The Thin Veneer of Evidence Based Medicine

By Dr. Alison Adams, Contributor

One Radio Network

Although allopathic medicine and dentistry like to insist that they are evidence-based – that is, that their interventions have all been proven to be beneficial in controlled clinical trials and such results published in peer reviewed journals – this is just a thin veneer of scientific respectability over an absolute sham.

A couple of stories currently in the headlines reveal the sordid truth. The first involves a retraction of unfavourable statements made about statins by authors published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), and the second the arrest of GlaxoSmithKline executives in China for a massive money laundering and bribery scheme. These issues are examined in turn below.

The BMJ statin debacle

The authors forced to retract statements relating to their papers which were bothpublished in the October 2013 issue of the British Medical Journal areDr John Abramson from Harvard Medical School with an article entitledShould people at low risk of cardiovascular disease take a statin?and Dr Aseem Malhotra,a specialist in interventional cardiology in London with the articleSaturated fat is not the major issue.

In these papers the authors claimed that statins caused serious side-effects such as severe muscle pain, cataracts, memory loss, tiredness and diabetes in up to 20% of patients and that they did not cut death rates. They questioned the 2005 UKNational Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommendation that practically all people over the age of 50 would benefit from ‘prophylactic’ statins.

The authors retracted their unfavourable statements about statins after the Professorof Medicine and Epidemiology and Co-Director of the Clinical Trial Service Unit at Oxford University, Sir Rory Collins,intervened saying that the some of the figures they cited were incorrect, that the pair had done “A serious disservice to British and international medicine” and that the scare was probably killing more people than had been harmed in the wake of the MMR vaccine hoopla surrounding Dr Andrew Wakefield.The BMJ have now set up a panel of experts to decide whether the two articles should be completely retracted.

So to Sir Rory Collins, whose research facility at Oxford University received £96 million in research funding from GlaxoSmithKline in addition to amounts received from other pharmaceutical companies includingPfizer,AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Sanofi,and Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD). He was also personally awarded a £50,000 prize from Pfizer for his research work on statins which he variously claims to have given to charity or put towards the facility.

It was largely Sir Rory Collins’ studies that lead to the NICE ­recommendations. The authors of the articles at issue argued that such proposals should be based upon research independent of industry funding (ie: tobacco, or in this case, pharmaceutical ‘science’). Unsurprisingly, Sir Rory Collins doesn’t see it that way.

“The results are the results. They bear no relation to our funders.”

Sir Rory Collins, Co-Director of Big Pharma funded research facility

Now, Sir Collins may be genuine in his concern to see practically the entire older populous medicated and furthermore he obviously doesn’t believe that his thinking on this matter has been influenced in any way by the fact that his institute and career depend upon pharmaceutical industry money. His actions also may not be entirely of his own will. I venture to suggest that pressure may have been brought to bear upon him by his Big Pharma paymasters to intervene in the debate, but that issue aside, he knows which side his bread is buttered.

With regard to the NICE recommendation to provide almost universal ‘prophylaxis’ of all over fifties – you have to understand that the people on such committees have spent years being indoctrinated to think this way.

It is literally insanity – but they can’t see it.

The authors of the articles probably believed the hype about Evidence Based Medicine thinking that the British Medical Journal would be a good forum to raise such concerns amongst their colleagues. They probably had no idea of the pressure they would be put under and the media storm they were bringing down on their heads.

Statin side-effects

In an article in the British Medical Journal in 2006 a general practitioner in private practice makes the observation thatsubtle statin side-effects are almost universalafter seeing her statin-advocating colleagues’ patients while she is on holiday.

“Almost without exception they have minor complains that could certainly be attributed to statins. By minor I mean subtle forgetfulness, vague muscle fatigue at the end of the day, mild disequilibrium; the type of stuff they probably wouldn’t have told me about had I not specifically asked. A small minority of these have severe muscle aches and are miserable and dying to stop the drug if only it were ‘safe’.”

Catey Shanahan MD

And the vascular surgeon,Haroun Gajraj,comments on the findings of a survey which shows that the majority of doctors are not enamoured of statins.

“In a recent survey by Pulse magazine, six in 10 GPs opposed the draft proposal to lower the risk level at which patients are prescribed statins. And 55 per cent said they would not take statins themselves or recommend them to a relative, based on the proposed new guidelines. If that doesn’t speak volumes, I don’t know what does.”

Haroun Gajraj, Vascular surgeon

Admittedly I haven’t conducted any kind of formal study of the subject, butI personally know of many people who have suffered horrible side-effects from taking statins and so I imagine the problem is wide spread. However, I think we might be waiting a long time for Big Pharma to fund research into that topic!

We know that GlaxoSmithKline have a long record of suppressing the results of unfavourable studies into their drugs and that they have received official warnings in the past about this behaviour (see below).

Here’s the thing: we start out as a single cell in our mother’s womb, enter this world as approximately 7lb babies and develop into adults andeverything that happens is nutrient-dependent, from proper growth, to proper brain function,reproduction,ageing, repair and maintenance. All of it.

Cardiovascular disease is about stress, toxicity and malnourishment. All ‘diseases’ are.It’s not about drugs.But because medics have been indoctrinated by Big Pharma over a long period of time and because they are taught practically nothing about nutrition or toxicity they can’t see that the problem is not solved by drugs, but by nutrition and detoxification.

Whilst we are on the topic – what’s so bad about dying of a stroke or heart attack in old age anyway? I think it would be an absolute blessing compared to the long, drawn-out, drug-addled slow living death many experience.