BMJ Editor-in-Chief: Lessons From the Controversy Over Statins

Are cholesterol-lowering statin drugs proven to be very safe and effective? Is it time to stop even debating it? Or is that just what the pharmaceutical industry wants you to believe?

Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, has a strong point of view:

Questions about the evidence base for statins continue to emerge from many quarters: how strong is the evidence, how large is the benefit for individuals at lowest risk of heart disease, how well did the trials record common minor side-effects, how representative were the trials of women and the elderly, what was the effect of active run-in periods and composite endpoints, how does taking a statin affect a person's diet and exercise patterns, why is there a discrepancy between the real-life experience of muscle pain and what was reported in the trials, why have the data for harms not yet been given the same levels of scrutiny as the data for benefits, and is cholesterol a reliable surrogate endpoint to guide prevention of cardiovascular disease?

So despite Horton and Collins and colleagues wanting to shut down the discussion and award themselves the final word, the debate about statins in primary prevention is alive and kicking. It is a debate that needs to be resolved as thoughtfully, objectively, and openly as possible, and not by eminence-based narrative reviews, however extensive, based on meta-analysis of data that only Collins, his fellow trialists, and industry sponsors have seen.
- Fiona Godlee

The Lancet: Lessons from the Controversy Over Statins