4 ms·

That's a hot take of a blog post. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The cholesterol to heart disease link is one of the best attested in med

That's a hot take of a blog post. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The cholesterol to heart disease link is one of the best attested in medical science [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15] And yet when making this very extraordinary claim, the author fails to cite any quantitative data for or against. He does not even attempt to build a qualitative argument by proposing a mechanistic theory of why cholesterol is unlikely to be causative of heart disease. Then he goes on to claim that doctors don't have hard evidence to show that statins reduce the incidence of heart disease, despite the fact that such evidence exists [5]. The post is just 10 paragraphs of fluff that boil down to 'don't trust the medico-industrial complex' Honestly, I think that blog post is a litmus test on scientific literacy - What convinces you more, data and numbers and charts and tests of statistical significance, or rail-against-the-machine rhetoric and a few scary sounding quotes provided without the associated context? [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/192160 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/19216... [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25815993/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25815993/ [3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/article-abstract/2537381 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/article-abst... [4] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/01.CIR.67.4.730 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/01.CIR.67.4.730 [5] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2678614 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2678614 [6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32507339/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32507339/ [7] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2008.10719668 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2008.10... [8] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18061058/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18061058/ [9] https://www.jacc.org/doi/abs/10.1016/j.jacc.2022.03.384 https://www.jacc.org/doi/abs/10.1016/j.jacc.2022.03.384 [10] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00020-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00020-3 [11] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/JAHA.123.030496 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/JAHA.123.030496 [12] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46686-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46686-x [13] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021915023001144 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002191502... [14] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12872-021-01971-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12872-021-01971-1 [15] https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jat/31/3/31_64369/_article/-char/ja/ https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jat/31/3/31_64369/_arti...

fny 1y ago
It's a bad blog post for sure. However, I've a few smart people say that lower cholesterol may not be what makes statins powerful: it's the anti-inflammatory properties. I'm too lazy to find papers right now.
- Calavar 1y ago
  Yes, there is certaintly data to make that argument. The argument that inflammation is a better predictor of heart disease than cholesterol is a reasonable one. On the other hand the argument that cholesterol is not a good predictor of heart disease and cholesterol lowering therapy is a fraud is not reasonable in the face of the evidence.
- breadwinner 1y ago
  > It's a bad blog post for sure The blog is merely pointers to, and excerpts from, other articles on sources such as New York Times and Bloomberg. The blog post can't be bad unless the original sources it cites are bad. Which ones are bad?
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > The blog post can't be bad unless the original sources it cites are bad The blog post misrepresents some of the sources by exaggerating the certainty of the claims and ignoring any evidence contrary to the point it's making. It's a bad blog post.
breadwinner 1y ago
> The cholesterol to heart disease link is one of the best attested in medical science What about this: Cholesterol lowering is not the reason for the benefit of statins. If it was, lowering cholesterol via any means should have produced the same benefit, but it doesn’t. One obvious way to confirm this is to find therapies that lower cholesterol by different means (i.e., other than statins) and see if they, too, prevent heart attacks. They don’t. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27taubes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27taubes.html (Some will discredit the author Gary Taubes without addressing the points he is raising.) The main reason why statins work may not be because they lower cholesterol, but because they reduce the inflammation that leads to heart attacks: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-04-15/heart-disease-not-about-cholesterol-businessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-04-15/heart-dis... This last link aligns with the new findings.

fny 1y ago

It's a bad blog post for sure. However, I've a few smart people say that lower cholesterol may not be what makes statins powerful: it's the anti-inflammatory properties. I'm too lazy to find papers right now.

Calavar 1y ago
Yes, there is certaintly data to make that argument. The argument that inflammation is a better predictor of heart disease than cholesterol is a reasonable one. On the other hand the argument that cholesterol is not a good predictor of heart disease and cholesterol lowering therapy is a fraud is not reasonable in the face of the evidence.
breadwinner 1y ago
> It's a bad blog post for sure The blog is merely pointers to, and excerpts from, other articles on sources such as New York Times and Bloomberg. The blog post can't be bad unless the original sources it cites are bad. Which ones are bad?
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > The blog post can't be bad unless the original sources it cites are bad The blog post misrepresents some of the sources by exaggerating the certainty of the claims and ignoring any evidence contrary to the point it's making. It's a bad blog post.

breadwinner 1y ago

> The cholesterol to heart disease link is one of the best attested in medical science What about this: Cholesterol lowering is not the reason for the benefit of statins. If it was, lowering cholesterol via any means should have produced the same benefit, but it doesn’t. One obvious way to confirm this is to find therapies that lower cholesterol by different means (i.e., other than statins) and see if they, too, prevent heart attacks. They don’t. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27taubes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27taubes.html (Some will discredit the author Gary Taubes without addressing the points he is raising.) The main reason why statins work may not be because they lower cholesterol, but because they reduce the inflammation that leads to heart attacks: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-04-15/heart-disease-not-about-cholesterol-businessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-04-15/heart-dis... This last link aligns with the new findings.