The debate rages (still): who should take cholesterol lowering drugs and why is the CTT bullying statin skeptics?
This morning I received an invitation to sign a letter authored by the Lown Institute in support of an article published in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) questioning the wisdom of prescribing statin drugs to patients at low risk of cardiovascular disease such as heart attack or stroke. "Statins" such as lipitor (atorvastatin) and zocor (simvastatin) are drugs which reduce cholesterol levels by inhibiting an enzyme on cell membranes. The article concludes that statin drugs are unlikely to be helpful to patients whose risk of heart disease or stroke is calculated to be less than 20% in 10 years. It was written by Dr. John Abramson, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and the author of two books about inappropriate use of medications and tests, Harriet Rosenberg, a social scientist from Canada who has written about the lack of good scientific study of statins in women, Nicholas Jewell, a statistician from UC Berkeley and Dr. James M. Wright, a professor at...