I post this today, Memorial Day, in honor of all the veterans who have served our military, in this moment or in all of history. I also know from my work in recent years which has focused on chronic illness and chronic wellness, and why increasing numbers of people have slipped from our natural state of "chronic wellness" into "chronic illness", that those who serve/served in our military in 'modern times' have high rates of chronic illness. They have something in common with many of the 'veterans' in the civilian population who today are remembering other times when they were well and were living their lives differently. So perhaps everyone will see the reason I chose this topic today, as it's a shining and current example of the 'big systems' that are in power (BigPharma industry) versus 'the little guy' -- fish and olive oil.

"Following the money" is something I like to teach people to do when thinking about any kind of issue. In this case, 'they' have drugs that are in competition with the simpler, more natural, less expensive fish oil that increasing numbers of people are 'into', for prevention as well as reversing and correcting previous states of unwellness in the cardiovascular system or other tissues. To have a placebo that's not truly a placebo but has components in it which are suspected to be some of the beneficial properties why fish oil works? I'd say 'unbelievable' if I weren't already so far down the path of learning about how things have worked and developed over the years and decades and centuries leading to the medical systems and "powers that be" in the United States, in the corporate world and government. 

Think about the dollars that BigPharma has to sponsor research whether they do it legitimately or illigitimately such as this article alleges (and it appears to me that this was confabulated research trying to discredit more natural forms of reversing cardiovascular disease.) Then think about a few of the olive and fish oil manufacturers coming together to do a 'big study' like this one. See the disparity of power? They can do smaller studies but by the BigPharma collaborative having a huge number of participants, the typical provider of medical advise in the United State is going to go by what this study says because they have learned to value bigger is better with research. 

I have seen physicians at continuing education literally not ask about fish oil and bipolar disorder/mental health, when a regional expert came to provide training. So I asked, and the response was that it was not a good solution to take fish oil as you'd have to be taking the equivalent of eating X# of fish a day. Yes, that's a sustainability problem if the whole world were to, today, stop taking all the mood medications and start taking fish oil, but if it's true that it's more effective, as the study I'm aware of indicated, then isn't that a pathway to figuring out what's causing the disorder and a more harmoneous way in terms of what our bodies can process without side effects, to treat something? That gets into a realm called 'evolutionary medicine, and psychiatry is one of the subspecialties, something most allopathically trained physicians aren't even aware of. But it makes sense to me and millions of other consumers and medical experts. So I promote education from that standpoint and want everyone to be aware of research like this NEW about fish oil.

If your provider cites this research and you 'think otherwise', challenge them on it, offer to provide a resource such as this one that I set up here. I've seen providers gradually seeing these realities. This is hard for many of them, they pledged to 'do no harm' and the frank and harsh reality is that many of the things they've been taught to do have harmed people. There is a process they have to go through, much like when someone dies or another tragic event occurs, and denial is part of it, as is anger. Acceptance comes to those who venture into the processing, so be supportive of that as consumers or colleagues if you are a medical provider. So many medical providers have fought hard fights to get the education they did, the training in the fields they did, and in the jobs they have had. It's not an easy time for anyone, basically.

Lastly, I will mention that in the past, my father, a World War 2 and Cold War veteran of the US Air Force, who spent his entire life chronically ill with many disorders which I believe come under the category of 'environmental illness' was completely undiagnosed with most of the disorders.

I had gotten on the trail of functional and integrative medicine in the mid 90s, when I was in university to become an occupational therapist in middle age and had been struck down by another significan round of illness which I believe was from a combination of foods I was unaware of being allergic to (wheat and dairy at the top of the list as is the case with MOST people who get tested who have illness issues) and being pushed by the university into having a vaccination for mumps rather than be kept from coming onto campus if one of the 20,000+ students in the university was to have mumps, not to mention I had many learning disabilities including dyslexia and had more stress than the average medical-industry student in order to get the grades required to be 'with the program'. 

Naturally, I shared all the information as I learned it with my father, who had a disorder that has a symptom of being stringent about following rules (he LOVED being in the military, by the way, it was a great system for him to operate within with that 'personality feature').

This is the kind of information that would lead him to NOT proceed in the progressive, functional medicine direction and instead he would stick with what conventional medicine condoned and promoted. Something like saying 'follow the money' and 'look at the motives by those that funded this' might possibly have allowed him to see this study for what it is. Which, in my opinion, is shameful abuse of the research system.

I commend writers and 'veterans' of the medical system such as Ms. Heidi Stevenson for their being here in the trenches to help get the word out to ALL the veterans, from the military or otherwise fighting the fight about wellness and illness today in America and beyond! "Medical Veterans we stand together" And to those who have served in the military, alive or who have now passed, such as my father ... (salute, blessings, my thanks....). 

Pfizer-Funded Study Falsely Claims Fish Oil Useless

Sunday, May 26th 2013 at 2:00 pm

Written By: 

Heidi Stevenson [1]

Heidi Stevenson is Allopathy's Gadfly. She's an iatrogenic survivor whose prior career in computer science, research, and writing was lost as a result. She has turned her skills towards exposing the modern medical scam and the politics surrounding it, along with providing information about the effectiveness of much alternative medicine, without which she would not be here today acting as Allopathy's Gadfly. Find her work on GaiaHealth.com [2]

There was no placebo!

Certainly, the write-up on the study claims there was, but the fact is that a placebo, to be legitimate, must contain things other than the active ingredients being tested. So what's being tested?Eicosapentanoic acid [5] and docosahexanoic acid [6], two of the substances in fish oil that are believed to be the active properties that provide its benefits.

The "placebo" used was olive oil. What's in olive oil? Eicosapentanoic acid and docosahexanoic acid, among other substances. Why would anyone expect different results between subjects who took the active ingredients and a "control" group who also took the active ingredients?

How They Cheated: Secondary Trick

The death rate in both the fish oil and fake placebo groups was less than the author anticipated. Why would that be?

In fact, the study did demonstrate something significant. Fewer people in both groups died than the researchers anticipated. Why would that happen? Simple! Both fish oil and olive oil are beneficial in heart health.

Nonetheless, rather than admit the truth—since clearly, these researchers were focused on something other than finding out what's beneficial to heart health [7]—they refused to ask why there were fewer deaths than anticipated. Instead, they simply ignored the only valid question. Instead, they simply added end points to the trial, such as nonfatal heart attacks and strokes.

And what did they discover from the secondary endpoints? In fact, they learned something that supports the fact that both fish oil and olive oil are beneficial to heart health: The secondary endpoints had the same results in both groups.

What Went Wrong?

Now we need to ask: Why is this pseudo study so embarrassingly wrong? How did the authors get themselves into such an absurdly ridiculous situation? And that can be answered quite simply: Follow the money.

Who paid for this junk science? There were three funders: Pfizer, Società Prodotti Antibiotici, and Sigma-Tau. All three of them are pharmaceutical corporations.

It isn't in their interest to fund research that elicits the truth. It's in their interest to fund research that drives potential patients and their doctors to their products. The fact is that fish oil and olive oil [8]are not products that they sell. What they sell are drugs.

Pfizer sells the cholesterol reduction drug, Lipitor. Fish oil and olive oil are both in competition with Lipitor. So, a study that directly debunks claims about the heart health benefits of fish oil and indirectly implies that olive oil is also not beneficial is just the sort of thing they'd want to fund.

What do the researchers know? If they hope to continue to receive research funding, they'd better deliver what the funders want.

So they did.

If it means that your health is damaged, that apparently means nothing to them. If it means you die as a result, they don't care. As long as they continue to get funded, they're happy to produce whatever faux results the buyers want.

As to those "experts" who have been promoting the phony results of this study,^[2,3] shame on them! The question is, do they prefer to be thought of as just plain ignorant, unable to see how absurd this pseudo study is, or do they want to be thought of as stupid, unable to understand how absurd it is?

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Resources

1. n−3 Fatty Acids in Patients with Multiple Cardiovascular Risk Factors [9]; New England Journal of Medicine; The Risk and Prevention Study Collaborative Group; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1205409
2. No benefit of fish oil in high-risk patients [10]
3. Fish Oils to Prevent Heart Disease: A Definite 'No Go' [11]

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Again, please go to either of the above-mentioned/referred websites, they are excellent resources.