The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new class of cholesterol-lowering drugs that will cost more than $14,000 a year.
Why did a new class of super-expensive statins need to be developed? Partly because the older statins are coming off patent and cannot be sold at high prices anymore. Also because of the wide range of dangerous side effects associated with “regular” statins, of course!
Statins aren’t just incredibly dangerous—they’re ineffective. That is quite a combination! Dr. David Brownstein recently pointed out there is little evidence that statins work. They do not, in fact, reduce the incidence of mortality of strokes and heart attacks.
Why aren’t these facts better known? Part of the answer lies in the $29 billion of statin sales each year. One in four Americans over the age of 45 takes statins.
We also pointed out in our earlier coverage that cholesterol is not the problem and is in fact vital to human health. A real danger as we age is that our cholesterol levels can get too low—which is only exacerbated by taking statins!