wow John, bad week for Western Medical Academics.....after years of a few Doctors being ridiculed for opposing Statins...suddenly the research is out that Statins do more harm than good. And the medical academics/researchers are the ones who chiefly have been the defenders. And hip replacements....carcinogenic; and it goes on and on.....once you start looking at the problems in academic medical research/usage its an eyeopener !
It makes the FSM move look like a (poor) attempt to deflect attention away from the problems in academic medicine/research by blaming others!
I suspect that unless you all back off, then you're going to get a community back lash against academic medics in general. The fact that you can get me and a group of similar influential totally non medic/alternative medic people (with absolutely no vested interest) so annoyed at the arrogance being shown by the FSM< and gets us looking more closely at the problems in academic medicine is a sign that its time you all cleaned up your own act. The many excellent surgeons, Doctors and Nurses who work with great commitment, could be tarnished by such an arrogant disconnected academic view of the world and your beliefs that you all control what is correct knowledge and what is not.
Instead of the VC's listening to your suggestions they should send you all packing with the message "clean up your own house"...or perhaps "physician heal yourself" one could say.

JP,

"suddenly the research is out that Statins do more harm than good"

What a load of rubbish.

Because the human physiology is so varied, everyone reacts slightly differently to drugs or vaccines, and taking any treatment has some inherent risk. For those with hypertension the side effects of not taking statins is most often heart disease and death.

This crusade against a life saving drug is similar to the morons from the anti vaccination mob.

Hi Shadow Minister.
Unfortunately I and many of my friends (all with many degrees and doctorates) must be in your opinion morons. The lady down the road (who has a Doctorate in a non medical but scientific subject) whose child was impacted by a vaccination and had a fit and other symptoms must be a moron according to you. So must many others. We (consumers) look at evidence from large scale research; we look at evidence from a range of other perspectives. We draw some conclusions and we leave some things on hold.
The consumer does the same. They hear the blind faith of the academic medico/pharm link in drugs, whether its chemo, all vaccinations (remember some recent problems), hips, statins and so on.
Its a pity that your last post was so. I had enjoyed the balance in your posts.
The number of people talking about this is growing. 1 in 150 taking statins who actually need them....thats the message out there
They compare now this blind faith with evidence they hear, see, collect, and many of us come to the conclusion that a lot of medicine is not as evidence based as it makes out it is. The overworked GP or Nurse can hardly have more time than to reply on the pharm rep for information; many of them balance this with evidence from individuals they treat or colleagues (dare I say sometimes even CAM colleagues)
Its not media hype-the coverage represents a huge consumer concern over what is happening to their health. And academic medicos will be the losers if they go down the path of FSM of throwing the blame at others.
FSM need to back off, apologise for their arrogance. If they don't then I suspect they will start to galvanise a backlash against them. And its not going to be a CAM backlash-its going to be much bigger and broader than that.
Then both Western Medicine practitioners and academic medicos and CAM need to find ways to work together to find the benefits of both approaches, and gradually to build better evidence.

JP,

"Unfortunately I and many of my friends (all with many degrees and doctorates) must be in your opinion morons." - You said it.

Compared to the approximately 2000 people that die p.a. in Australia from flu, the few people that get an adverse reaction compared to the hundreds of lives saved is not rational. It is like campaigning against seat belts because they chafe.

I have yet to see you post a link to support your far fetched claims.

interesting. Well it just says it all.
Bowing out now of the discussion- but each time FSM takes another arrogant step like this, they should expect the backlash to recruit a far wider section of the professional, political and general public....