Industrial falsehood

October 2015

In my February 2015 Newsletter I told you about our paper “How statistical deception created the appearance that statins are safe and effective in primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease”. We are happy to know that it has been mentioned and commented in more than 300 websites, but many more should know about it. I have therefore attached the full paper.

Recently my coauthor Professor David Diamond gave a brilliant talk at the Research Institute in Florida, where he presented our serious information in a more humorous way. For those who are not familiar with the scientific language it may be more easy to understand the drug industry’s many criminal ways they use to fool us by listening to David. His talk is now available on the web  Please tell your friends, colleagues, the media and the population about it!

But it is even worse.

For many years we have been told that we can prolong our life by taking a statin drug or two every day. But they haven’t told us how many extra years we are given. Recently three researchers from the University of Southern Denmark published a paper with the answer after having analysed the outcome in the statin trial where the necessary information was available. Here comes a section from the abstract:

...the median postponement of death for primary and secondary prevention trials were 3.2 and 4.1 days, respectively.

Conclusions. Statin treatment results in a surprisingly small average gain in overall survival within the trials’ running time. For patients whose life expectancy is limited or who have adverse effects of treatment, withholding statin therapy should be considered.”

In the trial with the best result life was prolonged by on average 27 days; in the trial with the worst trial life was shortened by on average 10 days. But in the discussion section you can read the following:

We believe that statins should be prescribed according to the prevailing guidelines. Statins are usually inexpensive and safe, at least in a clinical trial setting,20 and the benefit in terms of mortality or non-fatal cardiovascular outcomes cannot reasonably be challenged. 

Safe??? Don’t they know that independent researchers have found many more and much more serious side effects than have been reported in the industry sponsored trials. Read for instance my May 2013 Newsletter

You can read the full Danish paper here