Icarus Films Readies Documentary Filmmaker Anne Georet’s Cholesterol: The Great Bluff For DVD Release On Sept. 11

Icarus Films has tabbed Sept. 11 as the DVD release date for documentary filmmaker Anne Georet’s Cholesterol: The Great Bluff. 

Her film is a direct challenge to the world of medicine and 50-years of an absolute belief that heart disease and cholesterol are linked.  The solution to that linkage has led to billions of dollars being spent on statin drugs and the spawning of an industrialized multi-billion dollar “low fat” food monstrosity.   With Big Pharma and food suppliers (charging a premium) making billions, what incentive is there to actually review the data and adjust any thinking about the subject?

Georet makes the case that studies conducted by physiologist Ancel Keys in the 1950s arrived at conclusions that were crafted by Keys using “cherry-picked” data.  Known as “The Seven Countries Study,” the results became medical gospel.

Researchers interviewed by Georet who proposed alternative links to heart disease, such as too much sugar in the diet, found funding for their studies cut and their academic standing threatened.   Big bucks and the status quo is the 800-pound gorilla in the room.

Filmmaker Anne Georet uses a mix of interviews, with the likes of nutritionist Sylvain Duval and cardiologist and nutritionist Dr. Michel de Lorgeril, to explain how the body uses different “fats” and how cholesterol works.   This is coupled with investigative journalist and author Nina Teicholz (“The Big Fat Surprise”) and her examination of the history of the “science” and the vested interests in keeping things exactly as they are.

The topic of “good” and “bad” cholesterol is also explored, plus there are vintage news clips and advertising examples mixed into Georet insightful presentation.

As a bonus feature, Icarus Films is also including Anne Georget’s documentary feature, Branding Illness, which explores the world of pharmaceutical ads and how Big Pharma creates “diseases” — pre-menstrual dysphoric disease as an example — and then designs the drugs and marketing campaigns to fight the disease they have created.   Prozac, anyone?