The point of this test is to decide whether to take statins. But statins are a problematic drug, see here: https://medium.com/@petilon/cholesterol-and-statins-e7d9d8ee...
However, there is zero financial incentive for a physician to prescribe a statin. They are all generic medications. A month prescription is approximately $10.
We do not yet have final word on this topic, we will have a better understanding as time progresses, but until then I continue to recommend statins to my patients with appropriate risk factors, for the same reasons I find climate change credible. The data showing benefit is not just limited to the United States, it is international, and to essentially falsify something involving millions of individuals and thousands of researchers around the world just isn't feasible.
Well, doctors make money when they prescribe drugs: Patients will make more doctor visits when they are on prescription medications than if they are not.
> The data showing benefit...
The reason for the benefit is not fully understood. The argument is that the benefit comes not from lowering cholesterol but from reducing inflammation and stabilizing plaque. The medical community has no incentive to research this because they are raking in money, and any further research could only slow down the gravy train at best.
There's a pretty direct analogy to type 2 diabetes and metabolic disease generally. The human body naturally produces blood glucose and we would quite quickly die if our blood glucose levels went to zero. That doesn't mean that hyperglycemia is healthy and in fact, we know it directly causes all kinds of bad health outcomes. We absolutely need some LDL cholesterol, and in our evolutionary history when we faced famine there was probably some selection for people whose livers didn't aggressively metabolize LDL particles from the blood (an energetically costly process), but that doesn't mean that high LDL cholesterol today is safe if you're hoping to live a long life.
And yet lowering cholesterol using statins has proved beneficial for people who have already suffered heart attacks. How do you explain this? One explanation is that statins work for these people not because they lower cholesterol but because they reduce inflammation and stabilize plaque.
The science behind this is not fully understood. Big Pharma has no incentive to research this because they are raking in money, and any further research could only slow down the gravy train at best.
You are right about one point: You should absolutely not trust a random medium article, anyone can write medium article. Instead you should follow the links, then decide whether the experts quoted in the NYT and Bloomberg articles have a point.
- Is it not true that the existence of a link between high cholesterol and heart disease is only a hypotheses that originated in the 1950s, not a scientifically proven fact?
- Is it not true that the FDA generally has not required drug companies to prove that cholesterol medicines (such as statins) actually reduce heart attacks before approval?
- Is it not true that lowering cholesterol by different means (i.e., other than statins) is not beneficial, and does that not mean cholesterol is not the villain it is made out to be?
- Is it not true that the only large clinical trial funded by the government (rather than drug companies) found no statistically significant benefit at all?
What exactly are you saying is wrong?