American Heart Association Protects Industry Not Patients By Barbara Roberts, MD, and Martha Rosenbe [View all]

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/American-Heart-Association-by-Martha-Rosenberg-Cholesterol_Drug-Companies-Marketing_Drugs_HEART-131206-947.html

American Heart Association Protects Industry Not Patients By Barbara Roberts, MD, and Martha Rosenberg
General News 12/6/2013 at 08:33:16
By Martha Rosenberg

The American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) recently released new cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines. They are an egregious example of much that is wrong with medicine today.

The guidelines propose a vast expansion of the use of statins in healthy people, recommending them for about 44 percent of men and 22 percent of healthy women between the ages of 40 and 75. According to calculations by John Abramson, lecturer at Harvard Medical School, 13,598,000 healthy people for whom statins were not recommended based on the 2001 guidelines now fall into the category of being advised to take moderate or high intensity statin therapy.



The American Heart Association (AHA) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to "build healthier lives free of cardiovascular disease and stroke." Yet in its 2011-2012 financial statement, the AHA noted $521 million in donations from non-government and non-membership sources and many well-known large drug companies, including those who make and market statins, contribute amounts in the $1 million range.

Even as many in the medical community suspected the guidelines were a ploy to help the AHA's drug partners sell statins, it was revealed that the guideline's online calculator to determine cardiac disease risk over predicts risk by an astonishing 75 to 150 percent. But the guideline writers are standing firmly behind their faulty calculator.