Statins for Diabetics? - Quackery
CategoriesAlmost 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 CorrespondentWASHINGTON (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:One Soda a Day Increases Diabetes Risk 85 Percent
Cholesterol drug warning issued
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday June 6 2004
updated on Tuesday September 30 2008URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/06/06/statins_for_diabetics_quackery.htm
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