It seems that Astra-Zeneca has posted [DLMURL="http://marketdata.sky.com/skynews/news_item.html?ID_NEWS=120675222"]profits[/DLMURL] of [url]£6.9 BILLION [/url]today, most of which is for their statin Crestor. A lot of that comes from NHS prescriptions - then people wonder why NHS is costing us so much.
They're handing statins out like smarties these days. It seems that as soon as you reach a certain age, you can look forward to being over-medicated for the rest of your life... I question the necessity.
Absolutely! And statins have been shown to be useless for most women over the age of 65. Such a waste of money from the NHS point of view and just puts profits in the Pharma's pockets.
Diet and lifestyle are vastly more important!
The levels of cholesterol deemed 'high' have been changed slowly downwards over the years, as if every unit equates to another billion.
I'm afraid that drug companies ARE cynical enough to include compensation and litigation costs for harm in their projections and calculations in order to still show a profit when the claims come in.