From: Dave Burton
To: Elizabeth
Cc: Barb  
Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:11:55 -0400 (EDT)   (plus a few subsequent updates)
Subject: Blaylock v. statins/cholesterol ("Re: Fwd: Statins - more info")


Betty wrote:

> Barb wrote:
>
> > Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2007 14:57:03 -0500
> > From: Barbara
> > Subject: Statins - more info
> >
> > these two doctors are excellent.  Blaylock's report is
> > attached at .pdf.
> > Forget about using Statins.
> > barb
> >
> >
> > http://www.mercola.com/2005/jun/14/merck_behavior.htm
> > Dr. Mercola's advice [Chicago doctor, lives next door to Arlene]
> >
> > http://www.newsmax.com/newsletters/blaylock/issues/index.cfm
> > This is Dr. Blaylock, excellent advice. subscription is $50 a year,
> > I'm sending you a report on statins as an attachment.



Dear Betty & Barb,


I think [Betty's son, an MD] would tell you that Blaylock gets
no respect in the medical community.  Blaylock's article gives
clues about why that is so.


p.1 "There are over 4,600 journals reviewed every month by the
National Library of Medicine and entered as abstracts on the
Internet."

Sloppy.  PubMed/MEDLINE indexes over 5000 journals from around
the world, but most are not monthly.  Or perhaps he meant
ARTICLES, not journals.  Articles have abstracts, journals
do not.


p.2 "For the past several years there has been a propaganda
blitz not seen since the government poisoned our drinking water
with fluoride."

Nutcase alert!  "Since the government poisoned our drinking
water with fluoride?"  The fact is that 2/3 of municipal water
in the USA is fluoridated.

Cary fluoridates its water to 1 ppm.  I'm nearly certain that
Raleigh's water is also fluoridated.  Almost all large
municipalities in the USA fluoridate their water.
www.raleigh-nc.org says, "December 11, 1956: Raleigh voters
endorse fluoridation and approve bonds for streets."


p.2 "This latest blitz began with misinformation implying that
dietary cholesterol is the cause of arteriosclerosis (hardening
of the arteries) and that only drugs can prevent heart attacks
and strokes by lowering this cholesterol."

"Misinformation?"  In fact, large, double-blind, peer-reviewed
studies consistently have shown that the use of statins reduces
arteriosclerosis.

"Only drugs?"  That's a straw man.  In fact, I've never seen
cholesterol recommendations that did not include changes in
diet and increases in exercise to help combat hyperlipidemia.


p.2 "all statin drugs have been associated with causing or
promoting cancer in experimental animals."

Actually, the studies of statin carcinogenicity have been
inconclusive, with some studies finding increased cancer risk,
others finding decreased cancer risk, and most finding little
or no effect.  See: 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16143800  or  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16082430
and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20377474


p.3 "Recently, the medical community, in league with the
pharmaceutical companies, has been pushing to lower the
standard dramatically. Some of these 'maniacs' are calling for
blood cholesterols of 150, a level far too low."

It is one thing to disagree with the medical consensus about
cholesterol recommendations, but calling the bulk of the
medical community "maniacs" shows Blaylock to be a crank.


p.3 "So, why the obsession with cholesterol-lowering statin
drugs?  As with most things, just follow the money."

Actually, any cardiologist who has been around a long time can
tell you, for example, from his personal experience, about the
dramatic benefit of statin therapy to patients who have had
cardiac bypass operations.  It has greatly increased the
average time after a bypass operation before blockage recurs.
To cardiologists, that is exciting!


p.4 "policosanol, a waxy extract of sugar cane, has been shown
to safely lower cholesterol just as well as the statin drugs,
but without any toxicity whatsoever."

This article   http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/550370_4
reports, "In this trial, daily administration of 20 mg
policosanol (Cholesstor) did not lower serum total cholesterol,
LDL-C, or triglyceride levels, nor did it increase serum HDL-C.
Furthermore, when given in combination with atorvastatin,
policosanol did not produce any additional lipid lowering above
that induced by atorvastatin alone."
Am Heart J. 2006;152(5):982.e1-982.e5.


p.5 "Recently, the FDA withdrew the new statin cervivastatin
from the market because of the large number of deaths due to
this complication."

1) It is spelled cerivastatin, not cervivastatin.  (The product
name was "Baychol.")

2) It was withdrawn from the market nearly six years ago,
That's "recently?"  Well, the Blaylock article is dated 8/2004,
but that's still 3 years after Baycol was withdrawn by Bayer,
and Blaylock is still advertising and selling his uncorrected
2004 article.


I could go on, but I got tired of this.  Skipping to the end
we read:

p.10 "Dr. Blaylock serves on the editorial staff of the
Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association and is the
associate editor of the Journal of American Physicians and
Surgeons, official journal of the Association of American
Physicians and Surgeons."

But both the "Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons"
and "Journal of the American Neutraceutical Association" are
listed as untrustworthy by QuackWatch:
http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/nonrecperiodicals.html

Wikipedia (which, I acknowledge, is not terribly reliable)
claims that "historically some of [AAPS's] leaders have been
members of the John Birch Society."  If true, that is more
reason to question the veracity if the information from that
organization.  The JBS claims to be "conservative," but they
are actually conspiracy nuts.


The final sentence in his report is this:

p.10 "He recently retired as a Clinical Assistant Professor
of Neurosurgery at the Medical University of Mississippi
and now serves as a Visiting Professor in the Department of
Biology Belhaven College."

That is extremely (and deliberately) misleading.  He did
not "retire" from employment with the Medical University of
Mississippi, nor any other Mississippi University.

In fact there is no such institution as "the Medical University
of Mississippi," and never has been.  Googling for that
name finds thousands of hits, but they are all references
to Blaylock's own bio.

More recent versions of his bio have corrected the name of the
institution to "University of Mississippi Medical Center."
The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMC) is a
respected institution, but I wondered how Blaylock could not
have known the name of his own employer.  So I tried to find
him in UMC's archived faculty directories.  He wasn't listed in
any of them.

So I emailed the department chairman at UMC, and he informed me
that Blaylock had never actually worked there at all!  This is
what the chairman wrote:

   "He [Blaylock] was appointed clinical assistant professor
   of neurological surgery-non-salaried on July 1,1996 and
   terminated on February 1,2003.  Clinical faculty are not
   necessarily listed in the medical center faculty directory.
   ...
   Non-salaried means that the University of Mississippi gave
   him an honorific title in the hope that he would contribute
   to our teaching conferences for resident education.
   He never actually practiced neurosurgery at the university
   hospital nor did he see patients here.  Unfortunately,
   he did not come to any teaching functions at the university,
   being quite busy in his business."

As you can see, Dr. Blaylock didn't actually do anything at
UMC, except misuse the honorific title (with "non-salaried"
omitted) to promote himself.  It was obviously deceptive for
him to claim that he "retired" from an institution where he
never actually did any work, and was never paid anything.

What's more, it turns out that even the Belhaven position is
unpaid.

Of course, the fact that he was deceptive in his bio doesn't
necessarily mean that what he says about statins is wrong.
However, as Luke 16:10 cautions, "Whoever can be trusted
with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is
dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much."



BTW, my web page about cholesterol and statins is here:
http://www.burtonsys.com/cholesterol.html

I take very tiny doses of Crestor and Zetia: about 3 mg Crestor
and about 0.3 mg Zetia, daily, with good results.  (I've sometimes
used a mortar & pestle to grind 'em up and divide the doses so
finely, but I've gotten pretty good at just splitting the tablets
with a pill splitter.)  It turns out that the effectiveness of
statins and Zetia ars not very dependent on dosage.  If you are
worried about side-effects, lowering the dose of any medication
generally reduces the risk of side-effects (and also makes the
medications much more affordable).


-Dave
H: 919-481-0098