Public Statin Deniers and Anti-Vaxxers. How political rhetoric is infecting medicine (2019) Blog post by Jerome Burne HealthInsghtUK

Another good comment piece from Jerome- elements which sounds decidedly familiar!

"..... medical counter-reformation playbook. First, keep it personal – identify, belittle and denigrate the critics.........(some) experts emphasising their credentials (...whilst belittling others) "

http://healthinsightuk.org/2019/04/...how-political-rhetoric-is-infecting-medicine/

"An example also comes from the Guardian, which seems uncharacteristically ready to ignore the distorting effects of billions of dollars when it comes to the pharmaceutical industry. Last year, in October, the paper carried an ambitious 3-in-1 attempt to wrap up, not just detailed criticisms of the low-fat diet but also of the related hypothesis that cholesterol is the major cause of heart disease and of the massively well-funded campaign to put the whole country on cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. The headline captured the intention perfectly: Cholesterol Deniers.

It was a technically skilful example of the medical counter-reformation playbook. First, keep it personal – identify, belittle and denigrate the critics. Then quote several experts emphasising their credentials and thirdly work the dismissive phrases into the copy. But as an account of an important scientific debate, it had the objectivity of a Boris Johnson on the EU."

 

This sort of reporting will never do, you know. Looking at the evidence. Giving a sober, reasoned analysis. I don't know what the world is coming to. You won't find a mainstream newspaper behaving like that, thank you very much.

 

So here's a statin story about someone who had no problem with statins on paper, but whose doctors thought they did because of the statin rebellion - and it turns out statins were actually bad in this instance.

My wife has a channelopathy. It has been demonstrated through genetic testing. It's definitive.

She also developed high cholesterol. One of her three heart specialists recommended a statin, and she dutifully began taking them. She developed a rash on her limbs, and severe muscle pain and weakness. She reported this to the cardiologist who suggested the statin was not to blame, to keep taking it. She did and she grew worse. We were both alarmed, so we reached out to the cardio. He had her change statins.

This made no difference. Rather than go through another iteration of the first series of exchanges, and since I felt uninformed relative to the effect a statin would have on my wife''s form of PP (and I knew most cardio's didn't have a clue about her brand of PP), I contacted a periodoic paralysis group to see if they knew of people with channelopathies having reactions to statins. The feedback was immediate and resounding: Many people with channelopathies report issues with statins.

We went back to the cardio. I relayed this to him. I could almost feel the pained annoyance in his voice when he started to list the pro's vs con's of statins, how my wife's cholesterol levels were uncomfortably high and we needed to get over any hesitancy on our part about statins for her sake.

I must have sounded equally annoyed. "No," I said." My wife is experiencing a reaction to statins. Rash aside, her channelopathy symptoms seem aggravated by both statins we've tried. Moreover, I've looked into it, and evidently this is not uncommon in the PP community - but even if it were, it does not change the fact that she personally is having problems with the drug."

He did not believe me. He thought we were part of the anti-statin culture, which we were not. Funny how things play out sometimes.

We ended up trying two or three other cholesterol-mitigating therapies, but ended up just adjusting her diet.

A year or so later, one of the only two or three experts in my wife's channelopathy was reported to have said, in response to a patient inquiry about statins and if they were safe for PP sufferers, that there should be no reason statins would be harmful for people with PP. My guess is he was just trying to be steadfast to what holds true for most. But maybe he should have had his ear closer to the ground of his own patient community.

Medical politics are hard to avoid even when you are not political.

 

And they call it "evidence based medicine". And so it is. But only after evidence they don't like has been ignored.