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18 July, 2004
Duane, I have redirected your query to the other CA's
and the list, Hopefully someone has some ideas...
Chris
Thanks, Chris. I need a publisher, international, willing to take
on this book.
Can you help me? Do you have any contacts? I need someone not in
the control of the statin lobby. Duane
LIPITOR,
THIEF OF MEMORY (statin drugs and the misguided war on
cholesterol) by Duane Graveline MD MPH is now available from www.spacedoc.net
or www.buybooksontheweb.com
Much of interest here for those taking statin drugs.
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 23:00:00 -0400
To: Spacedoc@webtv.net (Duane Graveline)
From: Chris Gupta <chrisgupta@alumni.uwaterloo.ca>
Subject: Re: media contact
Great news Duane, now only if can get this into JAMA, BMJ etc..
I suspect their allegiance to the Statin ads gets in the way...
We should expose them for what they are - it gets my blood boiling
as people like us, without any remuneration, have to do what they
are paid to do!
Chris Gupta
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/
List information is at: http://tinyurl.com/2xohw
At 03:38 PM 7/12/2004, Duane Graveline wrote:
The following 1200 word article, based on my book, Lipitor, Thief
of Memory, will be published in the August issue of Conscious Choice
Magazine out of Chicago, for newsstand circulation in Chicago, San
Francisco, Vancover BC, Los Angeles and Seattle. Rebecca Ephraim,
Dragonfly Health Editor, is author. STATIN DRUGS AND MEMORY
Doctor Duane Graveline's first encounter with the frightening nightmare
of transient global amnesia (TGA) occurred six weeks after he was
started on Lipitor at his annual astronaut physical examination
at Johnson Space Center. His cholesterol had been trending upward
for several years. All was well until six weeks later when, after
hs usual morning walk in the woods, his wife found him
aimlessly walking about the yard. He did not recognize her, reluctantly
accepted cookies and milk and refused to go into his now unfamiliar
home. He "awoke" six hours later in the office of the
examining neurologist with the diagnosis of transient global amnesia,
cause unknown. His MRI several days later was normal. Since Lipitor®
was the only new medicine he was on, the doctor in him made him
suspect a possible side effect of this drug and, despite the protestations
of the
examining doctors that "statin drugs did not do this",
He stopped his Lipitor®. The year passed uneventfully and soon
it was time for his next astronaut physical. NASA doctors joined
the chorus he had come to expect from physicians and pharmacists
during the preceding year, that "statin drugs did not do this"
and at their bidding he reluctantly restarted Lipitor® at one-half
the previous dose. Six weeks later he again descended into the black
pit of amnesia, this time for twelve hours and with a retrograde
loss of memory back to his high school days. During that terrible
interval, when his entire adult life had been eradicated, he had
no awareness of hs marriage and four children, his medical school
days, his ten adventure-filled years as a USAF flight surgeon or
even his selection as
scientist astronaut. Even the names of his children were eradicated
completely and he laughed at the thought of being married and a
medial doctor for in his mind he was just a kid with startling recall
of every other kid in my class. Many years of richly lived life
had been stolen from his mind as if it never had happened. Fortunately,
and typically for this obscure condition, his memory returned spontaneously
and again he drove home listening to his wife's amazing tale of
how his day (and hers) had gone.
Transient global amnesia is the sudden inability to formulate new
memory, known as anterograde amnesia, combined with varying degrees
of retrograde memory loss, sometimes for decades into the past.
Until recently, the most common trigger events for these abrupt
and completely unheralded amnesia cases have been sudden vigorous
exercise, sex, emotional crises, cold water immersion, trauma--at
times quite subtle, and cerebral angiography. In the past four years
a new trigger agent has been added - the use of the stronger statin
drugs such as Lipitor®,
Zocor® and Mevacor®. Transient global amnesia is but the
tip of the iceberg of the many other forms of statin associated
memory lapses that are reported from distraught patients. Far more
common are symptoms of increased senility, disorientation, confusion
and unusual forgetfulness.
These lesser forms of memory impairment can be easily missed in
many
individuals because, to a certain degree, that is the nature of
us all.
Statin drugs, while curtailing cholesterol, must inevitably inhibit
the production of other vital intermediary products that originate
further down the metabolic pathway beyond the statin blockade. The
pharmaceutical industry has long been attempting to develop a means
by which interference with cholesterol production might be achieved
beyond the point where these vital intermediary product originate
but up to now have failed. The inevitability of significant, serious
and even lethal side effects has been knowingly accepted.
Ubiquinone coenzyme (Q10) production is one of these collaterally
damaged compounds of great concern. Biosynthesized in the mitochondria--the
tiny powerhouse of the cell that is responsible for cellular respiration
and energy--ubiquinone is mandatory for proper cardiac muscle function
and the health and well being of every cell in our body, including
muscle cells and those of peripheral nerves. In addition to statin
myopathy and the more extreme form of muscle cell
damage known as rhabdomyolysis, we now are seeing peripheral neuropathy
and congestive cardiac failure from a combination of cell breakdown
and
failure of mitochondrial energy production.
The dolichols are another area of collateral damage from statin
use. This class of compounds are involved in an intricate process
of cellular activity involving message transport known as the Golgi
apparatus. Proteins manufactured there in response to DNA directives
are packaged into transport vesicles that are shuttled across the
cytoplasm to their various destinations. Without dolichols there
would be intracellular chaos as various proteins could not be directed
to their proper target and would, in effect, be dead-lettered. The
post office analogy, though childishly simple, comes very close
to describing dolichol function as it is understood today.
And there is more, much more. On 9 November 2001 Dr. Pfreiger
of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science announced
to the world the discovery of the identity of the elusive synaptogenic
factor responsible for the development of the highly specialized
contact sites between adjacent neurons in the brain known as synapses,
the basis of all brain activity. This synaptogenic factor was shown
to be the notorious substance cholesterol! The glial cells of the
brain are now
known to synthesize cholesterol for the specific purpose of synaptic
formation and function. Stronger statins of the Lipitor, Mevacor
and Zocor class easily enter the brain and interfere directly with
glial cell's ability to synthesize cholesterol. This is now considered
to be the likely cause of the epidemic of memory dysfunction now
being noted.
There is no doubt that the present notoriety of cholesterol has
all but obscured its physiological importance and necessity in our
bodies. Cholesterol is not only the most common organic molecule
in our brain, it is also distributed intimately
throughout our entire body. It is an essential constituent of the
membrane surrounding every cell. The presence of cholesterol in
this fatty double layer of the cell wall adjusts the fluid level
and rigidity of this membrane to the proper value for both cell
stability and function. Additionally, cholesterol is metabolized
into other essential body steroids known as the steroid hormones
and is therefore
the sole source for the formation of the very powerful chemicals
in our body that determine our sexuality, control the reproductive
process and make possible our very existence.
The pharmaceutical industry would lead us to believe that rapidly
bottoming out our natural cholesterol levels through the use of
their highly touted statin drugs is a relatively innocuous process
of definite benefit to society. But as we learn more
each day of this ubiquitous and unique substance, we must question
the veracity of their medical advisors. Cholesterol is perhaps the
most important substance in our lives.
And now we are learning that statin's role in cardiovascular risk
reduction may have little or nothing to do with cholesterol or LDL
levels and depend instead upon anti-inflammatory mechanisms unique
to this class of drugs. Surprisingly, we are discovering that our
40-year war on cholesterol through the use of drugs
and the now infamous low fat/low cholesterol diet seems to have
been grossly misdirected. We have become a nation of fattened sheep,
prone to type 2 diabetes and with unchanged proneness to arteriosclerosis.
Despite this rapidly growing reality, our public still remains desperately
focused on cholesterol and statin sales have never been more aggressively
marketed.
Doctor Duane Graveline is the author of Lipitor, Thief of Memory,
from
which this material was excerpted. It can be obtained at:
www.spacedoc.net
www.bbotw.net
www.amazon.com
LIPITOR, THIEF OF MEMORY (statin drugs and the misguided war on
cholesterol) by Duane Graveline MD MPH is now available from
www.spacedoc.net or www.buybooksontheweb.com
Much of interest here for
those taking statin drugs.
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