I don't get it -- cholesterol in food?

I thought the link between cholesterol in the food and cholesterol in the
blood was weak. Apparently, the drug makers think it's strong:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4327591/

--
Bob in CT
Remove ".x" to reply

Bob in CT writes:
I thought the link between cholesterol in the food and cholesterol in
the blood was weak. Apparently, the drug makers think it's strong:

The article doesn't indicate a strong link between dietary and serum
cholesterol. Just that there was *a* link, which is true.

From what I've read, it seems that dietary cholesterol accounts for
about 20% of serum cholesterol. Blocking that can significanly lower
serum cholesterol. Didn't work for me; even on a ZERO cholesterol
diet my serum numbers didn't go down.

However, the liver uses cholesterol to produce bile, and if you can
block the re-absorption of bile, you can lower serum cholesterol.
That's what fiber does, and that seems to work for me.

Bob in CT wrote:

I thought the link between cholesterol in the food and cholesterol in the
blood was weak. Apparently, the drug makers think it's strong:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4327591/

Without even reading your link... you are investing belief in a
company that stands to make billions through marketing a patented drug
with god-knows how many side effects. You seem to believe that their
actions are based on the health and welfare of human beings and not
$$$$. If the cure to cancer was eating oregano no company would
research it because their are no exclusive rights and little profit to
be made in selling it. A cure eliminates your market. Treatments
secure long-term customers.

Time to click your heels together Dorothy.
DiGiTAL_ViNYL (no email)
350/328/200
Atkins since 1/12/2004

Bob in CT wrote in message ...
I thought the link between cholesterol in the food and cholesterol in the
blood was weak. Apparently, the drug makers think it's strong:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4327591/

Some drug that blocks in some unknown way the absorption of food
cholesterol. What else does it block? Nice to see corporate medical
research grasping at therapies that do not have a full of elucidation
of their mechanisms, yet low carb dieting is attacked as unproven and
dangerous.

Why don't these companies give us some free radical fighting drugs
that stop cholesterol oxidation and drugs that break down calcified
arterial plaques? These are actual problems as opposed to cholesterol
which is produced primarily by the liver and has always been part of
the human diet. If cholesterol was such a nasty substance the body
would not exert so much effort to recycle bile from the gut. It's not
like the gut absorbs every type of molecule and can't discriminate.

Carb consumption leads directly to triglyceride production in the
liver and an associated net production of LDL at the expense of HDL.
Shutting this process down through diet is much more intelligent than
taking drugs to block cholesterol absorption in the gut by unknown
mechanisms.

DigitalVinyl wrote in message . ..
Bob in CT wrote:

I thought the link between cholesterol in the food and cholesterol in the
blood was weak. Apparently, the drug makers think it's strong:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4327591/

Without even reading your link... you are investing belief in a
company that stands to make billions through marketing a patented drug
with god-knows how many side effects. You seem to believe that their
actions are based on the health and welfare of human beings and not
$$$$. If the cure to cancer was eating oregano no company would
research it because their are no exclusive rights and little profit to
be made in selling it. A cure eliminates your market. Treatments
secure long-term customers.

The above is pretty much the premise for another Atkins book about
treating common human ailments with vitamins & minerals & stuff. The
whole book is example after example of how a particular vitamin or
mineral has shown in tests to have double or triple the efficacy of
certain prescription drugs without the drugs' side effects, and yet
the treatment of choice is still the drug, not the vitamin, for the
reasons you just aptly stated.

Really recommend the book -- here's the amazon link for more info:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books

DigitalVinyl wrote in message . ..
Bob in CT wrote:

I thought the link between cholesterol in the food and cholesterol in the
blood was weak. Apparently, the drug makers think it's strong:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4327591/

Without even reading your link... you are investing belief in a
company that stands to make billions through marketing a patented drug
with god-knows how many side effects. You seem to believe that their
actions are based on the health and welfare of human beings and not
$$$$. If the cure to cancer was eating oregano no company would
research it because their are no exclusive rights and little profit to
be made in selling it. A cure eliminates your market. Treatments
secure long-term customers.

Time to click your heels together Dorothy.
DiGiTAL_ViNYL (no email)
350/328/200
Atkins since 1/12/2004


A nice broad sweeping indictment of an entire industry without even
bothering to read the link provided. Nothing like an open mind. BTW,
how would we know Oregano might be a possible cure for cancer without
one of these drug companies doing extensive research?

(Chet Hayes) wrote:

DigitalVinyl wrote in message . ..
Bob in CT wrote:

I thought the link between cholesterol in the food and cholesterol in the
blood was weak. Apparently, the drug makers think it's strong:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4327591/

Without even reading your link... you are investing belief in a
company that stands to make billions through marketing a patented drug
with god-knows how many side effects. You seem to believe that their
actions are based on the health and welfare of human beings and not
$$$$. If the cure to cancer was eating oregano no company would
research it because their are no exclusive rights and little profit to
be made in selling it. A cure eliminates your market. Treatments
secure long-term customers.

Time to click your heels together Dorothy.
DiGiTAL_ViNYL (no email)
350/328/200
Atkins since 1/12/2004


A nice broad sweeping indictment of an entire industry without even
bothering to read the link provided. Nothing like an open mind. BTW,
how would we know Oregano might be a possible cure for cancer without
one of these drug companies doing extensive research?

Whoosh, the point went right by you didn't it.
It is the nature of all businesses to make money for its principals
and only its principals (owners, executives). NOT to better mankind.
This is simple and basic and true.

Oregano cannot be copyrighted and there are no exclusive rights. Every
person can grow a mountain of oregano in their back yeard, even on
windowsills. There is no money to be made, so it is not looked for.
If it was found as such, the company would likely attempt to
synthesize a chemical compound instead that was similar so they could
patent and market it exclusively. You do realize that 90% of the NEW
drugs coming out are simple variations of existing drugs with no
better effectiveness. Usually they just change side effects..so if
drug A is burning a 3 inch hole in your stomach you can switch to Drug
B which may hurt you vision and give you migraines. Tired of that one?
Drug C has an obscure risk of heart attacks and nausea, diarrhea and
abdominal cramps. Tired of those side effects, You could try Drug A
again or wait for the next variation. Or maybe yb then the 7-year
patent will wear off and every drug company out there will start
shipping their own version of the same drug and you can try all of
them. True innovation is not coming quickly from drug manufacturers.
That is why so many of them use vague and flowery advertising
campaign. I remember the first 6 months I saw claritan ads, none would
tell you what the drug was for, just ASK YOUR DOCTOR FOR CLARITAN. Not
exactly responsible marketing of a prescription-only drug. Targetting
a consumer who has no clue how to prescribe medications is the first
sign that they are just pushing for money, and don't care about
health.

DiGiTAL_ViNYL (no email)
350/328/200
Atkins since 1/12/2004

Sorry to meander off topic, but your post reflects some common
misconceptions about patent law and the pharmaceutical industry, which
I would like to correct. I am speaking from the perspective of US
law, but the basic concepts are the same throughout much of the world.

DigitalVinyl wrote in message

Oregano cannot be copyrighted and there are no exclusive rights.

Oregano cannot be copyrighted because it is not a work of authorship
fixed in tangible form and thus not appropriate subject matter for
copyright. The concept you were trying to express is that oregano
cannot be patented. This is true, because oregano is not novel - it
is a known substance.

However, if you discovered a method of using oregano, say to treat
cancer, that was hitherto unknown, you could obtain a patent on that
*method*. Then anyone who uses the method would be in violation of
your right to exclude others from using the patented method.

Every
person can grow a mountain of oregano in their back yeard, even on
windowsills. There is no money to be made, so it is not looked for.
If it was found as such, the company would likely attempt to
synthesize a chemical compound instead that was similar so they could
patent and market it exclusively.

That's not necessarily so. Many drugs presently on the market are
still more efficiently obtained by processing natural sources than by
synthesis from raw reagents.

Moreover, the patentability of a compound does not depend upon whether
it was synthesized, or was extracted from a natural source. Rather,
it depends upon whether the compound was hitherto unknown. If you
purify a chemical from oregano that no one knew was in there, and no
one knew of from any other source, you may obtain a patent on the
purified form of the chemical. Someone using oregano would not be in
violation of such a patent, only someone using that chemical in its
purified form. Indeed, even if I figured out a way to synthesize the
same chemical in its purified form, I would still be in violation of
your patent *on the chemical* even though I obtained the chemical in a
completely different way.


Or maybe yb then the 7-year
patent will wear off and every drug company out there will start
shipping their own version of the same drug and you can try all of
them.

I'm not sure where you got the seven year term from. Figuring patent
terms can be somewhat complex, but they usually last a bit longer than
seven years. In most of the world, a patent issuing today will expire
twenty years from the date on which it was filed (or the date on which
the earliest related application was filed), subject to some term
adjustments. In the US, in the case of pharmaceuticals, patent terms
can actually be extended where the patent owner spent some of its term
in clinical trials for FDA approval.

True innovation is not coming quickly from drug manufacturers.

I disagree; I think there is a great deal of innovation.
Unfortunately, many drugs do not make a lot of money, either because
there aren't that many people who need them or because they are very
expensive to manufacture and administer. So some drug companies do
turn to pushing chemicals toward people who may not need them and
creating disorders that their compounds can alleviate.

That is why so many of them use vague and flowery advertising
campaign. I remember the first 6 months I saw claritan ads, none would
tell you what the drug was for, just ASK YOUR DOCTOR FOR CLARITAN. Not
exactly responsible marketing of a prescription-only drug.
Targetting
a consumer who has no clue how to prescribe medications is the first
sign that they are just pushing for money, and don't care about
health.

I don't disagree with your disgust with pharmaceutical advertising.

Claritin is an interesting example, though; first of all, as a
lifelong allergy sufferer who remembers life before Claritin, I would
count it as a major innovation and a major improvement to my life. It
is one of only two allergy drugs I can take that does all of the
following: (1) alleviates my symptoms; (2) does not put me to sleep;
(3) does not give me hives. (The other is Flonase, also a relatively
new drug.) I consider Claritin a shining example of the good that
pharmaceutical research can do. Moreover, the patent on Claritin
recently expired, and the impending introduction of generic forms of
the drug was what led the manufacturer to seek FDA approval for an
over-the-counter version of the drug. Their motive was maximizing
their profits, surely - but the result was that Claritin became
cheaper and easier for me to get. So the system is not all bad.

Have a good day,
carla