Hannah Wallace

JANERA.com anti-slavery fundraiser this Thursday

We interrupt our regular programming for a moment to plug JANERA.com, a fabulous organization I work for, and our upcoming fundraiser for the Somaly Mam Foundation this Thursday.
 
Details are here.

And here's the short version:  

Chelsea Art Museum - 26 March

9pm - 1am

Speaker E. Benjamin Skinner, author of "A Crime So Monstrous," great music, open bar

$40 in advance RSVP 

$50 at the door

If you want to learn more about modern-day slavery, buy Ben Skinner's book (now out in paperback) and read my interview with him.

Raw Milk—still controversial?

Raw milk continues to be a hot topic in the news—especially now that Connecticut is talking about restricting the sale of raw milk to farms and farmers' markets. (Connecticut, like California, has been one of the few states where farmers can sell raw milk in health food stores, as long as it is clearly labeled as such.)

On Friday, the Brian Lehrer show tackled the issue, inviting NYU nutrition professor Marion Nestle to weigh in ("I see no reason why we can't produce safe raw milk") and Connecticut state representative and economist Diana Urban, who sets the record straight re: the E. coli outbreak in CT last fall that was traced to a dairy in Simsbury. (The bottles of milk were not labeled as raw, which is what CT state law requires. "It was to do with poor management," Urban says.)

The whole segment is worth listening to if only to hear listener Rosalind tell how she uprooted her boys from NYC when they were diagnosed with ADD and ADHD and gave them a life of raw milk on a farm in the country (and other real foods, one would assume) instead of pharmaceuticals. Her enthusiasm for the beverage ("it contains more omega 3s than we could get anywhere else!") is contagious.

Urban, who grew up on a Long Island dairy farm drinking unpasteurized milk, explains why the law (should it pass) would be the death of small farmers in her state: they are living on such small margins as it is that they may have to go out of business if they can't sell at Whole Foods and other health food stores. 

As one CT dairy farmer in this NYT article says, "If you don't want to drink it, don't drink it."

Hat tip to Rachel Stevens for tipping me off to the WNYC segment.

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The Truth about Lipitor

Sally Fallon's talk last week inspired me to delve into the latest research on cholesterol and statins. Though this investigative article is over a year old (it was BusinessWeek's cover story last January 17th), it's one of the most thorough I could find on the subject of statins (specifically, Pfizer's blockbuster drug Lipitor) and their inability to significantly reduce heart attacks in any but those who have already had heart disease. 

Journalist John Carey's main points, in case you don't have time to read the whole thing:

1. Pfizer has mislead the public (as most pharmaceutical companies do) by using this dramatic statistic in its ads: Lipitor reduces the risk of heart attack by 36%. Read the fine print, and you'll see that in a large clinical study, only 1 person out of 100 was spared a heart attack after taking Lipitor for 3 years. (In scientific parlance, Lipitor has a very high NNT—number needed to treat—of 100. Compare that to the standard antibiotic therapy to treat H. pylori stomach bacteria, which has an NNT of 1.1—10 out of 11 people will be cured.) 

2. 10-15% of statin users suffer side effects including muscle pain, cognitive impairments, and sexual dysfunction. Small prices to pay if you're definitely preventing a heart attack. But if after 3 years of these unhappy developments you only reduce your risk of coronary events by 1 out of 100—you have to ask yourself if Lipitor is worth taking. (Not to mention its high price tag—if not to you directly, then to insurance companies, Medicare, and ultimately back to you via taxes.)

3. Though Lipitor indisputably lowers cholesterol levels, many scientists are raising doubts that we need to drive down our cholesterol levels in the first place. (i.e. the whole cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease is under intense scrutiny.)  As Dr. Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at the Oakland Research Institute says in the article, "When you look at patients with heart disease, their cholesterol levels are not that [much] higher than those without heart disease."  John Carey, the reporter, continues:

Compare countries, for example. Spaniards have LDL levels similar to Americans', but less than half the rate of heart disease. The Swiss have even higher cholesterol levels, but their rates of heart disease are also lower. Australian aborigines have low cholesterol but high rates of heart disease.

It's starting to look like Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, Gary Taubes, Uffe Ravnskov (author of the out-of-print "Cholesterol Myths"), and other "cholesterol skeptics" (as they're known) should not have been so quickly dismissed.