Our corrupt medical establishment

I was just doing some research on Red Yeast Rice for a friend who has high cholesterol and no medical insurance.

I suggested Red Yeast Rice (RYR) which has been around a long time and is well known to reduce cholesterol. In fact it and a similar cousin form the origins of our statin drugs. RYR has been used in Chinese Medicine for over 1000 years: "Its use has been documented as far back as the Tang Dynasty in China in 800 A.D. and taken internally to invigorate the body, aid in digestion, and remove "blood blockages."

Western scientists started looking into the specifics of RYR in the late 1940's and "discovered" the statins which are the necessary/key ingredient.

So far so good except that that some RYR contains statins and some does not and obviously you need to get the kind with the statin or you are not doing yourself any good.

But thanks to our corrupt medical establishment you can't:
"the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ruled that it is illegal to sell red yeast rice that contains more than trace amounts of the cholesterol-lowering substances and to promote red yeast rice for lowering cholesterol levels."

Their reasoning is so absurd as to be almost comical:
1) "the FDA considers the products containing red yeast rice with high levels of cholesterol lowering substances to be new, unapproved drugs for which marketing violates the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. "
Something used for more than 1000 years is deemed "new" by the FDA? Talk about presumptuous arrogant western logic.

2) There is concern that patients who already take statin drugs with or without these other medications may increase their risk of muscle or kidney injury. So a doctor cannot just tell a patient to not take RYR if they are prescribed a statin drug? Hmmm wait a minute here... why not just take RYR instead of the statin drug! Now we are on to something.

Statin drugs are expensive. RYR is cheap. Doctors are peddling new generation statin drugs which are $100/refill. RYR is about $5 last time I checked. 1/20 the cost.

Another part of our medical establishment (the Mayo Clinic) gives us a purported reason for the ban: The presence of lovastatin in the red yeast rice products in question is potentially dangerous because there's no way for you to know what level or quality of lovastatin might be in red yeast rice.

Sounds reasonable except:
1) RYR has been used for over 1000 years in Chinese medicine so the notion we don't know how to use it says that the knowledge and wisdom gained through those 1000 years is meaningless. I just don't believe that for a second. I think 1000 years of experience counts for something.
2) Lowering cholesterol is an iterative process even with modern statin drugs. You get your level tested and the doctor prescribes (or does not prescribe) something. You come back and have the level checked again. Dosage of statin is adjusted accordingly. Dietary changes are perhaps suggested. You repeat the process as necessary. Their own methods are iterative and imprecise.
3) Is there any evidence that short term variations in cholesterol are important (vs. a generally lower level over time?). Is there a "latency" with Statin drugs? Perhaps as the statin level builds up the cholesterol level drops? Maybe they are like SSRI drugs for depression. Missing a day is meaningless due to the latency of the drug. If statins worked the same way then it would not matter if a given RYR tablet had 10% or more or 10% less statin than another one.

I am guessing that the statement "The presence of lovastatin in the red yeast rice products in question is potentially dangerous because there's no way for you to know what level or quality of lovastatin might be in red yeast rice." is pure speculation - and flies in the face of 1000 years of Chinese experience. I am guessing that they (the Chinese) have ways (honed over that time) of ensuring the efficacy of RYR treatment. Obviously their traditional methods do not precisely measure the statin level directly but I'm guessing they arrive at essentially the same place via different means. They probably use complex and well thought out cultivation and fermentation methods that when followed precisely provide consistent statin levels without even knowing what statins are.

But we will probably never know because it's unlikely that an American drug company would spend money to study something that might undermine it's own (much more expensive) product.

That's what this comes down to of course: money. It's not about protecting us, it's about making us powerless to help ourselves and instead forcing us to spend (big) money on their products - or potentially suffer heart attacks and strokes. In my opinion this is modern American "extortion capitalism" at it's worst. Legally deny people the opportunity to help themselves and instead expose them as powerless fodder to be exploited by avaricious drug companies. Red yeast rice was THE way you reduced cholesterol on your own - until 2007.

How about looking at this from a public health standpoint. What is better overall a) having a broad section of the public (especially low income/uninsured) take RYR regularly -the way they take Saw Palmetto for Prostate issues, or b) make effective RYR unavailable forcing people with cholesterol problems to get expensive statin drugs that are fundamentally no different and thereby shutting out 35 million uninsured totally. I don't think it takes a genius to see that the RYR statin ban is costing lives. Probably lots of lives but this ban is not about saving lives this is about making money.

There was something almost sinister about that way this went down: "In 1998, the FDA tried to ban a product (Cholestin) containing red yeast rice extract but the U.S. district court in Utah allowed the product to be sold without restriction. " There was public outcry over the case and the FDA backed off for a while. But more recently they have taken a different -and deceptive- tack. Instead of banning RYR outright they simply declared that any RYR types that contain statins are verboten. This brings technical issues into play, technical issues that are over many peoples heads. This allows supplement companies to sell RYR to customers who have learned/been told/read that RYR "lowers cholesterol" but not mention it no longer contains the key ingredient! Many of these supplement companies are just as unscrupulous as the FDA and welcome the opportunity to continue making money on RYR even though it's now worthless. They don't care, they still make money. And doctors can now tell people that they can take RYR along with statin drugs thus appearing friendly to eastern/alternative medicine. Everybody makes money. Everybody is happy. Except the people having heart attacks and strokes that would have been prevented by unimpaired RYR - which is what many thought they were taking.

There is something almost Dickensian about this. It's dysfunctional and bizarre.

There is a pharmacist who is currently being prosecuted for diluting chemotherapy treatments to make more money. Basically what was supposed to be one treatment was "cut" and used for 3, 5 even 10 people. This man is considered by some to be evil and may get the death penalty. OK, so what about an institutional process engineered by the FDA which allows the selling of a substance that is essentially diluted on an ongoing basis. Is this not similar? Heart attacks and strokes are serious issues. Every bit as serious as cancer.

What do I tell my friend who has no medical insurance and high cholesterol.