Good News from the past year

January 2014

For many years it has been utterly difficult to publish papers critical to the cholesterol campaign and its misleading messages. Let me mention only a paper of mine from 1995 in which I criticized three of the major and most cited reviews authored by the leaders of the campaign. I pointed to more than 30 papers with results that contradicted the cholesterol hypothesis but which were cited in a way so the reader might think they were in favor. It took four years to get that paper published. During that time it was rejected by seven major medical journals with irrational arguments or no arguments at all.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. In 2013 British Medical Journal (BMJ), one of the largest and most respected medical journals, has published several papers critical to the cholesterol campaign. Here they come.

According to the dietary guidelines used today we should avoid animal food and dairy products. In a detailed, updated analysis of the dietary trials where this advice had been tested Christopher Ramsden from NIH and his coworkers from various institutions in the US and Australia showed that such a diet increased both total and cardiovascular mortality and with statistical significance.

Note also the critical comments to the new cholesterol guidelines by John Abramson from Harvard and his coworkers, and the comment by BMJs editor Fiona Godlee. Read also the recent paper by Jeanne Lenzer where she pointed to the panelists’ many ties to the manufacturers.

Yet another important BMJ paper (attached) is “Saturated fat is not the major issue” authored by cardiologist Aseem Malhotra. In the end he also questions the usefulness of statin treatment.

Furthermore, BMJ started the New Year in a promising way by general practitioner Des Spence: “Evidence based medicine is broken”.