Nice to see you getting information from qualified sources. That guy is an out and out quack.
Statin tablets.
- Thread starter gavroche
- Start date
Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
Nice to see you getting information from qualified sources. That guy is an out and out quack.
Drago
Legendary Member
- Location
- Suburban Poshshire
Whereas you're a graduate of the Royal College of Medicine, I presume?
roubaixtuesday
self serving virtue signaller
Cholesterol is a risk factor, not the sole cause of heart attacks.
roubaixtuesday
self serving virtue signaller
Asking others to use reputable sources is not the same as claiming that you yourself are one.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
What about asking others to use disreputable sources that use reputable sources? Is that allowed?
As I've written elsewhere: in gods we trust - all others show data.
classic33
Leg End Member
roubaixtuesday
self serving virtue signaller
Sure.
Some interpretation or processing of data is almost always needed to make it useful information or knowledge. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW_pyramid
Reputable sources of information, knowledge and wisdom are arguably far more important than data.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
How can that be? Without the data, the rest of the pyramid falls down. Blindly going towards where someone "reputable" tells you wisdom points without checking the foundations - the data - is to leave oneself open to quackery.
@classic33 - can you find any similar accusations against Dr Aseem Malhotra? He's far from the only doctor linked to an experimental diet. We've had no shortage of diet advice from statin advocates too.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
Never mind. https://life.spectator.co.uk/articl...-lifestyle-guide-based-on-distorted-evidence/ suggests he's probably about as bad as certain statin fans in taking a one-sided view of the evidence, just in the other direction.
roubaixtuesday
self serving virtue signaller
It is absolutely impossible to check all the data yourself.
For the effectiveness of statins, that would involve literally millions of data points.
So you must rely on others to analyse that data and turn it into something informative. For instance, a scientific paper.
Then, you rely on someone else, typically a government regulator, to turn that into knowledge: that the sum total of all the information on the drug shows a positive reward/ risk ratio.
Finally, after many years of experience with multiple different statins, meta analysis is used to assimilate all of the knowledge together into the received wisdom, written as guidance on the usage in various populations.
Avoiding quackery is absolutely important, but cannot be done on the basis of analysing the raw data yourself.
Pale Rider
Legendary Member
That 'doctor' certainly looks like a quack.
Reminds me of a barmy ex-member on here who was eating 100 bananas a day, or something like that.
Might have been a wind up, but if so it was a determined one.
Reminds me of a barmy ex-member on here who was eating 100 bananas a day, or something like that.
Might have been a wind up, but if so it was a determined one.
vickster
Legendary Member
Not the dreaded Durianrider
He's not a doctor and has no medical degree nor does he have any qualifications as a dietician. He has a "Doctor of Chiropractic" degree which means he spent a lot of time studying pseudoscience. Studying star trek doesn't make me rocket scientist in the same way he's not a doctor.
As for @mjr and @roubaixtuesday you are both coming at the same problem but from slightly different angles, and both imo, largely correct. You can't just trust a "reputable source" as who is to say who is reputable. It's a complicated problem, but fundamentally the current consensus is that we trust those who let others scrutinise their work and data before publishing in a journal where others can look, scrutinise and try to replicate or disprove.
The whole scientific endeavour is based on allowing the current understanding to be changed or rewritten when model which better fits the data comes along. Where statins are concerned the evidence we have at present overwhelmingly says that from a population perspective statins are a good thing and reduce mortality. This is not to say however that they are the best solution for everyone and you should take medical advice based on that - it may be that an exercise and healthy eating regimen works for you, but that's not the case for most people.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
It doesn't work for me, sadly. I'm now on some expensive alternatives to statins.
I think where trusting the chain of authority falls down at the moment is that some of the regulators take money into account when deciding which treatments to approve for which situations and some of the side effects are underreported for obvious reasons, like exercise intolerance won't show in people who don't exercise and memory loss may only be noticed once treatment stops for another reason. There also seems to be huge resistance to accepting that symptoms are caused by statins, with patients made to suffer years of torment before it is accepted - and if you object and stop a statin unilaterally because you can no longer deal with it, the symptom doesn't get reported except through the MHRA Yellow Card system which I've never known produce a change.
I think where trusting the chain of authority falls down at the moment is that some of the regulators take money into account when deciding which treatments to approve for which situations and some of the side effects are underreported for obvious reasons, like exercise intolerance won't show in people who don't exercise and memory loss may only be noticed once treatment stops for another reason. There also seems to be huge resistance to accepting that symptoms are caused by statins, with patients made to suffer years of torment before it is accepted - and if you object and stop a statin unilaterally because you can no longer deal with it, the symptom doesn't get reported except through the MHRA Yellow Card system which I've never known produce a change.
Last edited:
