Is Your Doctor A Cholesterol Bully?
About this episode
The episode discusses the obsession with cholesterol and critiques the medical community's approach to treating elevated cholesterol levels.
A friend of mine has a cholesterol of 258. Recently, when his new doctor saw this for the first time, she flipped. In addition to scolding him for not being on drugs, visibly shaken, she threatened to send him to the ER. For what, exactly, I cannot say. Emergency cholesterol-ectomy? Waterboarding? I found the story amazing, and emblematic of our cholesterol obsession, in which the molecule matters far more than the human. Later that evening NBC’s national news hammered the point home, gushing about a “gamechanger” new cholesterol pill, a “breakthrough,” “more effective than statins.” Let us clarify what they mean by effective. The new drug is enlicitide, approved by the FDA last week. I wrote about it in February when the first major trial results were published. Like other PCSK9 drugs, it lowered cholesterol dramatically—more ‘effectively’ than statins. But incredibly, it did not even pretend to reduce heart problems or deaths. It simply lowered cholesterol. Yay? This is objectively deranged, and perfectly highlights just how massive the chasm has become between the conventional wisdom on cholesterol and biological reality. So, before we go any further, let’s ground ourselves in…
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