Statins for Diabetics? - Quackery

Almost everyone with diabetes should be considering to take a statin drug, says the American Diabetes Association - ADA, according to a Reuters news item of 3 June 2004. Although statins have not been tested for diabetics, the association says in its latest guidelines that, as diabetes patients are at a high risk of heart attack, the drugs "almost certainly will do them some good".

Quite certainly the drugs will harm a large number of the 18 million diabetics who are expected to swallow the pills - muscle proteins are attacked by statins causing at first pain and then dissolution of muscle tissue that can lead to renal overload and eventual death.

The association also recommends a daily aspirin for diabetics. Aspirin has its own problems. Thinning the blood, it can lead to internal bleeding and some thousands of those hundreds of thousands of unnecessary medical deaths in the US must be ascribed to this "side effect" of the widespread and indiscriminate use of Aspirin.

The ADA has also been endorsing the use of a toxic sweetener - Aspartame - for diabetics as a sugar substitute. Aspartame has its own problems and should not even be on the market, much less be used by an already challenged segment of the population. It apparently causes so many health problems that soft drink makers and others have recently been sued in court for unleashing a neurotoxic food additive on the general population.

The ADA's recommendation to diabetics to start using statins may well be a reaction to increased incidence of heart trouble, in part caused by their earlier recommendation to use aspartame as a low calorie sweetener. If we define quackery as the use of remedies based on someone's opinion rather than on fact, then the ADA's recommendations certainly qualify.

While the pharmaceutical companies are forbidden to promote the "off label" use of pharmaceutical drugs, such quasi-medical associations as the ADA can be used to do the dirty job and apparently they are. They can recommend statins on a hunch, arguing they "almost certainly" will "do some good".

What about doing some basic research and finding the nutrients that will control diabetes? Actually, all one would have to do is read up on the research already done to find all manner of effective substances for diabetes management. These natural substances such as chromium, biotin, vitamin C and other antioxidants and co-enzyme Q 10 are not accessible to pharmaceutical patent protection. Could that be the reason we're not told about them in great news headlines?

Here's a copy of the article in Reuters News:

Think About Statins for Every Diabetic - Group

Thu Jun 3, 2004

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Almost everyone with diabetes should consider taking a statin drug to lower cholesterol, even if they already have low cholesterol levels, the American Diabetes Association advised on Thursday.

Diabetes patients are at such high risk of heart disease that the statins almost certainly will do them some good, the group said in its latest treatment guidelines.

People with diabetes should all consider taking a daily aspirin, too, the new guidelines say.

"It may well be that everybody with diabetes should be on a statin," said Dr. Nathaniel Clark, vice-president for clinical affairs for the group.

"We know that statins lower low-density cholesterol but they may also have some other qualities that have not been tested," Clark said in a telephone interview.

An estimated 18 million Americans have diabetes, 90 to 95 percent of them type-2 diabetes. This once was called adult-onset diabetes but it is showing up in children more often now.

Type-1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease caused when the body mistakenly destroys insulin-producing pancreas cells.

Type-2 diabetes is strongly associated with being overweight and sedentary. It greatly raises the risk for heart disease, stroke and heart attack and can also lead to blindness and limb loss.

Clark said the Association decided to add statins to the guidelines after seeing the results of a British study, published earlier this year in the Lancet medical journal, that showed people who took statins had a one-third lower risk of stroke.

Their study included adults over the age of 40 whose total cholesterol levels were as low as 135 -- considered extremely low by most standards. Among normal healthy people, doctors do not usually consider giving drugs to lower cholesterol until total levels hit 200.

But Clark said diabetics are a special case.  

"It is now a consensus that having diabetes is the equivalent in terms of cardiovascular risk of already having had a heart attack," Clark said.

"We are talking about what we would consider a high-risk group."

Statins are becoming more and more popular with doctors as study after study finds they can lower the risk of a range of heart conditions and may also help patients with multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease.

Worldwide, 25 million people take statins, but up to 200 million could be eligible.

The drugs are not cheap, however. The United States already spending $12.5 billion on statin drugs, more than any other type of medicine, and the drugs can cause a rare type of side-effect called rhabdomyolysis, which damages muscles. 

See also related:

American Diabetes Association promotes statin drugs to diabetic patients without a shred of proof that they help; the pharmaceutical industry gives millions each year to the ADA

One Soda a Day Increases Diabetes Risk 85 Percent

Cholesterol drug warning issued

The Dangers of Statin Drugs: What You Haven't Been Told About Cholesterol-Lowering Medication, Part I

The Dangers of Statin Drugs: What You Haven't Been Told About Cholesterol-Lowering Medication, Part II

The Dangers of Statin Drugs: What You Haven't Been Told About Cholesterol-Lowering Medication, Part III

The Dangers of Statin Drugs: What You Haven't Been Told About Cholesterol-Lowering Medication, Part IV

The Dangers of Statin Drugs: What You Haven't Been Told About Cholesterol-Lowering Medication - References

 

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posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday June 6 2004
updated on Tuesday November 30 2010

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Readers' Comments

Aspartame and the Internet

The following letter appeared in The Lancet on 3 July 1999. It is reproduced here with the permission of the publishers of this respected journal.

Sir - Patients at our diabetes clinic have raised concerns about information on the internet about a link between the artificial sweetener aspartame and various diseases. Our research revealed over 6000 web sites that mention aspartame, with many hundreds alleging aspartame to be the cause of multiple sclerosis, lupus erythematosis, Gulf War Syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, brain tumours, and diabetes mellitus, among many others. Virtually all of the information offered is anecdotal, from anonymous sources and is scientifically implausible.

Aspartame, a dipeptide composed of phenylalanine and aspartic acid linked by a methyl ester bond, is not absorbed, and is completely hydrolysed in the intestine to yield the two constituent amino acids and free methanol. Opponents of aspartame suggest that the phenylalanine and methanol so released are dangerous. In particular, they assert that methanol can be converted to formaldehyde and then to formic acid, and thus cause metabolic acidosis and neurotoxicity.

Although a 330 ml can of aspartame-sweetened soft drink will yield about 20 mg methanol, an equivalent volume of fruit juice produces 40 mg methanol, and an alcoholic beverage about 60-100 mg. The yield of phenylalanine is about 100 mg for a can of diet soft drink, compared with 300 mg for an egg, 500 mg for a glass of milk, and 900 mg for a large hamburger (1). Thus, the amount of phenylalanine or methanol ingested from consumption of aspartame is trivial, compared with other dietary sources. Clinical studies have shown no evidence of toxic effects and no increase in plasma concentrations of methanol, formic acid, or phenylalanine with daily consumption of 50 mg/kg aspartame (equivalent to 17 cans of diet soft drink daily for a 70 kg adult) (1, 2).

The anti aspartame campaign purports to offer an explanation for illnesses that are prominent in the public eye. By targeting a manufactured chemical agent, and combining this with pseudo-science and selective reporting, the campaign makes complex issues deceptively simple. Sensational web site names (eg, aspartamekills.com) grab the browser's attention and this misinformation is also widely disseminated via chat groups and chain e-mail.

People consult the internet about medical issues for various reasons and many users regard online sources as being authoritative and valid. The medical profession has a role in teaching our patients to be discriminating consumers of the information offered there.

Anthony Zehetner, Mark McLean

Department of Endocrinology, Westmead Hospital,
Sydney NSW 2145, Australia

References

1. Aspartame. In: Gelman C R, Rumack B H, Hess A J, eds. DRUGDEX® System. Englewood, Colorado: MICROMEDEX, 1998. Edition expires 1999.

2. Anon. ADA position statement: use of noncaloric sweeteners. Diabetes Care 1991.

Posted by: Andrew on September 27, 2004 05:57 AM

 

Andrew,

thank you for your comment on the subject of Aspartame. If you are using the substance and do not feel any symptoms, that would of course qualify for a questioning attitude. You say you are a professional physicist and that scientific papers supporting the safety of aspartame have a serious quality, while the warnings are of "tabloid quality".

You might be falling in a trap, that of selective reporting of facts.

Anti-depressant drugs, for instance, have similarly been called safe, and the scientific papers seemed to prove that, until it was discovered that the pharmaceutical industry had not published the negative papers, while basing their assertions of safety on those papers that did not show an increased suicide risk for those taking antidepressants. You can search "antidepressants and suicide" on any search engine and will find the data. Several articles are also on this site.

With regard to the damaging nature of aspartame, the sites you cite with denials and the article you copied, even though published in a "reputable" medical journal, seem very thin evidence indeed. Not really what a professional scientist would necessarily call convincing.

On the balance, we can now say that the aspartame controversy has gone beyond the mere presence of "a chain letter on the internet", or "anonymous complaints". We have legal cases in progress, where hopefully the science (or the lack of science) on the safety of aspartame will be examined.

I would not be so quick to rush to judgement regarding the veracity of allegations that aspartame may be dangerous for health. Science is fine, but when commercial interests slant the outcome (selectively suppress some of the evidence) we may be in serious trouble. The verdict certainly is not in yet, and I would be irresponsible to NOT warn others of the dangers that may be lurking.

Posted by: Sepp Hasslberger on September 27, 2004 11:19 AM

 

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