Nissen payments

Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a leading cardiologist from the UK, along with Dr. Maryann Demasi and Dr. Robert Lustig, and who does not take any money from drug makers wrote an excellent commentary arguing that the cholesterol hypothesis is dead. In response, cardiologist Dr. Steven Nissen claimed that “internet-driven cults” were scaring people away from statins. Both are cardiologists. Who is right and who is wrong? The public has no way to know.

Oh, but let’s look at Dr. Nissen’s payments from Big Pharma. According to ProPublica, Dr. Nissen had scored a cool $80,000 payday from drug firms last year. Nice. Oh, right, further he received money from 3 of the biggest drug firms (Amgen, Pfizer, and Astra Zeneca) on the planet to do research and write papers. Dr. Nissen hysterically claims that cults are scaring people away from life saving statins and that if we listened to them, everybody would die. Funny, Dr. Nissen seems to be engaging in a lot of fear mongering himself to scare people into taking their (highly-profitable) medications.

Is it true? Would people start dying in droves if they all stopped their statins? Well, this paper answers that question. In France, an intense statin controversy in 2013 drove discontinuations of that drug up by 50% compared to 2012 and 2011. Lots of people died as a result, right? Not at all

No ‘Health Tragedy’ occurred despite the hysterical hand-wringing of doctors. There were 2000 LESS deaths in 2013. For heart disease deaths, there were 1200 LESS deaths. Yes, you read that correctly. There were less deaths when people stopped their medication. I can’t say that one resulted from the other, but certainly the predicted disaster never happened. Once again, people are predicting disaster, as they did when Dr. Demasi produced her brave documentary ‘Heart of the Matter’.

The general public is not stupid. They understand that many doctors are on the payroll of Big Pharma but are desperate to hide this fact. They understand that the people that should be the most expert — the university professors and the physicians at the teaching hospitals and the researchers who write the articles are the ones that are taking the most $$$. They’re trading their academic prestige for cold hard cash in a form of intellectual prostitution.

Of the 22 members of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society, 20 received money from Big Pharma. The CCS is responsible for writing all kinds of guidelines that doctors follow in the treatment of heart disease. Yet 91% of the doctors writing these influential guidelines are directly in the pay of Big Pharma. Not surprisingly, these guidelines heartily endorse the liberal use of statins. It should be in the drinking water! The very people who should be safe-guarding the public have sold them out.

Then, there’s the money being funneled in things like the impressive sounding Canadian Heart Research Centre, with many University of Toronto professors. This is really just a money-laundering operation of the pharmaceuticals. All the big drug companies pour millions of dollars into this ‘Research Centre’ which produces thinly disguised infomercials aimed at your local physician.

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