I’m astounded by how stupid people with PhDs can be. Yesterday’s news carried a story about research claiming that B vitamins did nothing to prevent heart attacks. Not one but three separate studies tested whether folic acid, vitamin B6, and vitamin B12 reduced heart risks. The studies were set up to test the hypothesis that a buildup of homocysteine increases risk. Homocysteine is an intermediate biochemical on your body’s path to creating the antioxidant glutathione. Too much homocysteine causes inflammation of artery walls and inflammation is now getting a lot of attention as a cause of cardiovascular disease. A disruption in the metabolism of B vitamins causes a buildup of homocysteine.
The role of homocysteine in promoting cardiovascular disease was first proposed by Dr. Kilmer McCully over 35 years ago and is described in his two books The Homocysteine Revolution and The Heart Revolution. On the faculty at Harvard Medical School, Dr. McCully found that children who had heart attacks and strokes also had high homocyteine levels. He investigated further and found a similar relationship in adults. But his discovery was rejected by his colleagues. They were ready to reject it because they knew that cholesterol not homocysteine was the culprit. Dr. McCully was ostracized, denied tenure, and left Harvard. And become a hero in the orthomolecular health community.
But these vitamin B studies looked only at people at high risk of heart attacks or strokes. In other words, people who were already sick. And while they didn’t find a lower risk of heart attacks and strokes, they did find that the vitamins lowered homocysteine.
This was enough for the researchers to dismiss the homocysteine hypothesis. Steven Nissen, president of the American College of Cardiology and a very big man in the world of statins and cholesterol, sniffed that “The homocysteine theory really isn’t getting much attention anymore.” I think Steve is talking to the wrong people. What really gets him excited is statins. Just this morning newspapers reported a study Steve conducted that claims to show that mega-doses of statins reverse heart disease. Some of his colleagues found the study premature.
But wait! What did the vitamin B research actually show? That folic acid, vitamin B6, and vitamin B12 do lower homocysteine, but don’t reduce the risk of heart attacks in people who are already sick. That says nothing about the effect on healthy people. Even if you’re a big-shot scientist, you don’t get to suspend logic and generalize from sick people to healthy people. You only get to say what your science supports.
Wouldn’t a good question have been, “What is it about the metabolism of these sick people that prevents lowered homocysteine from working?”
In Bertold Brecht’s play Galileo, the sixteenth century scientist invites the bishops of Rome to look through his telescope and see for themselves the moons orbiting Jupiter—a heresy for which Galileo is ostracized and quarantined. The bishops decline because they already know what they’ll see. In testing the homocysteine hypothesis, the researchers looked through the telescope and still saw what they expected to see.
How can you tell when a scientist is being stupid? When they won’t look through the telescope. When they look but don’t see. When their conclusions and the health standards that affect you and me aren’t supported by their own science. When they don’t ask the obvious question.
The issues in this article are developed (with references) in issue #9 of the Progressive Health Observer in a review article titled “What Causes a Heart Attack.”
Related resources are available on the Heart page.
