Healthy as a horse? You obviously could use a statin, says latest 'study'

It used to be that if you showed up at your doctor’s office with perfect cholesterol and blood pressure numbers, you’d get a hearty pat on the back.

Now you could end up leaving with a prescription for statins instead!

I’ve been warning you for years that Big Pharma would stop at nothing to make sure everyone in America was taking these cholesterol-lowering meds. They’re even marketing them to kids — and some nutjobs have suggested putting them in the water.

Now, a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine is claiming that giving perfectly healthy adults statins could keep them from dying from heart attacks or strokes.

It’s the latest scheme to make a fortune by putting millions more people on these dangerous meds. And it’s all based on one of the shoddiest — and most deceptive — studies you’ll ever see.

A healthy dose of skepticismThe way the press covered it, you would have thought we’d landed on the moon again.

Researchers claimed their latest study proved that by giving people with no heart disease, normal cholesterol and good blood pressure readings daily doses of Crestor, they were able to reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and deaths by 24 percent.

Even Dr. Sanjay Gupta — the CNN talking head who practically never met a mainstream treatment he wouldn’t push — claimed the research would “make the case that statins should be used more broadly.”

Well, I don’t know if Dr. Gupta lost his mind — or simply sold it to Big Pharma. Because this study is the type of Grade A bull you’d expect to see on a cattle ranch — not in a prestigious medical journal.

First off, this research was funded by AstraZeneca, which makes Crestor and one of the blood pressure meds that the study authors also experimented with.

I mean, I’d trust this about as much as Pepsi telling me cola cures cancer.

And remember that 24 percent reduction in heart attacks, strokes, and heart deaths that everybody is bragging about?

Well, they must have hired Enron’s accountant and an entire PR firm to come up with that.

You see, 3.7 percent of people who choked down statins and blood pressure meds experienced heart problems, strokes, or heart-related deaths during the study — compared to 4.8 percent of the people who did nothing.

It takes a lot of nerve to call that a big deal. I mean, you had a 95 percent chance of being fine if you didn’t take meds — compared to a 96 percent chance if you choked them down every day for years.

Not exactly the kind of results you write home about.

And for that measly extra percentage point of protection, these researchers exposed thousands of perfectly healthy patients to the muscle problems, increased risk of diabetes, and other hazards that come with statin drugs.

Statins can even send your risk of cataracts through the roof.

I mean, is this what it’s really come to? We’re going to threaten people’s vision just to help Big Pharma make its next billion?

And make no mistake about it — this study was all about protecting drug company bottom lines, not your health. It was about trying to convince thousands of doctors (including yours) to hand you statins whether you need them or not.

And because doctors today can prescribe drugs “off label” for just about anything they want, there’s nothing (other than common sense, I’d hope) stopping this from happening.

This new plan to sell even more of these drugs is being presented at the big meeting of the American College of Cardiology this week — meaning that even if your doctor didn’t read about it before, he’ll certainly be hearing about it now.

No matter how innocent they try to make these drugs out to be, the bottom line is they are highly risky medications that come with plenty of serious side effects.

And if you’ve managed to reach whatever age you are now healthy and strong, that old fashioned advice still stands:

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Sources:
“Groups sue FDA over approval of genetically engineered salmon” March 31, 2016, EcoWatch, ecowatch.com