There cannot be two kinds of medicine — conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted.
Is following the nutritional guidelines proven effective to improve health of the great majority an alternative or conventional medicine?
From the video:
“So, you have the situation now where all these doctors who are trying to, you know,
point out the problem, basically just try and get shut down. Like — like Malcolm
Kendrick. Like, he’s disappearing from the internet. They shut him down in the
terms of Wikipedia. This guy Steve Nissen, for example, he says, “Well, you know, if
you’re against statins, you’re like an anti-vaxxer.” That’s — that’s what he says,
right? And it’s like, well, he’s also the guy who’s taking all the money from Amgen
and Pfizer and everything, right? So, it’s not an unbiased opinion. And then you get
like crazy, crazy stuff, you know, like talking about the statins. That, “Oh, everybody
should be getting it. They should be putting it in the drinking water. Everybody over
the age of 50 should be getting it.” It’s like, where are these opinions coming from?
Because if you look at the actual science, which Malcolm does, it’s not there. There’s
nothing to support that sort of use to put these drugs into, you know, the mouths
of millions of patients. Yet, as a family physician, as a medical student, you get
taught by these people. Then they write guidelines that you’re almost forced to
follow, because otherwise, you’re not following standard of practice. So, you’re
almost forced to give these because they wrote that guideline.
So, what happens when you stop statins? Well, in France there was actually a sort of
natural experiment where this happened. So, there was a controversy in 2012,
2013. There was some big controversy. They — discontinuations increased by 50%.
So everybody’s like, “Oh, people are gonna die. People are gonna die.” It’s like, what
happened? What didn’t happen was they didn’t die. So, if you look at mortality, 558
in 2012, and 556 in 2013. Cardiovascular deaths: 32.2 in 2012, 31.6 in 2013. So, it’s
like, here’s all these big, you know, people who are raising all this ruckus:
“Oh, if you talk about statins, people are gonna die. People are gonna get heart
attack.” They don’t die. They don’t get heart attacks. You’re just trying to give it to
the right people. And this is the problem is that there are a population of people
who take these drugs who should. But that’s a relatively small amount. Then it’s
like, oh, but you don’t make money by selling a small amount of drug. You make
money by selling a large amount of drug. So, you want to push it out into the
general population so that everybody over 50 is taking this stuff. But it’s not that
useful. And this is what it showed”
It is not a dichotomy between alternative and conventional, it is between rigorously tested or not.
J-Mac,
Sounds like the problem might be doctors overprescribing.
I’m going to ask another question:
How many hours do you think medical doctor are taught nutrition at medical schools?
If conventional medicine is corrupt, why should we trust its view on alternative medicine? Isn’t it in the best interests of Big Pharma to discredit any competition, such as alternative medicine?
Sure…one of them…especially if they are getting incentives…
J-Mac,
Yes, I am quite sure that nutrition is one of the biggest factors leading to all sorts of medical issues, and we still to this day have very little training or understanding about nutrition.
A lot of the things in alternative medicine, like Chinese medicine, is based on hundreds and thousands of years of people learning what to eat when they are sick. They can be effective, but they can’t be expected to produce results overnight, which is what people want. They also become diluted by modern habits of eating, so that its hard to actually know the effectiveness, because no one really does it fully.
I am an athlete and a vegetarian, and I can tell you that diet plays a huge role in how I feel each day. But we really know close to nothing about it.
I agree. The media contribute to the confusion as well as the corrupt politicians, medical journal editors and scientists.
Not everything in the Chinese or alternative medicine is correct but rural communities in China and Japan have a high percentage of centenarians, so they are doing something right…
I guess you are not affected by the propaganda that unless you consume sufficient animal protein you are going to be deficient of some amino acids and will die…? 😉
When was the last time you saw a diet book or program where it said:
Stop overeating or you will be a fat, sick pig!
Nobody wants to hear this simple truth that gluttony is the problem…
Do you eat fish, dairy or eggs?
J-Mac,
Not much, but I don’t fret over it if I do. But honestly, I think the whole protein problem is not much of a concern. I know some old buddhists that haven’t eaten zero animal products for decades and they don’t seem to have a problem at all. One guy I know is 98 years old and he hasn’t eaten animal products for 40 some years, and he seems fine.
While searching for something else, I came across this interesting thing about the LDL cholesterol “bear killer”:
“Lack of an association or an inverse association between low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol and mortality in the elderly: a systematic review.
Ravnskov U1, Diamond DM2, Hama R3, Hamazaki T4, Hammarskjöld B5, Hynes N6, Kendrick M7, Langsjoen PH8, Malhotra A9, Mascitelli L10, McCully KS11, Ogushi Y12, Okuyama H13, Rosch PJ14, Schersten T15, Sultan S6, Sundberg R16.
Author information
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
It is well known that total cholesterol becomes less of a risk factor or not at all for all-cause and cardiovascular (CV) mortality with increasing age, but as little is known as to whether low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), one component of total cholesterol, is associated with mortality in the elderly, we decided to investigate this issue.
SETTING, PARTICIPANTS AND OUTCOME MEASURES:
We sought PubMed for cohort studies, where LDL-C had been investigated as a risk factor for all-cause and/or CV mortality in individuals ≥60 years from the general population.
RESULTS:
We identified 19 cohort studies including 30 cohorts with a total of 68 094 elderly people, where all-cause mortality was recorded in 28 cohorts and CV mortality in 9 cohorts. Inverse association between all-cause mortality and LDL-C was seen in 16 cohorts (in 14 with statistical significance) representing 92% of the number of participants, where this association was recorded. In the rest, no association was found. In two cohorts, CV mortality was highest in the lowest LDL-C quartile and with statistical significance; in seven cohorts, no association was found.
CONCLUSIONS:
High LDL-C is inversely associated with mortality in most people over 60 years. This finding is inconsistent with the cholesterol hypothesis (ie, that cholesterol, particularly LDL-C, is inherently atherogenic). Since elderly people with high LDL-C live as long or longer than those with low LDL-C, our analysis provides reason to question the validity of the cholesterol hypothesis. Moreover, our study provides the rationale for a re-evaluation of guidelines recommending pharmacological reduction of LDL-C in the elderly as a component of cardiovascular disease prevention strategies.
Speaking about cooking science on the need of LDL killer lowering statins worth 50 billion a year.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27292972