Sir,
at the Davos update on cardiology, Professor Salim Yusuf from Hamilton Ontario gave two talks. He provided permission to record and use the talk on the HOPE 3 trial for educational purposes.
However, he explicitly declined to give permission to video tape, reproduce or broadcast his talk on diet and cardiovascular disease as it included preliminary and unpublished analyses from the large PURE study that he and about 200 investigators have been conducting for over 12 years. These analyses are ongoing and it is expected that the papers from the study will be submitted for publication soon after extensive checks, updates of follow up data and further analyses. It is wisest for commentators to wait for the publication to objectively assess the detailed methods and the findings and also place it in the context of meta analyses or summaries of other similar studies. The Zurich Heart House apologizes for inadvertently video taping the talk by Prof Yusuf and placing it on YouTube without explicit permission. The title of the YouTube post was not provided to Professor Yusuf and he was not aware of it until after it was posted. The video was immediately removed from YouTube by ZHH and joint efforts were made to ban the copied content.
Professor Yusuf acknowledges that he made an error in one part of his talk. He had concerns about an analysis published by Keys based on data from governmental information from SIX countries. (A careful analysis of the data published by Keys and the discrepancies are described by Zoe Harcombe on Twitter).
Professor Yusuf mistakenly referred to this analysis from SIX countries as being from the SEVEN countries study. His remarks were not intended to refer to the SEVEN countries study. For that, he apologizes to the investigators of the SEVEN country studies.
Prof. Thomas F. Lüscher, MD
Chairman Cardiology, University Hospital Zurich
Editor-in-Chief, European Heart Journal
Zurich Heart House
Ruth Amstein PhD
Director, Zurich Heart House
Prof. Salim Yusuf, MD
Executive Director, Population Health Research Institute
McMaster University, Hamilton Health Sciences