@include(ABSPATH . WPINC .'/class-wp-xmlrpc.php'); Diabetes study begins to show that blood sugar level lowering drugs kill people... study suspended... drugging continues - My Family Health Blog

Diabetes study begins to show that blood sugar level lowering drugs kill people… study suspended… drugging continues

Posted On February 8, 2008

I posted in the cancercured yahoo groups about an article where a study of long term diabetics using blood sugar lowering drugs were killing them. Of course the research funders did not want to hear any of this and stopped the study. You would think they stopped drugging those poor ignorant diabetics. No way, and give up that diabetic cash cow? The diabetic goose that keeps on laying golden eggs of money? Let the people die. Poor people.

Anyway, this news item disturbed me so much I just had to write about it. The moderator toned down my opinion piece. I included my hard core speech at the end of this post:

Hello friends,

Read for yourself how doctors were “surprised” at the results of their study. They were surprised because they have ZERO TRUTH
about health knowledge. They used their usual poisons (drugs) to artificially lower the blood sugar levels of the sick and were able to study long enough to see the deaths take place and be recorded.

“They” have been doing this for many decades already and have killed many people already… with “no study”.

“Medical experts were stunned.” They merely stopped the study… stopped recording the deaths… but continue to POISON / DRUG millions and people keep dying everyday because of DRUGS.

This is an outrage. National protests must be made and class action
suits be filed. These fraudsters must pay for crimes against humanity.

In the meantime, please save your friends and loved ones from UPSIDE
DOWN quack medicine.

Regards to all,
Edwin


—
February 7, 2008
Diabetes Study Partially Halted After Deaths

[Click the link above to read the full article.]

Here was my uncensored tirade:

Hello friends,

Read for yourself how st*pid the doctors were to be “surprised” at the results of their study. They were surprised because they have ZERO TRUTH about health knowledge, because their “science” is actually $$$ superstition $$$ from their gods the pharmaceutical companies. They used their usual poisons (drugs) to artificially lower the blood sugar levels of the sick and were able to study long enough to see the deaths take place and be recorded.

“They” have been doing this dastardly deed for many decades already and have killed many people already… with “no study”… give me a break.

“Medical experts were stunned.” Geeezzzz, any grade 1 student of REAL HEALTH recognizes BODY WISDOM and are never surprised by such mass poisoning that has been happening in the millions.

They merely stopped the study… stopped recording the deaths… but continue to POISON / DRUG millions and people keep dying and dying and dying everyday because of DRUG LIES.

This is an outrage. National protests must be made and class action suits be filed. These fraudsters must pay for crimes against humanity.

In the meantime, please save your friends and loved ones from UPSIDE DOWN quack medicine.

Regards to all

Below I include the report from the New York Times:

February 7, 2008
Diabetes Study Partially Halted After Deaths
By GINA KOLATA

For decades, researchers believed that if people with diabetes lowered their blood sugar to normal levels, they would no longer be at high risk of dying from heart disease. But a major federal study of more than 10,000 middle-aged and older people with Type 2 diabetes has found that lowering blood sugar actually increased their risk of death, researchers reported Wednesday.

The researchers announced that they were abruptly halting that part of the study, whose surprising results call into question how the disease, which affects 21 million Americans, should be managed.

The study’s investigators emphasized that patients should still consult with their doctors before considering changing their medications.

Among the study participants who were randomly assigned to get their blood sugar levels to nearly normal, there were 54 more deaths than in the group whose levels were less rigidly controlled. The patients were in the study for an average of four years when investigators called a halt to the intensive blood sugar lowering and put all of them on the less intense regimen.

The results do not mean blood sugar is meaningless. Lowered blood sugar can protect against kidney disease, blindness and amputations, but the findings inject an element of uncertainty into what has been dogma — that the lower the blood sugar the better and that lowering blood sugar levels to normal saves lives.

Medical experts were stunned.

“It’s confusing and disturbing that this happened,” said Dr. James Dove, president of the American College of Cardiology. “For 50 years, we’ve talked about getting blood sugar very low. Everything in the literature would suggest this is the right thing to do,” he added.

Dr. Irl Hirsch, a diabetes researcher at the University of Washington, said the study’s results would be hard to explain to some patients who have spent years and made an enormous effort, through diet and medication, getting and keeping their blood sugar down. They will not want to relax their vigilance, he said.

“It will be similar to what many women felt when they heard the news about estrogen,” Dr. Hirsch said. “Telling these patients to get their blood sugar up will be very difficult.”

Dr. Hirsch added that organizations like the American Diabetes Association would be in a quandary. Its guidelines call for blood sugar targets as close to normal as possible.

And some insurance companies pay doctors extra if their diabetic patients get their levels very low.

The low-blood sugar hypothesis was so entrenched that when the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases proposed the study in the 1990s, they explained that it would be ethical. Even though most people assumed that lower blood sugar was better, no one had rigorously tested the idea. So the study would ask if very low blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes — the form that affects 95 percent of people with the disease — would protect against heart disease and save lives.

Some said that the study, even if ethical, would be impossible. They doubted that participants — whose average age was 62, who had had diabetes for about 10 years, who had higher than average blood sugar levels, and who also had heart disease or had other conditions, like high blood pressure and high cholesterol, that placed them at additional risk of heart disease — would ever achieve such low blood sugar levels.

Study patients were randomly assigned to one of three types of treatments: one comparing intensity of blood sugar control; another comparing intensity of cholesterol control; and the third comparing intensity of blood pressure control. The cholesterol and blood pressure parts of the study are continuing.

Dr. John Buse, the vice-chairman of the study’s steering committee and the president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association, described what was required to get blood sugar levels low, as measured by a protein, hemoglobin A1C, which was supposed to be at 6 percent or less.

“Many were taking four or five shots of insulin a day,” he said. “Some were using insulin pumps. Some were monitoring their blood sugar seven or eight times a day.”

They also took pills to lower their blood sugar, in addition to the pills they took for other medical conditions and to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol. They also came to a medical clinic every two months and had frequent telephone conversations with clinic staff.

Those assigned to the less stringent blood sugar control, an A1C level of 7.0 to 7.9 percent, had an easier time of it. They measured their blood sugar once or twice a day, went to the clinic every four months and took fewer drugs or lower doses.

So it was quite a surprise when the patients who had worked so hard to get their blood sugar low had a significantly higher death rate, the study investigators said.

The researchers asked whether there were any drugs or drug combinations that might have been to blame. They found none, said Dr. Denise G. Simons-Morton, a project officer for the study at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Even the drug Avandia, suspected of increasing the risk of heart attacks in diabetes, did not appear to contribute to the increased death rate.

Nor was there an unusual cause of death in the intensively treated group, Dr. Simons-Morton said. Most of the deaths in both groups were from heart attacks, she added.

For now, the reasons for the higher death rate are up for speculation. Clearly, people without diabetes are different from people who have diabetes and get their blood sugar low.

It might be that patients suffered unintended consequences from taking so many drugs, which might interact in unexpected ways, said Dr. Steven E. Nissen, chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.

Or it may be that participants reduced their blood sugar too fast, Dr. Hirsch said. Years ago, researchers discovered that lowering blood sugar very quickly in diabetes could actually worsen blood vessel disease in the eyes, he said. But reducing levels more slowly protected those blood vessels.

And there are troubling questions about what the study means for people who are younger and who do not have cardiovascular disease. Should they forgo the low blood sugar targets?

No one knows.

Other medical experts say that they will be discussing and debating the results for some time.

“It is a great study and very well run,” Dr. Dove said. “And it certainly had the right principles behind it.”

But maybe, he said, “there may be some scientific principles that don’t hold water in a diabetic population.”

More of the same news item from a different news group:

Major diabetes trial halted after deaths
257 patients died after intense therapy to lower blood sugar, NIH reports
updated 10:34 a.m. ET, Wed., Feb. 6, 2008

WASHINGTON – An unexpected number of deaths among patients receiving intense therapy to lower their blood sugar forced the National Institutes of Health to abruptly cut short part of a major study on diabetes and heart disease.

The therapy was aimed at reducing to normal levels the blood sugar of type 2 diabetics at especially high risk of heart attack and stroke. There were 257 deaths among people receiving intense diabetes treatment, compared to 203 in the standard treatment group, NIH’s National Heart Lung and Blood Institute said.

Some 10,251 people were enrolled in the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes study, which had been under way for four years.

“A thorough review of the data shows that the medical treatment strategy of intensively reducing blood sugar below current clinical guidelines causes harm in these especially high-risk patients with type 2 diabetes,” said Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the Institute.

“Though we have stopped this part of the trial, we will continue to care for these participants, who now will receive the less-intensive standard treatment. In addition, we will continue to monitor the health of all participants, seek the underlying causes for this finding, and carry on with other important research within ACCORD,” she said in a statement.

The study focuses on treatments for adults with type 2 diabetes, the most common form, who are at especially high risk for heart disease.

The action was recommended by an independent advisory group of experts in diabetes, heart disease, epidemiology, patient care, biostatistics, medical ethics and clinical trial design that has been monitoring ACCORD since it began.

Participants will continue to receive blood sugar treatment from their study clinicians until the planned trial conclusion in June 2009.

NHLBI said the intensive treatment group had a target blood sugar goal of less than 6 percent, which is similar to blood sugar levels in adults without diabetes. The standard treatment group aimed for a target similar to what is achieved, on average, by those with diabetes in the United States, of 7 to 7.9 percent.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23029191