It’s widely believed that a low cholesterol diet will improve your risk of dying of cardiovascular disease. Problem is, even this dogma has been challenged by the best results of randomized clinical trials. There’s an interesting review of the literature up to 1997 here. The controversy hasn’t gone away.

It’s clear that statins are effective in lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease although I suspect that the effect is greatly exaggerated in the minds of the general public and family physicians. We’re not very good at calculating real risks.

Drugs often have side effects that may be either unknown or undisclosed when they’re first marketed. Vioxx, for example, was widely used before being withdrawn from the market in 2004 because of adverse cardiac effects. In the five years Vioxx was on the market, it’s believed to have caused over 88,000 heart attacks, 30 to 40 percent of which were probably fatal. Incidentally, in the year before its withdrawal, Merck had sales revenue of $2.5 billion from Vioxx. (from Wikipedia)

Reliance on medication might not be the best idea if a condition can be controlled non-pharmaceutically. And when it comes to putting drugs on the market, maybe it’s best not to rush.