Statins are now being promoted for use in children. This is outrageous. Statins have been heavily promoted for adults and web sites are springing out all over with complaints describing serious permanent side effects.
As a long time practicing physician I have taken many people off Statins who were put on them by other physicians, including cardiologists who had been told at medical meetings that Statins were needed to lower cholesterol even though most did not have any medical problems caused by so called "high cholesterol."
People are describing muscle weakness and wasting, memory loss, and dementia. Many of these patients are elderly and may be assuming it is part of natural aging. It is not. People in their 30's and 40's are being affected. The drug companies are brushing these complaints aside as merely anecdotes. They are profiting as the statins are some of the biggest drug sellers. We need the FDA to start doing its job and study this very serious issue.
Do your own research by a search for "Statins-Side effects"
Also read the articles and book "Statin Drug Side Effects" by Duane Graveline, MD.
There are many mainstream articles that will pop up on any search engine.
Here is one sample from Business Week, hardly a radical or alternative medicine promoter.
At a minimum, parents should do research before putting their children on Statins. Get a second or third opinion before using Statins. Lifestyle, diet and exercise for children is the first thing to discuss with the doctor if weight and cholesterol are concerns.
Business Week Magazine
Cover Story January 17,2008
In the Real World, a Slew of Side Effects from Statins
By John Carey
A tennis-playing 68-year-old, Dr. H. Denman Scott was talked into taking Lipitor in 2006 by his doctor because his "bad" cholesterol (LDL) was a borderline 130. "I had no symptoms," he says, but he followed the doctor's advice, and the drug dropped his LDL to 60. Then Scott, a retired professor of medicine, began to have muscle pain. After 10 months on the drug, he woke one morning with paralyzing soreness. "I thought it was Lipitor-related," he says. "I'd seen it in a lot of people I had taken care of over the years." Scott stopped taking the drug, and two months later the aches went away.
In clinical trials of statins, side effects were relatively rare. But many doctors believe they are more common in the real world, afflicting perhaps as many as 15% of patients. After muscle aches, prominently mentioned on Lipitor's label, common complaints include cognitive problems ranging from mild confusion to loss of memory. Former astronaut and retired family doctor Duane Graveline says that he "descended into the black pit of amnesia" both times he was put on Lipitor, prompting him to write a book and set up a Web site on statins' side effects.
One trial also showed an association between statin use and cancer. Proponents argue that was an anomaly. "You need to look at the big picture rather than worrying yourself to death over individual trials," says Dr. Scott Grundy, the lead author of national guidelines for statin use and who has received honoraria from Pfizer (PFE). But the big picture is still fuzzy. The safety of statins in long-term use "is an incredibly important question for which we have very little data," says Dr. Beatrice Golomb of the University of California at San Diego.