Vioxx Killed Over 100,000 - How Many Will Statin Drugs Kill

Vioxx (and also other Cox2 inhibitors) was a common prescription for aches and pains that was given to many people before it was removed from the market for causing death via heart disease. In the court cases, it has come to light that the people that produced Vioxx were well aware of its potential to adversely affect the heart. Yet they still saw to it that these drugs were brought to market and actively marketed as drugs of choice for treating aches and pains.

Today, we have a whole class of drugs commonly prescribed to people by the medical field because their blood level of cholesterol is deemed high. Medical science has attributed high levels of cholesterol to heart disease, yet the truth be known about 50% of the people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels. Also studies with older populations show people with higher cholesterol levels have a longer life expectancy. A good perspective on the falsity of cholesterol theory has been done by a Swedish MD, Dr Uffe Ravnskov. He has written a book called "The Cholesterol Myths"

In medicine the standard for bringing any drug to market should be the benefits in taking that drug outweigh any risks involved from that same drug. In the case of statin drugs, they effectively lower the blood cholesterol numbers by interfering with a metabolic pathway involved in the bodies production of cholesterol. However, studies have failed to show a lower mortality rate simply from lowering cholesterol numbers. And there are several problems associated with interfering with this metabolic pathway. Most notably this same pathway interferes with the bodies supply of CoEnzyme Q10. CoQ10 in involved in cellular energy production in all cells. A common side effect of statin drugs is muscle weakness caused by the lower amounts of CoQ10 that the body has to work with. The heart being the most important muscle in the body also has to function with a lower rate of CoQ10 bringing into question the wisdom of treating heart disease with this class of drugs.

Even more disturbing about this lowered rate of CoQ10, is the fact that this nutrient is typically low in cancer patients and is in fact considered one of the many alternative cancer cures (see http://www.cancertutor.com/ ) In my mind this brings into question the fact that statin drugs as a class may cause cancer. In fact the rat studies of statin drugs did see an increase in cancers. The reason that this may not be evident in human trials of statin drugs is that most if not all of the studies of statin drugs lasted less than five years. Cancers typically take longer than five years to develop and in fact if you were to conduct a study trying to find a correlation of tobacco use and cancer and the study lasted only five years, you would probably not find a correlation.

The drug makers are well aware that these drugs lower CoQ10 in the body. In Europe and Canada, patients prescribed statin drugs also get a prescription for this nutrient. Merck has patented a version of Lipitor that includes CoQ10 in the US but has not brought it to market. And unlike Europe and Canada, few physicians in the US advise their patient to take CoQ10 supplements.

Another effect of statin drugs is that they stimulate the growth of blood vessels. While this may might sound like an innocuous benefit, the greatest need for increased blood vessel growth is from cancer cells and recently researchers have called this effect into question For more info on this see http://www.mercola.com/2000/sep/10/statins_cancer.htm and/or http://www.yourmedicaldetective.com/public/1020.cfm

In closing I would like to add that this research takes on a personal note with me. My mother was a seven year statin drug user. She recently passed away at the young age of 72 from pancreatic cancer. I fully attribute her death to her total trust in the medical industry.