About those who write the guidelines
October 2004
How to convert healthy people into patients
You have probably heard about the new guidelines issued a few months ago by the National Institutes of Health and according to which “normal” cholesterolnow is considered to be far below the mean value in most populations. Bingo thus for the drug companies (and the authors of the guidelines).
But luckily there is a growing number of sceptical scientists. A few days ago the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an American non-profit consumeradvocacy organisation, send a petition to the NIH and a number of politicians and institutions asking for a neutral evaluation of the studies that have been used as an argument for introducing these guidelines. Read the petition and also the response from Barbara Alving, acting director of the National Heart,Lung, and Blood Institute, sent to a reporter on British Medical Journal:
Please note that while the petition is backed up by relevant references to the scientific literature, Alving´s response has nothing of the kind. Malcolm Kendrick has a comment to this story, “Conflict of Interest –Time to Count The Spoons”
I am an independent medical researcher