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Drug research articles may contain conflicts of interest

Hidden financial conflicts of interest are creeping into published drug research through the back door, warns an international team of investigators led by researchers from Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at Montreal Jewish General Hospital and McGill University. Their results have been recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

It was found that significant declarations of financial conflicts of interest in individual drug trials disappeared when those studies were combined in large meta-analysis. A 'meta-analysis' statistically combines results from many individual drug trials as a way of developing policies about the medications that doctors prescribe for their patients.

29 meta-analysis including results from 509 drug trials were reviewed concerning a range of drug treatments published in high-impact medical journals. The authors of the study documented the funding sources and author-industry financial ties of all 509 trials and whether the meta-analysis stated who funded the trials.

It was found that only 2 out of 29 meta-analysis mentioned who had funded the original drug trials. Additionally, those 2 did it in very obscure places in the published articles. Not one of the meta-analysis mentioned whether the researchers who conducted the trials were employed by the pharmaceutical industry or had received money from industry.

It was also found that in seven meta-analysis every drug trial was paid for, at least in part, by the maker of the drug or had researchers who were linked financially to drug makers. However, in six of those meta-analysis, there was no mention of who funded the drug trials.

Only seven out of 29 meta-analysis' authors said they had even recorded who funded the drug trials they evaluated, and only two out of seven published this information.

Few myths

1. Temperature must not go over 98.6 F. degrees for fear of brain damage

Why was fever created? Many virus and bacteria cannot survive over the normal temperature of body. But doctors have been trained in the system to prescribe a white artificial chemical compound to quickly reduce fever so that virus can survive and adding other white chemical compounds, namely antibiotics. But many virus and bacteria have started to develop immunity or resistance to antibiotics.

2. Genes cause disease

The implication being that, because you are born with the genes that you have, there is nothing that you can do about the impending disease. But not to worry, because medical research is currently spending billions of dollars working on expensive ways to give you new, and healthy genes. The real tragedy with this situation is that it is the acidosis that cause degenerative disease, and not genes. You might be asking, 'if this is true, then what do the genes do?' the answer is that the genes are the body's computer maps showing the body which way it can go and can not go. Although they map the body's roadways to disease, they do not make the body go down any particular roadway. To put it in simpler terms, the genes dictate which of the many degenerative diseases to which you will be prone, they do not cause the disease.

3. Stay out of the sun

The truth is that the sun shining on the body's skin does many things. One result is the photosynthetic production of the mineral regulator inositol triphosphate, INSP-3, an important biochemical mineral regulator. Another result of the sun shining on the skin is the photosynthesis of vitamin-D in the skin, resulting in increasing the small intestine's capability to absorb mineral nutrients, thereby reducing the acidosis known to cause degenerative disease. This includes all cancers.

Cholesterol is always bad

Another popular misconception is 'Cholesterol is bad for you'. Cholesterol should be first defined. It is a secondary alcohol. Compared to the alcohol in the spirits we consume, the two carbon ethanol, cholesterol is a giant found in large amounts of unsaturated fatty acids and eggs (one egg contains about 300 milligrams of cholesterol). The body produces about 2000 mg of cholesterol each day, and that is why studies have shown that when most cholesterol is removed from the diet, the cholesterol level in the blood remains basically the same. This is not to say that a diet rich in cholesterol will not raise your blood cholesterol, because usually it will. Cholesterol is like any other nutrient in that too much of anything is probably not good for your health. For example, too much sugar or too much salt can kill you, and yet the public hysteria has been directed at the bad guy cholesterol. To a biochemist, this situation is ridiculous, as cholesterol is one of the more predominant molecules in the human body. It binds and holds the bi-layer cell walls together. It is the base chemical from which many hormones are derived, including testosterone and estrogen (sex hormones). It is used to conduct nerve impulses. It is present in large quantities in the brain and bile. Cholesterol is a necessity for life.

Cholesterol combines with various fatty acids in the blood to form two types of protein salts known as lipoproteins. On type is known as high density lipoprotein, or HDL cholesterol, known as the good cholesterol, as people who have high levels of it in their blood actually have less risk of heart disease. The other type is known as low density lipoprotein, or LDL cholesterol, known as the bad cholesterol, as people who have high levels of it in their blood are prone to heart disease.

As discussed previously, becoming prone to heart disease does not mean that the LDL cholesterol causes the heart disease, but rather, it makes the body more prone to getting heart disease instead of getting other degenerative diseases. It is not only an oversimplification to state that, because cholesterol is found in significant amounts in the arterial plaque blocking the flow of blood, that cholesterol is responsible and therefore should be avoided. In fact, this is simply not true. If society were to use the same deductive reasoning, we would have to throw all policemen in jail because, just like cholesterol, they are always found at the scene of the crime. Ironically, both the police and the cholesterol are at the crime scene for the same reason: they are there to help save your life.

To understand the role of cholesterol in plaque buildup, it is necessary to ask yourself the following question, 'if cholesterol in my blood is so bad for me, then why don't I ever develop plaque in my veins?' After all, it is the same blood, in the same heart, in the same body. The answer lies in the basic difference between a blood artery and a blood vein. The artery, which delivers the blood from the heart to various parts of the body, is basically the same as a vein, which returns the blood to the heart, but with one major difference. The artery surface is made up of muscle tissue that can squeeze and compress the artery, resulting in an increased blood pressure, thereby insuring the blood gets to the distant parts of the body. It is muscle tissue that is most susceptible to disintegration by lactic acid. Once the body's fluids become acidic, the muscle tissue surface of the arteries becomes a susceptible target. The April 1997 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine agrees with this concept by suggesting a radical 'new' medical theory that cholesterol is not the primary 'cause' of heart disease, but rather, 'inflammation of blood vessel walls is the primary cause of heart attacks and strokes'. With the muscle tissue disintegrated, the remainder of the artery wall is weakened. Should the artery break, death would be certain. To prevent this from happening, the body responds by reinforcing the weakened arterial wall. As the wall is thin, it is exposed to the very positively charged external acids (acids are positively charged and alkalis are negative). This causes various components in the blood with negatively charged components, such as phospholipids, to be attracted and stick to the positive, acid weakened wall. A host of other components, collagen, triglycerides, fibrin, mucopolysaccarides, heavy metals, proteins, muscle tissue and debris, and finally the crack-sealing, goopy LDL cholesterol, can now attach themselves to the phospholipids anchored on the weakened artery wall. All of these plaque components are bound together by calcium.

The net result is a stronger, but thickened and hardened artery wall, which diminishes the size of the opening in the artery. This plaque-filled state of the arteries is known as heart disease. It was caused by acidosis, which was the result of mineral deficiency and a disbalanced diet.

Health and Long Life