New Research Confirms We Got Cholesterol All Wrong

A comprehensive new study on cholesterol, based on results from more than a million patients, could help upend decades of government advice about diet, nutrition, health, prevention, and medication. Just don't hold your breath.

The study, published in the Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, centers on statins, a class of drugs used to lower levels of LDL-C, the so-called "bad" cholesterol, in the human body. According to the study, statins are pointless for most people.

"No evidence exists to prove that having high levels of bad cholesterol causes heart disease, leading physicians have claimed" in the study, reports the Daily Mail. The Express likewise says the new study finds "no evidence that high levels of 'bad' cholesterol cause heart disease."

The study also reports that "heart attack patients were shown to have lower than normal cholesterol levels of LDL-C" and that older people with higher levels of bad cholesterol tend to live longer than those with lower levels.

This is probably news to many in government. But it's not news to everyone.

"In fact researchers have known for decades from nutrition studies that LDL-C is not strongly correlated with cardiac risk," says Nina Teicholz, an investigative journalist and author of The New York Times bestseller The Big Fat Surprise (along with a great recent Wall St. Journal op-ed highlighting ongoing flaws in federal dietary advice).

In an email to me this week, she pointed out that "physicians continue focusing on LDL-C in part because they have drugs to lower it. Doctors are driven by incentives to prescribe pills for nutrition-related diseases rather than better nutrition—a far healthier and more natural approach."

Cholesterol in our diets comes from animals and animal products—including eggs, meat, fish, and dairy. The government told us for decades that these foods were, to varying degrees, dangerous.

Federal dietary policy is shaped by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), which meets every five years to update its findings. The government touts the DGAC and the dietary guidelines it develops as "an important resource to help our Nation reach its highest standard of health."

The federal government's war on cholesterol, as early DGAC recommendations suggest, dates back decades. For example, the 1995 DGAC report stressed the dangers of dietary cholesterol.

"Most people are aware that high levels of saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet are linked to increased blood cholesterol levels and a greater risk for heart disease," it declares. "Choosing foods with less cholesterol and saturated fat will help lower your blood cholesterol levels."

Only in 2015 did federal dietary guidelines (mostly) halt the assault on cholesterol. Many hailed the news, while still stressing that high cholesterol levels in our bloodstreams is still a danger.

"There's a growing consensus among nutrition scientists that cholesterol in food has little effect on the amount of cholesterol in the bloodstream," a Harvard Medical School blog post noted that same year. "And that's the cholesterol that matters."

"The government's new stance on dietary cholesterol is in line with that of other nations, which do not single out cholesterol as an issue," the Washington Post reported following the release of the most recent dietary guidelines in 2016. "Yet it should not be confused with officials' continued warning about high levels of 'bad' cholesterol in the blood—something that has been clearly linked to heart disease."

But this most recent study is throwing cold water on many of those continued government warnings about blood cholesterol.

What's more, if bad cholesterol isn't so bad, then the benefits of so-called good cholesterol are also under assault. Recently, *HDL, the so-called "good" cholesterol, was itself deemed suspect in some cases.

Dietary fat also appears not to be the danger the government says it is. Another new study, reported on by Ron Bailey this week, suggests, as he writes, that the federal government's warnings to avoid dairy products that are high in fat "is bunk."

I'm not a nutritionist. I don't know if the science on cholesterol is settled. But the federal government has warned us for decades about cholesterol in our bodies and in our food. The fact those warnings are now changing means the government has, despite what I'm sure are the good intentions of everyone involved, been handing out poor dietary advice and developing regulations that reflect that poor advice.

I'm one of many who has called out the DGAC and the federal government for foisting "decades of confusing and often-contradictory dietary advice" upon the American public. I also suggested, in a column last year, that one way the government might back up its claims to possess invaluable and unparalleled expertise in the areas of food policy and nutrition would be stop regularly reversing or altering its recommendations.

"The reason that we don't know about these huge reversals in dietary advice is that the nutrition establishment is apparently loathe to make public their major reversals in policy," Teicholz says. "The low-fat diet is another example: neither the AHA or the dietary guidelines recommend a low-fat diet anymore. But they have yet to announce this to the American public. And some in the establishment are still fighting to retain the low-fat status quo."

I am not your doctor, nor your nutritionist. I have no idea what you should eat. Maybe the government should adopt that mantra, too.

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Sen. Cory Booker Says Aborting a Baby With a Heartbeat is ‘Health Care’

Sen. Cory Booker (D.-N.J.) sent out a Tweet today objecting to a law signed by the governor of Georgia yesterday that would prohibit aborting a baby who has a detectable heartbeat.

“Georgia’s ‘fetal heartbeat’ law is an all-out-attack on women that will strip them of their rights before many even know they are pregnant. I will fight to protect Roe v. Wade—abortion is health care,” said Booker in his Tweet.

On Tuesday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law that would prohibit aborting a baby with a detectable heartbeat. This made Georgia the fourth state to pass a law of this kind. The other states are Ohio, Mississippi and Kentucky.

Because Roe v. Wade, the current Supreme Court precedent on abortion, says women have a right to abortion in early pregnancy, the state laws banning abortion of a baby with a heartbeat will eventually need to be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

The Tweet that Booker sent out included a video in which he stated his opinion in favor or Roe v. Wade. “And so, I believe very strongly in Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” he said.

“I believe that we should actually codify it in law through the legislature so nobody, no matter who you appoint to the judiciary branch of the government can ever overturn it,” he said.

“And I will fight to protect a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions,” he said. “I will fight to make sure that a woman’s body is under the purview of that woman and not a bunch of politicians in Washington or in a state capitol.”

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Another Obama Gender-Agenda Fail

Brig. Gen. Kristin Goodwin was removed from the Air Force Academy for poor performance.

At the end of April, the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA), without explanation, removed its Commandant of Cadets, Brig. Gen. Kristin Goodwin. It is unusual to remove an officer from command prior to his or her next rotation. According to the Public Information Office, “Effective immediately, Brig. Gen. Kristin Goodwin is no longer performing her duties as the commandant of cadets pending the results of an ongoing investigation.”

Goodwin is a ‘93 USAFA graduate, and spent most of her pilot years with bomber groups, but coming to the Academy from her staff job as a military assistant to Barack Obama’s inept and unqualified Air Force Secretary, Deborah Lee James. She was on a short list for the USAFA Commandant post with other qualified candidates, but she had one extra qualification important to the Obama administration — gender dysphoria.

Obama loathed our military, and disgracefully used its service branches and their respective academies to implement and enforce his cultural agenda. The Air Force Academy was his favorite target, having the most conservative culture of the service academies.

In 2013, we exposed Obama’s agenda to rid military oaths of the words, “So Help Me God,” starting with a quiet omission of those words in the USAFA officer and enlisted oaths. After our investigation of Obama’s subversive maneuver, veterans serving in Congress sent an official letter of inquiry to the Superintendent of the Air Force Academy asking for “a detailed explanation as to why the [AFA handbook] omits 'So Help me God.’” That put and end to the administration’s effort to alter military oaths, though we can tell you with complete certainty that the explanation given to Congress was a lie.

Goodwin arrived at USAFA for her new appointment with her “wife” and their daughter. Let me say again, while Goodwin’s choice of a mate is just that, her “sexual orientation” undoubtedly elevated her above other qualified candidates for the Commandant post. Unfortunately, with a few women in military leadership positions, they tend to be toxic leaders when endeavoring to prove they are better than any male counterpart.

According to our military analyst, former Marine officer Charles Paige, “Some female leaders are out to prove to everyone that they’re the Alpha. There are plenty of male flag/general officers who think fear and intimidation are good leadership traits, but percentage-wise there’s a higher proportion of female flag/general officers that demonstrate it, and of those, the LGBT even more so.”

Our sources in the Air Force community indicate that Goodwin’s removal was not based on criminal activity, but because of well-documented caustic communications with subordinates — the toxic leadership style which won her the nickname “The Duchess.”

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Michigan Attorney General Ignores State Law and Targets Faith-Based Foster Care and Adoption Providers

Michigan passed a law in 2015 protecting the right of faith-based foster care and adoption providers to operate consistently with their beliefs.

But apparently, the Michigan attorney general thinks it’s ok to just go ahead and ignore that law.

The office of Attorney General Dana Nessel – in a settlement agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in March – agreed that the state will no longer provide funds to foster care and adoption agencies who desire to place children in homes with a married mother and father according to their religious beliefs.

Clearly, the attorney general has one goal in mind: to shut out faith-based foster care and adoption providers.

This is anti-religious hostility, plain and simple – and it forces children to pay the price.

That’s why Catholic Charities West Michigan has filed a lawsuit.

Religious foster care and adoption providers such as Catholic Charities West Michigan are driven by their faith to serve the most vulnerable in their communities. One of the ways they do this is by providing foster care and adoption services for the many children that do not have a home. With more than 400,000 children in foster care in the U.S., and approximately 13,000 in Michigan alone, we need more organizations like this. Yet, because Catholic Charities West Michigan believes that the best place for a child is in a home with a father and a mother, some government officials would like to single them out and punish them.

Michigan works with a number of foster care and adoption providers across the state to help children find loving homes. And protecting faith-based foster care and adoption providers does not interfere with other providers. It simply ensures that there are more providers working toward the best for children.

With so many kids in foster care, why wouldn’t Michigan want to use every resource at its disposal?

Eliminating faith-based foster care and adoption providers means fewer organizations working to find children loving homes.

We’ve already seen the effects of such anti-religious hostility in other areas. Laws demanding that faith-based foster care and adoption agencies act against their beliefs have forced Catholic Charities to cease their foster care and adoption ministries in Boston; Washington, D.C.; Illinois; San Francisco; and Buffalo. In Illinois, for example, this forced thousands of children and foster parents to leave Catholic Charities – displacing roughly 3,000 children.

This is especially concerning because religious foster care and adoption providers are often the most effective at finding homes for difficult-to-place children, including groups of siblings, older children, and children with special needs. For instance, 45 percent of all Catholic Charities adoptions were children with special needs in 2016.

These places shouldn’t be kicked out of the system. They should get an award.

After all, they get it. We must keep kids first.

While the Michigan law does just that, the attorney general has decided that political ideology trumps the law – and the needs of children.

But these kids are our future – and our present – and they deserve better than that.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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