Apart from proposing a co-payment for visiting doctors, the last federal budget also contained a proposal to increase the level of co-payments for medications. The government seems to have given little…
Whether the harms of statins outweigh their benefits depends on how you balance them up.
AJ Cann/Flickr
A panel convened by medical journal BMJ to investigate whether it was right to correct rather than retract two pieces featuring a mistake about side effects from statins has endorsed the journal’s decision…
The recent retraction of an academic claim in a leading journal about the incidence of side effects from cholesterol-lowering drugs has sparked anger in the medical community and potentially undermined…
A public health own goal.
Cholesterol pills by Shutterstock
What we know about statins comes almost entirely from commercial interests. So what we take for knowledge about their harms and benefits is actually information designed to optimise the drug makers’ responsibility…
Nearly 13m more adults in the US will be eligible for statins after new guidelines widened the criteria for use of the drugs to treat high cholesterol and prevent heart attacks and strokes. Using data…
After last week’s controversial Catalyst program on the ABC, some people may be wondering whether they should stop taking statins to lower their cholesterol. But before making such a decision, read this…
What should we make of the claims about saturated fats and cholesterol-lowering drugs?
Image from shutterstock.com
On the past two Thursdays, the ABC’s Catalyst program set off a chain reaction of protest from sections of the medical community, aghast that the non-medical media would question the accepted wisdom that…
Statins have improved the quality of life for many people who would have otherwise suffered debilitating cardiovascular disease.
Mykl Roventine
Cardiovascular disease (heart attack and stroke) causes the most deaths in Western countries overall and the vast majority of premature deaths. Drugs known as statins have been the cornerstone of how we…
The Australian government pays $50 a month for a drug that costs $2 a month in New Zealand.
e-MagineArt.com/Flickr
A government-appointed committee makes a recommendation that would save taxpayers $260 million within a year, but it’s ignored. And people at risk of heart attacks lose out. Let me explain via a ripping…
Headlines such as “Thousands at Risk” are guaranteed to cause worry.
Nate Steiner
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently revised the safety labels for statins, widely used anti-cholesterol drugs. They mandated label warnings saying statins may increase the risk of type 2…