Extended Interview - Professor Shah Ebrahim

Professor Ebrahim is one of the authors of the highly influential Cochrane review of statins. Followers of the statins saga will already be aware that the Cochrane group radically changed their opinion of statins between the first review in 2011 and the second review in 2013.

This video is almost one hour long, sorry, I did wonder if I should split it into three videos to make it more digestible. However, I think the video is useful in appreciating the mindset of those who dogmatically support mass statin use. In my mind, the striking features of the interview are:

  1. Support for Ancel Keys work, which is now widely known to have been fraudulent.
  2. A complete disregard for any suggestion that statins might be harmful in any way, despite the fact that Cochrane themselves admitted a serve lack of data on the adverse effects of statins.
  3. Complete refusal to accept that the ‘benefits’ of statins have been exaggerated - associated with this is the opinion that it is OK to use relative percentages, which we know only serve to mislead people.
  4. Complete refusal to accept that the huge commercial influences may be a problem.

By the way, for just one of the many examples why the commercial interests are a problem, please see this other video here, which features a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.