The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

 

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Unpublished papers and letters by members

Science: a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence.
                                                                                                             James Randi

...but only in the ideal world. Here come examples of critical comments that the medical journals and other media don´t like to hear. They are listed chronologically

Joel Kauffman: Letter in response to Hiatt, W. R. Medical Treatment of Peripheral Arterial Disease and Claudication.  N Engl J Med 2001:344:1608-20. The letter was not published.

Uffe Ravnskov: Letter in response to the Third Report of the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults (Adult Treatment Panel III). JAMA 2001;285 The letter was rejected by the editor of JAMA 4-5 months after submission; read editors answer.

Joel Kauffman: Letter in response to Raggi P, Cooil B, Callister TQ. Use of electron beam tomography to develop models for prediction of hard coronary events. Am Heart J 2001; 141: 375-82. The letter was not published.

Uffe Ravnskov: Letter in response to Hecht HS, Superko R. Electron beam tomography and National Cholesterol Education program guidelines in asymptomatic women. JACC 2001;37:1506-11. The letter was not published. The editor's answer is included

Paul Rosch: Letter sent to Wall Street Journal by Paul Rosch commenting an article by Tara Parker-Pope about the current guidelines for cholesterol lowering. The letter was not published. 

Paul Rosch: Letter sent to The Washington Post commenting an article by Amy Dockser Marcus, Why Low Cholesterol May Not Protect You, published Aug 19, 2003. The letter was not published.

Paul Rosch: Letter sent to the editor of New York Times commenting an August 19 2003 article by Candice Reed about global amnesia. Her article is attached in the end. The letter was not published.

Sally Fallon and Mary Enig: Letter sent to the editor of New York Times 19. July, 2003 commenting an article by Jane Brody, "Cholesterol: When It’s Good, It’s Very, Very Good", in which she claimed that our digestive systems resembled those of cows and deer, implying that we should stick to a vegetarian diet. The letter was not published.

Joel Kauffman: Letter sent to the editor of Wall Street Journal on May 25, 2003 commenting an article by Scott Hensley, "The Statin Dilemma: How Sluggish Sales Hurt Merck, Pfizer". The letter was not published.

Uffe Ravnskov, Joel M. Kauffman; Peter H. Langsjoen, Kilmer S. McCully, Paul J. Rosch. Letter to Archives of Internal Medicine, submitted July 20, 2002 documentig that Scott Grundy exaggerate the benefits of statin treatment in old people. Includes Editor's rejecting answer

Uffe Ravnskov, Paul J. Rosch, Peter H. Langsjoen, Joel M. Kauffman, Kilmer S. McCully. Letters to Lancet commenting the HPS trial. Includes editor's rejecting answer

Uffe Ravnskov. In Nature Medicine 2002; 8:1211-17, a section about atherosclerosis was introduced by Daniel Steinberg: Atherogenesis in perspective: Hypercholesterolemia and inflammation as partners in crime. Here is a commenting letter. Ravnskov´s covering letter follows as does the answer from the editor.

Uffe Ravnskov.  Letter to the editor of Lancet, sent 10. December 2002, pointing at the evidence that statin treatment causes cancer. Editor's answer is included.

Uffe Ravnskov. Letter sent on Jan 22, 2003 to the editor of JAMA as a comment to  a paper by Hu FB and Willett WC. Optimal diets for prevention of coronary heart disease. Jama 2002;288:2569-78.

Joel Kauffman.  Letter sent to the editor of Wall Street Journal on May 25, 2003 commenting claims that more people should be treated with statins. No answer.

Eddie Vos and Peter H. Langsjoen. Letter commenting an editorial in New England Journal of Medicine about statin treatment. Submitted 26. April 2004

Leslie Klevay. Letter sent to the editor of New England Journal of Medicine commenting the new statin trial TNT, where the lower number of cardiovascular deaths was balanced by an increased number of deaths by other causes, mainly cancer. Editor´s rejecting letter is included.

Uffe Ravnskov, Paul Rosch, Morley Sutter. In a letter to the editor of JAMA we asked for a specification of the serious side effects that were seen in almost 50 % of the patients treated with statins in the IDEAL trial. The authors did not give us any specific information. We therefore asked again. The editor's answer is included.

Should a 39-year old, healthy woman with heredity for breast cancer start a life-long statin treatment as recently recommended in a paper in JAMA? Of course not - read why. Objections from THINCS members, expressed in two letters, were rejected by the editor, however. 

Uffe Ravnskov. An overly optimistic review of statin treatment published by Jane Armitage in The Lancet on November 24, 2007 was commented in a letter to the editor by Uffe Ravnskov, but rejected by irrelevant objections. Read the letter, the editors response and Uffe Ravnskovs comments to the response.. 

Uffe Ravnskov. In a review published in Lancet the authors found an inverse association between cholesterol and stroke mortality but a positive association with coronary mortality. However, they had excluded several studies of coronary mortality with the opposite result. Read Uffe Ravnskovs rejected letter, submitted on Dec 1, 2007, the editors response and Uffe Ravnskovs comments to the response 

Paul Rosch. This is a further comment to Jane Armitage´s review in The Lancet, rejected by the same arguments as those given to Uffe Ravnskov (see above). 

Uffe Ravnskov. In the ENHANCE trial cholesterol was lowered in two groups of people with familial hypercholesterolemia. To their surprise, angiography showed that progress of atherosclerosis progressed most in the group whose cholesterol was lowered the most. There is a good, evidence-based explanation to that finding,  but the editor didn´t find it worth publishing.

Paul Rosch. In a 2008 issue of JAMA authors of a review paper about peripheral neuropathy ignored that this disease is almost 30 times more frequent in statin users than normally. But the editor didn´t find it worth pulishing. 

Paul Rosch, Uffe Ravnskov. In another JAMA issue Stamler and Neaton published a number of false statements in support of the cholesterol campaign. However, the editor did not find our objections to this type of scientific malpractice of interest.

Uffe Ravnskov, Kilmer McCully In Journal of the American College of Cardiology Libby, Ridker and Hansson published a review about inflammation and atherosclerosis without mentioning a word about the possible role of microorganisms, an issue that has been evaluated in more than 100 reviews- Obviously the authors did not know either  that the lipoproteins partake in the innate immune system, a crucial fact considering  the fact that more than remnants of 50 different bacteria and several virus species have been found in atherosclerotic tissue. We sent a letter commenting these issues. It was rejected, however with the motivation that the journal was able to publish only a few letters addressing controversial topics.

Paul Rosch* Do Statins Prevent and Treat Infections - Or Is It High Cholesterol? As usual medical journals do not accept letters questioning the benefit of statin treatment. Here is yet another example. Read also this paper in British Medical Journal