Why do you think that doctors generally fail to warn their patients about this lesser known side effect of statins?
Answer – Most prescribing physicians are completely unaware of the potential of cognitive side effects from statin drug use. Doctors are victims, in a sense, much like their patients, for they have never been informed of the cognitive problems of many statins, known for years by the drug industry. In a Pfizer paper, recently made available, Pfizer researchers reported seven cases of amnesia and four additional cases of severe memory loss in their 2502 study patients during the clinical evaluation phase of Lipitor development, over five years ago. Somehow this information never was effectively communicated to the doctors responsible to prescribe this drug, helping greatly to explain FAA s current practice of allowing statin drug use in commercial airline pilots. Their flight surgeon s never were informed of this. And it is not as rare as one might think. This ratio of 11/2502 (5/1000) translates into 150,000 expected cases of severe memory impairment this year alone among our 30 million
