Cholesterol guidelines

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For instance, as reported by USA Today on October 16, 2004 ("Cholesterol Guidelines Become a Morality Play") eight of the nine doctors who formed a committee in 2001 to advise the government on cholesterol guidelines for the public were making money from the very same companies that made the cholesterol-lowering drugs that the doctors were urging millions of Americans to take. For example, one of the committee members, Dr. H.

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Example: In the 1990s, only approximately 13 million Americans warranted treatment under the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) cholesterol guidelines. Then, in 2003, a panel of experts rewrote the guidelines and lowered the numbers so much that now 36 million more people have "high" cholesterol. Many of the doctors on that panel had served as paid speakers, consultants or researchers for the large pharmaceutical companies that manufacture cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins. It's not surprising that high cholesterol has become an obsessive concern for everyone.

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National Institutes of Health's cholesterol guidelines from the 1990s, thirteen million Americans might have warranted treatment with statins. In 2001 a new panel of experts rewrote those guidelines, and effectively raised that number to 36 million, in a scene reminiscent of Henry Gadsden's dream of selling to everyone.8 Yet five of the fourteen authors of this new expanded definition, including the chair of the panel, had financial ties to statin manufacturers.

Eight of the nine experts who wrote the latest cholesterol guidelines also serve as paid speakers, consultants, or researchers to the world's major drug companies—Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, Bayer, Abbott, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline.11 In most cases the individual authors had multiple ties to at least four of these companies. One "expert" had taken money from ten of them.

The links were not mentioned in the published version of the cholesterol guidelines, and the extent of the conflicts was not publicly known until media organizations uncovered them, sparking a major controversy.12 The existence of such ties should not imply that any of these guideline writers would make recommendations in order to please their drug company sponsors. The problem is the growing perception of coziness. The full details of all those financial ties were subsequently published on a U.S. government website and it is worth taking a look at them for yourself.

While the campaign for an independent review of the cholesterol guidelines was getting under way, another very different and much better funded campaign was being launched elsewhere in the U.S. A new patient advocacy group called the Boomer Coalition sprang onto the world stage with an advertisement broadcast during the televised Academy Awards ceremony in 2004. The ad kicked off a campaign to make heart disease "the most-talked-about disease" among American baby boomers.

One of their most recent projects involved a critical look at the official cholesterol guidelines. While those guidelines recommend more than 40 million Americans could benefit by taking drugs to lower their cholesterol, Woloshin and Schwartz estimate there are over 10 million currently taking them.42Among the more than 30 million who are therefore "untreated" there are many that this pair believe could benefit from drugs. But there are also many who could lower their risks of heart attack or stroke just as easily without drugs, by other means, such as by stopping smoking.

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In 2004, it was revealed that six out of nine board members who issued the new cholesterol guidelines that lowered the maximum level of LDL cholesterol have been paid by the very pharmaceutical companies that stand to benefit from those new guidelines. What's most intriguing about the U.S.

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More than three dozen physicians, health researchers, and scientists have put their name to a strongly worded letter to the NIH director, arguing that the guidelines, with their expanded recommendations for drug therapy, are not supported by the scientific evidence-arguments flatly rejected by the NIH.30 This grassroots campaign was inspired in part by a blistering critique from Harvard University clinical instructor and author Dr. John Abramson.

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The Associated Press reports that consumer groups blast the new cholesterol guidelines. Most of the heart disease experts who urged more people to take cholesterol lowering drugs have been exposed to have made huge amounts of money from the companies selling those medicines! "It's outrageous they didn't provide disclosure of the conflicts of interest." said Merrill Goozner with the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Folks, this happens all the time. Remember, too, that virtually all studies for new and existing drugs are paid for and funded by their own manufacturers.

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