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US government to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol (2015)

washingtonpost.com

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Re: US government to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol (2015)

#91

Post by nommm-nommm »

clarkmoody wrote: post #17

Wouldn't it be nice if there were more government warnings and less restrictions / regulations? Imagine if the FDA, instead of blocking new drugs for 10 years and $1B, it simply withheld its endorsement until satisfied by the clinical trials. Consumers could then take the government's recommendations into consideration when making a decision and drugs could get to market much faster. The history of medical reversals…

Ummm... Artifical transfats have already been outlawed. http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/16/health/fda-trans-fat/

Re: US government to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol (2015)

#93

Post by zdean »

badsock wrote: post #54
clarkmoody wrote: post #17

Wouldn't it be nice if there were more government warnings and less restrictions / regulations? Imagine if the FDA, instead of blocking new drugs for 10 years and $1B, it simply withheld its endorsement until satisfied by the clinical trials. Consumers could then take the government's recommendations into consideration when making a decision and drugs could get to market much faster. The history of medical reversals…

Just as an example: 9% of the cases of Idiosyncratic Drug-induced Liver Injury is self-harm caused by people taking non-regulated dietary supplements: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18955056 You have a theory that the average person will wisely assume the responsibility to vet the health effects of what they consume, but empirical reality disagrees with your theory. Right now people are injuring themselves with…

The issue with non-regulated dietary supplements may well be caused by the current state of regulation (this is strictly my own opinion/observation).

In the current state of things, we've grown accustomed to seeing warnings when the government thinks there is a potential danger with a particular FDA regulated drug. So perhaps the lack of warnings with supplements is giving people a false sense of security about the dietary supplements...ie, "if they were dangerous, surely there'd be a warning". If, as the parent comment suggests, the paradigm shifts so that the government's position is one of several factors to consider, perhaps then people would look at supplements with a greater degree of caution and suspicion. In other words, changing the paradigm may change people's behavior in terms of how they approach both drugs and supplements.

Re: US government to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol (2015)

#94

Post by kuschku »

pdq wrote: post #36
mkautzm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbohydrates are not a bad thing and are indeed an important part of health. The current suggested diet doesn't say, 'bread'. It specifically calls out Whole Grains, which a great deal of evidence suggests are a Good Thing. Suggesting that grains, or even carbs, are somehow worse than literal fat is misleading at best, and delusional at it's worst.

I'm referring to the original 1992 food pyramid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#/medi... > Fats, oils, sweets: sparingly > Bread, cereal, rice & pasta: 6-11 servings Yes I am in the camp that believe fats and proteins are both much healthier than carbs, and especially refined sugars. The latest nutrition supports low carb diets, as can be seen with Atkins and Keto diets.

> The latest nutrition supports low carb diets, as can be seen with Atkins and Keto diets.

That statement is not supported by any reliable studies.

The latest nutrition supports a healthy mix of carbs and fats, specifically whole grain and unsaturated fats. Not a monodiet of fat, nor a monodiet of carbs, nor processed carbs, nor saturated fats.

Focusing too much on a fat-based diet causes massive kidney issues, just as a too much carb-based diet causes circulatory issues.

Re: US government to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol (2015)

#95

Post by frisco »

RangerScience wrote: post #89
azinman2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that marketing budgets for pharmaceuticals are also huge. The average person has no chance. The constant bombardment already means people go to their doctor asking for Rx by name even without understanding the medical need or if they're right for it. Now remove regulation... the warnings basically just blur into the background. Already we get so many warnings on prescriptions that they just turn into not…

Hmm. Could you then disallow any advertising of drug while you're still without FDA endorsement? Like how you're not allowed to advertise cigarettes. I suspect this line of thinking just leads to too many problems, however.

Not too many problems, that's in general exactly how it works today. FDA approvals are generally marketing approvals: what you're allowed to advertise your drug for and to who. Physicians can do more or less whatever they want in terms of prescribing things. (Drugs which aren't approved for marketing for anything yet are a little different, but can still be made available as an "investigational" drug, which is a much lower, primarily safety, bar.)

Re: US government to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol (2015)

#96

Post by [deleted] »

RangerScience wrote: post #89
azinman2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that marketing budgets for pharmaceuticals are also huge. The average person has no chance. The constant bombardment already means people go to their doctor asking for Rx by name even without understanding the medical need or if they're right for it. Now remove regulation... the warnings basically just blur into the background. Already we get so many warnings on prescriptions that they just turn into not…

Hmm. Could you then disallow any advertising of drug while you're still without FDA endorsement? Like how you're not allowed to advertise cigarettes. I suspect this line of thinking just leads to too many problems, however.

[deleted]

Re: US government to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol (2015)

#97

Post by petilon »

This doesn't go far enough. That there is a link between high cholesterol and heart disease is only a hypotheses, not a scientifically proven fact. Lowering cholesterol does not necessarily lower heart disease. Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27taubes.html

Because the link between excessive LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular disease has been so widely accepted, the Food and Drug Administration generally has not required drug companies to prove that cholesterol medicines actually reduce heart attacks before approval. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/business/17drug.html

Meanwhile drug companies are making billions selling cholesterol lowering medicines called statins. But lowering cholesterol using drugs is not useful. Read more about that here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-04-15/heart-dis...

Not only that, these statins are dangerous drugs. Its side effects include loss of short term memory, for example. Read more about that here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-not-dementia-...

Re: US government to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol (2015)

#98

Post by spqr0a1 »

badsock wrote: post #54
clarkmoody wrote: post #17

Wouldn't it be nice if there were more government warnings and less restrictions / regulations? Imagine if the FDA, instead of blocking new drugs for 10 years and $1B, it simply withheld its endorsement until satisfied by the clinical trials. Consumers could then take the government's recommendations into consideration when making a decision and drugs could get to market much faster. The history of medical reversals…

Just as an example: 9% of the cases of Idiosyncratic Drug-induced Liver Injury is self-harm caused by people taking non-regulated dietary supplements: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18955056 You have a theory that the average person will wisely assume the responsibility to vet the health effects of what they consume, but empirical reality disagrees with your theory. Right now people are injuring themselves with…

Idiosyncratic Drug-induced Liver Injury (DILI) is only 13-20% of all DILI. The other ~80% being pharmacological. About 40% of all acute liver failure is caused by acetaminophen. http://www.nature.com/ajg/journal/v102/n11/full/ajg2007481a....

Meaning a single FDA approved over-the-counter drug is responsible for over 20 times as much liver failure as all dietary supplements. Some regulation may be beneficial but the current policies are clearly suboptimal.

Re: US government to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol (2015)

#99

Post by SapphireSun »

BurningFrog wrote: post #49
throwaway2016a wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine if the FDA, instead of blocking new drugs for 10 years and $1B, it simply withheld its endorsement until satisfied by the clinical trials. Consumers could then take the government's recommendations into consideration when making a decision and drugs could get to market much faster. I'd go one step further. Give the FDA competition. Have private companies (similar to UL for electronics) that can endorse and…

Or have competition in the form of foreign FDA counterparts. If the European/Japanese/Other Reputable Country authorities have approved a drug, it could be allowed it in the US, with a clear label, of course. Foreign physiology and science is the same as American.

There are some merits to this idea, but there's a major flaw. It's kind of like tax havens. If you have two countries with different tax rates, all else being equal, a multinational will set up HQ in the lower tax county. Likewise, for pharmaceuticals, the company will pick the country that has the lowest barrier to entry and then sell to both.

While within a country a given barrier may be too high or low, it will probably be somewhat randomly too high or low around some appropriate level of safety. With the multi-country scheme, the bias will be towards too low on nearly every drug.

Re: US government to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol (2015)

#100

Post by wyager »

mkautzm wrote: post #65
WillPostForFood wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yup, the science is "agreed on." Disagree and lose your job/funding. That's how to build climate consensus.

That's not at all true, and that level of ignorance is actually quite dangerous. Scientists in no field are punished for disagreement. Even in really fringe science, disagreement is not only well-funded, but encouraged. A great example is String Theory: It has a lot of supporters and a lot of people saying it's untestable bunk, but research for both sides continues.. Consensuses happen when there is sufficient data t…

Nope, that's not how it works. Do you work in the science community? Many fields of science and engineering are gradually being eaten by politics. Going against progressive politics is dangerous for the career of any academic scientist in the US. This isn't a huge issue (yet) for math or hard physics. It's hard to politicize those fields (not for lack of trying; I could go on a very long rant about how non-scientists are trying to make scientific fields conform to their political expectations), but for other fields like environmental science (which, by the way, is only weakly scientific in the sense that it does not follow good practices for having high predictive power, so it's relatively easy to manipulate) political concerns are very powerful.

This is a bit rambly, but the gist of it is that it's naive to pretend that many nominally scientific fields are actually entirely objective and free from politics.

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