Diamond and Ravnskov's paper is particularly relevant at this time as reports out of Britain have revealed that leaders in health care and research, including the editor in chief of the British Medical Journal, Fiona Godlee, and the chair of Britain's Commons Health Select Committee, Sarah Wollaston, have called for drug companies to release all of their records involving undisclosed adverse effects of statins in their clinical trials.
"We welcome more medical journals to follow the new rules introduced by the British Medical Journal stating that 'clinical education articles will be authored by experts without financial ties to industry'," say Diamond and Ravnskov.
The authors advocate other health beneficial strategies that are known to reduce cardiovascular risk, such as cessation of smoking, weight control, exercise and stress reduction. They also emphasized the great value of a low carbohydrate diet for normalizing all of the biomarkers of cardiovascular risk, with excellent outcomes, especially for people with type 2 diabetes.
Diamond and Ravnskov concluded their paper with the sobering statement that "There is a great appeal to the public to take a pill that offers the promise of a longer life and to live heart attack free. The reality, however, is that statins actually produce only small beneficial effects on cardiovascular outcomes, and their adverse effects are far more substantial than is generally known."
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