Statins aren't a wonder drug | Malcolm Kendrick

Photograph: Plush Studios/Getty Images


Statins are the most widely prescribed drugs in medical history. They appear to have effortlessly conquered heart disease. If guidance proposed by Nice – the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – is followed, 15 million people in the UK, most with no history of heart disease, could soon be taking them.

A recent study by researchers at Imperial College London made the claim that "statins have virtually no side effects, with users experiencing fewer adverse symptoms than if they had taken a placebo". This can only mean that statins make people feel better.

The Oxford University professor Rory Collins this weekend accused critics of the drugs of misleading the public. Increasingly, statins are being promoted for use in a vast range of diseases – as a potential cancer cure, a drug to prevent organ rejection, and as cures for Parkinson's disease and dementia. Now it is announced that statins reduce brain shrinkage in multiple sclerosis.

Can all of this be true? Is it possible for a drug to have no side-effects at all, and still cure most of the major diseases afflicting western civilisation? Well
Statins aren't a wonder drug | Malcolm Kendrick [shared from Weave for Windows Phone]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/23/statins-not-wonder-drug-major-diseases

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