Statins

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Statins have been sold for nearly forty years. In that time the proof they save lives has got thinner, and the number of people told to take them has kept climbing.

1987: the first statin goes on sale in America. It is meant for people whose cholesterol is dangerously high and will not come down with diet. 1994: statins post the best result they will ever post. In men who have already survived a heart attack, deaths over five years fall from about 12 in 100 to 8 in 100. 1996: Lipitor is approved, and the job becomes selling that result to people who have never had a heart attack. 2000: Pfizer buys the whole of Warner-Lambert, the company that made Lipitor, for about $90 billion, just to own the pill outright. 2001: the American cholesterol guideline nearly triples the number of people told to take a statin, from 13 million to 36 million. 2002: the drug is tested in 10,000 older Americans with high blood pressure, most of them without heart disease. It makes no difference to how many die. 2002: in a trial of people over 70, the statin group has no fewer deaths and 25% more new cancers. 2004: Britain decides the drug is safe enough to sell over the pharmacy counter, with no doctor involved. 2011: Lipitor's patent runs out. It has become the best-selling drug in history. 2012: the FDA adds memory loss and raised blood sugar to the warning label. 2013: a new American guideline adds another 12.8 million people to the list. 2014: Britain halves the risk score that qualifies you, and 4.5 million more people become eligible. 2016: the drug is tested in 12,000 people across 21 countries who have no heart disease. Again, it makes no difference to how many die. 2026: a new American guideline makes 87.5 million people eligible, including 93% of everyone in their seventies, and asks for a cholesterol test on every child aged nine to eleven. The strongest evidence the drug ever produced came in 1994, from men who had already had a heart attack. Every expansion since has handed it to healthier people, in whom the trials keep finding no difference in deaths.