Olive oil an aid in breast cancer fight: study

FairfaxDigital, January 11, 2005

Olive oil can help fight breast cancer, researchers said in a study out yesterday.

“Our findings underpin epidemiological studies that show that the Mediterranean diet has significant protective effects against cancer, heart disease and ageing,” said the study’s lead author, Javier Menendez, of Northwestern University’s Feinberg medical school in Chicago.

Researchers showed in a series of laboratory experiments on breast cancer cells that oleic acid, found in olive oil, dramatically cuts the levels of a cancer-promoting gene called Her-2/neu (also known as erb B-2), Menendez said.

High levels of the gene occur in over a fifth of breast cancer patients and are associated with highly aggressive tumours that have a poor prognosis, according to findings reported in the January 10 Annals of Oncology.

Oleic acid suppressed the gene, and other tests showed that it boosted an antibody treatment trastuzumab (Herceptin), which targets the gene and has helped to prolong the lives of many breast cancer patients, the researchers said.

DNA image from Columbia University

As a trained scientist and engineer, I focus on effects which can be repeatedly produced in the laboratory. In particular, I detect specific pathogens, target them with specific frequency sets, and repeatedly eliminate them virtually 100% of the time using hundreds of research participants. In so far as is possible, I independently verify effects through objective means. A graph of frequency peaks from a DIRP scan with an FSCAN is one of the most useful cross checks. However, anyone who has been an experimental scientist knows there are clever ways to do objective checks in many dimensions on an experiment.

At the same time, there are many effects that are often experienced by people I work with that are not repeatable in an exact manner because they depend on the unique state of that individual and their frame of mind at the time. The effects are worth mentioning because they are becoming increasingly common and some of them are very powerful in a psychological and spiritual dimension as well as the physical.

In my view, they all relate to the inherent link between DNA structures that is independent of distance. I often tell my clients that a high resolution photo with the latest digital cameras is more useful to me than a DNA sample such as blood, hair, or saliva. In fact, to me it works like a DNA sample. Scanning of the photo with the Cameron Aurameter works as well as scanning them in person. The experiments below point to some of the characteristics of DNA that can help point the way to an understanding of this phenomenon.

Self Healing DNA Discoveries



Below are three astonishing experiments with DNA whichproves that DNA can heal itself according to the “feelings” of the individual as reported recently by Gregg Braden.

In his recent program entitled Healing Hearts/Healing Nations: The Science of Peace and the Power of Prayer, Gregg Braden discussed how in the past we lost huge amounts of information from ancient spiritual traditions (when the library at Alexandriaburned we lost at least 532,000 documents), and that there may be information in those traditions which could help us understand some of the mysteries of science. To this end he reported on three very interesting experiments. Gregg Braden started off as a scientist and engineer, before he began pursuing these larger questions.

EXPERIMENT #1

The first experiment he reported was done by Dr.Vladimir Poponin, a quantumbiologist. In this experiment, first a container was emptied (ie a vacuum was created within it), and then the only thing left in it were photons (particles of light).

They measured the distribution (ie the location) of the photons and found they were completely random inside the container.This was the expected result. Then some DNA was placed inside the container and the distribution (location) of the photons was remeasured. This time the photons were LINED UP in an ORDERED way and aligned with the DNA. In otherwords the physical DNA had an effect on the non-physical photons.

After that, the DNA was removed from the container, and the distribution of the photons was remeasured again. The photons REMAINED ORDERED and lined up where the DNA had been. What are the light particles connected to?

Gregg Braden says we are forced to accept the possibility that some NEW field of energy, a web of energy, is there and the DNA is communicating with the photons through this energy.

EXPERIMENT #2

These were experiments done by the military. Leukocytes (white blood cells) were collected for DNA from donors and placed into chambers so they could be measure electrical changes. In this experiment, the donor was placed in one room and subjected to “emotional stimulation” consisting of videoclips, which generated different emotions in the donor. The DNA was placed in a different room in the same building. Both the donor and his DNA were monitored and as the donor exhibited emotional peaks or valleys (measured by electricalresponses), the DNA exhibited the IDENTICAL RESPONSES AT THE EXACT SAME TIME. There was no lag time, no transmission time. The DNA peaks and valleys EXACTLY MATCHED the peaks and valleys of the donor in time.

The military wanted to see how far away they could separate the donor from his DNA and still get this effect. They stopped testing after they separated the DNA and the donor by 50 miles and STILL had the SAME result. No lag time; notransmission time. The DNA and the donor had the same identical responses in time. What can this mean?

Gregg Braden says it means that living cells communicate through a previously unrecognized form of energy. Thisenergy is not affected by time and distance. This is a non-local form of energy, an energy that already exists everywhere, all the time.

EXPERIMENT #3

The third experiment was done by the Institute of Heart Math and the paper that was written about this was titled: Local and Non local Effects of Coherent Heart Frequencies on Conformational Changes of DNA. (Disregard the title! The info is incredible.)

This is the experiment that relates directly to the anthrax situation. In this experiment, some human placenta DNA (the most pristine form of DNA) was placed in a container from which they could measure changes in the DNA. Twenty-eight vials of DNA were given (one each) to 28 trained researchers. Each researcher had been trained how to generate and FEEL feelings, and they each had strong emotions.

What was discovered was that the DNA CHANGED ITSSHAPE according to the feelings of the researchers: 1. Whenthe researchers FELT gratitude, love and appreciation, the DNA responded by RELAXING and the strands unwound. The length of the DNA became longer. 2. When theresearchers FELT anger, fear, frustration, or stress, the DNA responded by TIGHTENING UP. It became shorter and SWITCHED OFF many of our DNA codes! If you’ve everfelt “shut down” by negative emotions, now you know why your body was equally shut down too. The shut down of the DNA codes was reversed and the codes were switched backon again when feelings of love, joy, gratitude and appreciation were felt by the researchers.

This experiment was later followed up by testing HIV positive patients. They discovered that feelings of love, gratitude and appreciation created 300,000 TIMES the RESISTANCE theyhad without those feelings. So here’s the answer to what can help you stay well, no matter what dreadful virus or bacteria may be floating around. Stay in feelings of joy, love, gratitude and appreciation!

These emotional changes went beyond the effects of electro-magnetics. Individuals trained in deep love were able to change the shape of their DNA. Gregg Braden says this illustrates anew recognized form of energy that connects all of creation.

This energy appears to be a TIGHTLY WOVEN WEB that connects all matter. Essentially we’re able to influence this web of creation through our VIBRATION.

Antioxidant vitamins and coronary heart disease risk: a pooled analysis of 9 cohorts^1,2,3

Paul Knekt, John Ritz, Mark A Pereira, Eilis J O’Reilly, Katarina Augustsson, Gary E Fraser, Uri Goldbourt, Berit L Heitmann, Göran Hallmans, Simin Liu, Pirjo Pietinen, Donna Spiegelman, June Stevens, Jarmo Virtamo, Walter C Willett, Eric B Rimm and Alberto Ascherio

¹ From the National Public Health Institute, Helsinki (PK, PP, and JV); the Departments of Biostatistics (JR and DS), Nutrition (EJO, WCW, EBR, and AA), and Epidemiology (SL, DS, WCW, EBR, and AA), Harvard School of Public Health, Boston; the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention, Boston (WCW); the Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston (WCW); the Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (MAP); the Department of Medicine, Children’s Hospital, and the Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston (MAP); the Department of Medical Epidemiology, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm (KA); the Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston (SL); the Center for Health Research, Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Loma Linda, CA (GEF); the Section of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Henry N Neufeld Cardiac Research Institute, Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (UG); the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden (GH); the Research Unit for Dietary Studies at the Institute of Preventive Medicine, Copenhagen (BLH); the Research Centre for Prevention and Health, Glostrup, Denmark (BLH); the Glostrup University Hospital, Glostrup, Denmark (BLH); and the Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (JS)

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 80, No. 6, 1508-1520, December 2004

Background:Epidemiologic studies have suggested a lower risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) at higher intakes of fruit, vegetables, and whole grain. Whether this association is due to antioxidant vitamins or some other factors remains unclear.

Objective:We studied the relation between the intake of antioxidant vitamins and CHD risk.

Design:A cohort study pooling 9 prospective studies that included information on intakes of vitamin E, carotenoids, and vitamin C and that met specific criteria was carried out. During a 10-y follow-up, 4647 major incident CHD events occurred in 293 172 subjects who were free of CHD at baseline.

Results:Dietary intake of antioxidant vitamins was only weakly related to a reduced CHD risk after adjustment for potential nondietary and dietary confounding factors. Compared with subjects in the lowest dietary intake quintiles for vitamins E and C, those in the highest intake quintiles had relative risks of CHD incidence of 0.84 (95% CI: 0.71, 1.00; P = 0.17) and 1.23 (1.04, 1.45; P = 0.07), respectively, and the relative risks for subjects in the highest intake quintiles for the various carotenoids varied from 0.90 to 0.99. Subjects with higher supplemental vitamin C intake had a lower CHD incidence. Compared with subjects who did not take supplemental vitamin C, those who took >700 mg supplemental vitamin C/d had a relative risk of CHD incidence of 0.75 (0.60, 0.93; P for trend <> E intake was not significantly related to reduced CHD risk.

Conclusions:The results suggest a reduced incidence of major CHD events at high supplemental vitamin C intakes. The risk reductions at high vitamin E or carotenoid intakes appear small.

Scientific journalism at it best provides a detailed analysis of a topic that appeals to both a scientist and a layperson. It supports the case with detailed references to the scientific literature and allows the reader to research the issue independently. The best scientific journalism I read in 2004 was

and the best candidate for 2005 is

In both cases, the authors exposed systematic refusal to see the evidence, a common phenomenon in medicine which my favorite cardiologist colleague calls the “cognitive gap.” Of course it is sometimes systematic suppression of evidence for personal or corporate gain as in the case of deaths caused by VIOXX or contaminated polio vaccine. In the case of nanobacteria, it appears to be mostly the cognitive gap since there are some scientists that claim nanobacteria do not exist even after reviewing the evidence.

The interesting thing about both nanobacteria and SV40 is that they increase the risk of both heart disease and cancer in over 100 million Americans. Future research may demonstrate that they cause more deaths than the current known single causes of death (cigarettes for number of people killed, alcohol for number of years of life extinguished). Right now they are both in the “cognitive gap” stage where the medical community is like primitive tribesman brought to New York in the early years of America. When standing right beside a large ocean-going ship, they could not see it because it did not fit into their frame of reference.

But I digress. What is interesting about The Calcium Bomb: The Nanobacteria Link to Heart Disease & Cancer? One example is that Dr. E. Olavi Kajander discovered nanobacteria while working in 1985 as a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratories of Professor Dennis Carson at the Scripps Research Institute near San Diego, California. In 1987, Kajander returned to Finland to establish his own cell culturing lab at the Biochemistry and Biotechnology Department of the University of Kuopio where he demonstrated that nanobacteria were coming from contaminated fetal bovine serum. Since bovine serum is used to make many of our vaccines, almost anyone who has been vaccinated is infected with nanobacteria.

In 1998, Kajander applied for a patent which was subsequently granted by European and American patent authorities and now forms the basis of conventional treatment. Investors may want to take a look at the prospectus of Nanobac Life Sciences, Inc.

United States Patent 5,135,851, Kajander, August 4, 1992

Culture and detection method for sterile-filterable autonomously replicating biological particles

Abstract: Novel autonomously replicating biological particles resembling bacteria and having most surprising properties were discovered from cell culture sera and other biological samples alleged to be sterile according to the current testing methods. These slowly growing agents named Nanobacteria are smaller than any known cell-walled bacteria. They pass through sterile filters, even with pore sizes smaller than their diameter. They cannot be cultured on any standard microbiological media. With the isolation and detection methods provided here they are commonly detectable in animal or human serum. This patent holds for methods of their culture, detection, purification, and elimination and described the necessary reagents for that. Autonomously replicating particles can be cultured in RPMI 1640, or in DMEM, or in other cell culture media. Optimal growth can be obtained by supplementing the culture medium with 10-20% sterile fetal bovine serum. Addition of small amounts of D,L or L selenomethionine together with nucleotide precursors may improve growth. Culture is started by addition of the test sample to the medium in a cell culture vial which is thereafter incubated under standard mammalian cell culture conditions for at least 15 days. Biological samples are preferably sterile-filtered before culture through 0.22 micron filters. The growth of Nanobacteria, if present, can be seen using microscopy at high magnification. The organisms can be made more visible by DNA staining and immunostaining done either separately or simultaneously to a fixed preparation. Nanobacteria can be cultured without mammalian cells, but co-culture together with an adherent cell line like 3T6 is useful because 3T6 cells can take Nanobacteria inside the cells. This aids the staining of the preparations. Intracellular agents are not lost during fixation and staining. Nanobacterial antigens can be prepared by specific culture, harvest, purification and solubilization methods. Immunization of rabbits with the solubilized antigen (treatment with proteinase K and with 1 N HCI) produces highly specific antibodies to Nanobacteria. Gamma-irradiation of culture serum at 2.5-4.0 megarads, preferably in addition with treatment using solid-phase bound antibodies enables preparation of Nanobacteria-free serum. Use of this serum creates sterile culture medium for the culture and detection of Nanobacteria. Double staining combining Hoechst No. 33258 stain and immunofluorescence specifically distinguishes Nanobacteria from other cell culture contaminants.

Targeting a key enzyme in cell growth: a novel therapy for cancer

J Kulsh

Medical Hypotheses (1997) 49, 297-300

Abstract: The enzyme ribonucleotide reductase (RR) controls the synthesis of DNA precursors and thus plays a pivotal role in cell growth. Since the free-radical-containing active-site of this enzyme can be disabled by a lone electron, low-level direct electric current should have an inhibitory effect on RR and, thus, on uncontrolled cell proliferation. This hypothesis is strongly supported by the results of several cancer electrotherapy studies reported over the years.

Excerpt: Cancer is uncontrolled cell growth. For a cell to divide, it must replicate its DNA strand. The building blocks of this strand ?? four bases ?? are in short supply in a healthy, resting cell. However, the building blocks of a related molecule RNA are always in great abundance since RNA is needed for many cellular functions. When a cell is ready to divide, an enzyme called ribonucleotide reductase (RR) converts building blocks of RNA into those of DNA. The enzyme RR is, thus, pivotal for cell growth. Not surprisingly, the activity of this enzyme is tightly linked, much more than that of any other enzyme, to neoplastic transformation and progression…

A novel way of arresting the activity of this pivotal enzyme in cell growth, is suggested by the fact that the active-site of RR contains a stable tyrosyl free-radical which is essential for its activity. Such free-radicals can be neutralized/destroyed by free-floating electrons — easily available in the form of direct electric current. Thus DC electrotherapy should result in inhibition of RR and cessation of malignant cell proliferation. Low-level surface DC electrotherapy would act selectively on cancerous growth since the concentration of the target enzyme RR is exponentially higher in cancerous cells, as compared to healthy quiescent cells…

Free radicals are known to be formed in a biological medium when it is subjected to any voltage in excess of 1.2 volts. Electrochemical products begin to form around 1.5 to 2 volts but these products may not be significant in concentration until the voltage is raised to, say, 3 or 4 V. If the anti-tumor effect of electrotherapy is due to the disabling of the pivotal enzyme RR through free radical interactions, voltage between 1.2 to about 3 V should be most beneficial. Higher voltage, for this mechanism, would be undesirable for two reasons: (i) more and more electrons would engage in electro-chemical processes, leaving less and less electrons free or as free-radicals, and (ii) concentration of toxic electrochemical species would increase steadily. This toxicity may be as harmful as the tumor itself.

I had the privilege of working with Linus Pauling on several occassions in the decades before his death and he introduced me to the experts he knew on Vitamin C. One of the criticisms on use of Vitamin C was that it was simply excreted in the urine, so taking a lot of it was of little benefit.

Pauling was one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable people I have met in my lifetime. Talking with him was like browsing through the Library of Congress as he had a truly encyclopedic mind. The data he provided Watson and Crick was a key element in their discovery of the structure of DNA and he was annoyed that they beat him out of his third Nobel prize.

In any event, Linus always argued that the blood plasma level of Vitamin C was the important factor and it was increased signficantly by taking a lot of Vitamin C. A recent study shows that this increase using oral intake is limited. However, an IV of Vitamin C raises blood plasma levels significantly.

Some preventive medicine experts advocate that you get a signed agreement from any hospital you enter that they will provide intravenous Vitamin C drips, as these will prevent most of the nosocomial infections that kill over 90000 people a year in the United States, not to mention promotion of healing and recovery from whatever ails you.

Vitamin C pharmacokinetics: implications for oral and intravenous use.

Padayatty SJ, Sun H, Wang Y, Riordan HD, Hewitt SM, Katz A, Wesley RA, Levine M.

Ann Intern Med. 2004 Apr 6;140(7):533-7

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the National Cancer Institute, and the Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-1372, USA.

BACKGROUND: Vitamin C at high concentrations is toxic to cancer cells in vitro. Early clinical studies of vitamin C in patients with terminal cancer suggested clinical benefit, but 2 double-blind, placebo-controlled trials showed none. However, these studies used different routes of administration.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether plasma vitamin C concentrations vary substantially with the route of administration.

DESIGN: Dose concentration studies and pharmacokinetic modeling.

SETTING: Academic medical center.

PARTICIPANTS: 17 healthy hospitalized volunteers.

MEASUREMENTS: Vitamin C plasma and urine concentrations were measured after administration of oral and intravenous doses at a dose range of 0.015 to 1.25 g, and plasma concentrations were calculated for a dose range of 1 to 100 g.

RESULTS: Peak plasma vitamin C concentrations were higher after administration of intravenous doses than after administration of oral doses (P < style="font-weight: bold;">LIMITATIONS: Patient data are not available to confirm pharmacokinetic modeling at high doses and in patients with cancer.

CONCLUSIONS: Oral vitamin C produces plasma concentrations that are tightly controlled. Only intravenous administration of vitamin C produces high plasma and urine concentrations that might have antitumor activity. Because efficacy of vitamin C treatment cannot be judged from clinical trials that use only oral dosing, the role of vitamin C in cancer treatment should be reevaluated.

Do you think cell phones a health risk? If yes, get a Green8, put it on your phone, and keep it away from your body. Ionizing radiation causes DNA breaks and chromosome aberrations which increase the risk of cancer. It is prudent to assume anything that causes the same thing is very risky. The cellphone industry reminds me of the cigarette industry 20 years ago. They kept saying we had not “proved” that cigarettes cause cancer. Eventually they started losing legal cases involving victims so “proof” probably depends more on a judge and jury than on science.

Researchers find DNA breaks from RF radiation

Jeffrey Silva, RCR Wireless News, 27 Dec 2004, p. 7

WASHINGTON–European researchers have found DNA breaks and chromosomal aberrations from radio-frequency radiation like that emitted from mobile phones, but they said new data does not prove handsets pose a health risk and called for more research…

“There was a strong postive correlation between both the intensity and duration of exposure to [RF radiation] and the increase in single- and double-strand DNA breaks and micronuclei frequencies” stated the study’s summary.

Those in the electronic frequency research mentoring program need to (1) follow updates in the medical literature, (2) develop hypotheses of health problem causation, (3) develop frequency sets to test these hypothesis, (4) confirm that individuals with health problems respond to these frequency sets, and (5) repeatedly prevent or eliminate these health problems by providing solutions.

Let’s consider the state of research in heart disease, particularly atherosclerosis. Leading researchers now assume this is caused by inflammation. That means there is likely to be a pathogen that causes inflammation and the health problem could be prevented by eliminating the pathogen.

Exercise 1: What is the pathogen?

Exercise 2: What is its frequency?

Hint: New Scientist reported this week that vaccination with oxidized LDL reduces the incidence of artherosclerotic plaque formation in mice by 70%. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to conclude that there is a pathogen in cells with oxidized LDL and that it could be eliminated by applying correct frequencies. Those who have studied the vaccination problem carefully know that it is a shock to the immune system with potential negative side effects. Developing easy means to kill the pathogen is more effective and avoids compromising the immune system. This should intensify research to identify the pathogen and find frequencies that easily exterminate it. Success in doing this puts you at least two steps ahead of conventional approaches to the problem. Since a single step in medicine requires an average of 17 years from publication to routine treatment, you will be 2×17 or 34 years ahead of the conventional paradigm if you can finish these exercises.

Vaccination could protect against heart disease

James Randerson, New Scientist, 22 December 2004

About 10 years ago, Jan Nilsson at Lund University in Sweden tried to provoke this immune response by giving oxidised LDL to mice. Oxidised LDL is the main form of the protein found in plaques, so Nilsson expected to see more atherosclerosis. But he was wrong. “To our surprise the mice were protected,” he says.

This started him thinking that patients could be vaccinated against atherosclerosis, an idea that his group and Hansson’s group have been working on independently. Both teams are using fragments of the oxidised form of LDL to prime the immune system to attack plaques when they first begin to form.

To test the idea, they have been injecting groups of mice with LDL fragments or a saline control. The mice given the LDL vaccination show as much as a 70% reduction in the number of plaques, and existing plaques appeared to stop growing, Nilsson and Hansson reported at the Cambridge meeting. There were no signs of any ill effects.

Libby, Peter. Atherosclerosis: The New View. Scientific American, May 2002, pp. 47-55.

PETER LIBBY, who earned his M.D. from the University of California, San Diego, is chief of cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Mallinckrodt Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and co-editor of the sixth edition of Heart Disease, a classic cardiology textbook (see “More to Explore,” on page 55). He regards “lifestyle modification as the cornerstone of cardiovascular prevention” and practices what he preaches by running recreationally, albeit, he says, more avidly than swiftly.

Scientists now agree that inflammation fuels the development and progression of atherosclerosis: the dangerous accumulation of fat-laden deposits, or plaques, in the arteries. The old view that fat builds up on passive artery walls is no longer tenable.

Inflammation can also cause certain plaques to rupture. Blood clots tend to form over ruptured plaques and can then occlude arteries, leading to such atherosclerotic complications as heart attack and stroke.

Excess low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or bad cholesterol, in the blood can trigger arterial inflammation. And cholesterol-lowering therapies already cornerstones of treatment for atherosclerosis can reduce it. Strategies that interfere with inflammation in other ways are under study as well.

A blood test that detects ongoing inflammation might prove useful as an adjunct to the cholesterol tests that doctors now employ to assess risk for heart attack and stroke.

There are big dollars in cholesterol drugs and your doctor will not tell you that statins disrupt your CoQ10 pathway leading to higher risk of sudden heart failure. He or she also will not tell you that the Life Extension Foundation has a nutritional supplement protocol for lowering cholesterol that works well in combination with exercise. When my primary care physician wanted to put me on statin drugs a few years ago when my cholesterol hit 240, I told him I would be back in a few weeks with my cholesterol in normal range. The LEF protocol along with exercise brought it to 150. My physician was ecstatic and said he never saw anything like it! I thought it was too low (despite what some doctors will tell you) and work at maintaining it at 180.

I’ve replaced some of the LEF protocol with Dr. Sear’s pharmaceutical grade fish oil which my tests indicate lowers my heart rate by 10 beats/minute along with a 5-10 point cholesterol drop within a few minutes of taking it. This is consistent with findings of the Lyon study. In 1994, the Lancet published the Lyon Diet Heart Study which showed that a mediterranean diet reduced mortality by 70%. This is a little better than statin drugs, many of which show only marginal effects. In 1999, one of the leading cardiologists at Massachusetts General Hospital reported in an editorial in Circulation that almost no cardiologists were familiar with the Lyon Heart Study. Circulation. 1999;99:733-735

Maybe cardiologists do read the medical literature but are confused by reading misinformation from guys on drug company payrolls at NIH.

The National Institutes of Health: Public Servant or Private Marketer?

By David Willman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Doctors have long relied on the NIH to set medical standards. But with its researchers accepting fees and stock from drug companies, will that change? A continuing examination by The Times shows an unabashed mingling of science and commerce.

For 15 million Americans, it is a daily ritual: gulping down a pill to reduce cholesterol. They do it because their doctors tell them to. Their doctors, in turn, rely on recommendations from the National Institutes of Health and its scientists, such as Dr. H. Bryan Brewer Jr.

Brewer, as a leader at the NIH, was part of a team that gave the nation new cholesterol guidelines that were expected to prompt millions more people to take the daily pill. He also has written favorably of a specific brand of cholesterol medication, Crestor, which recently proved controversial.

What doctors were not told for years is this: While making recommendations in the name of the NIH, Brewer was working for the companies that sell the drugs. Government and company records show that from 2001 to 2003, he accepted about $114,000 in consulting fees from four companies making or developing cholesterol medications, including $31,000 from the maker of Crestor…

In the Aug. 21, 2003, American Journal of Cardiology, Brewer wrote that Crestor “produced markedly greater reductions” in cholesterol levels than three established competitor drugs tested in clinical trials. That was true. But Brewer also concluded that Crestor’s “benefit-risk profile … appears to be very favorable,” and that proved to be questionable.

Brewer assured doctors there was no basis for worry about a muscle-wasting side effect called rhabdomyolysis, which can cause kidney failure and death. (Another anticholesterol drug, Baycol, was removed from the market in 2001 after at least 31 deaths related to rhabdomyolysis were reported.)

Brewer wrote: “No cases of rhabdomyolysis occurred in patients receiving [Crestor] at 10 to 40” milligrams.

But eight cases of rhabdomyolysis were reported during clinical trials of Crestor. One of the case reports cited a patient who took the drug in 10-milligram doses, according to records filed with the Food and Drug Administration and reviewed by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act. Sales representatives for AstraZeneca have routinely provided copies of Brewer’s journal article about Crestor to doctors nationwide, a company spokeswoman confirmed last week.