Purpose
We are updating based upon knowledge gained over the past decade. Thank you.
Statin drugs:
1. Demonstrated to be of trivial or no benefit to a huge number of those to whom they have been or are now being prescribed.
2. Known to cause a significant number of severe adverse effects—regarding which the US has no compulsory system to report.
3. Are not "good" or "bad" per se: it depends upon, first, to whom they are prescribed, and secondly, the reason(s) why.
4. Are not all the same and fall into at least two major categories: hydrophilic and lipophilic.
You and your health care professionals should understand the hugely significant difference between "Absolute vs. Relative Numbers in Evaluating Drug Therapy"--especially given that the preceding is the title of a 25-year-old letter to the editor of AFP.
(to be contiued...)
Our first purpose is to promote research into treatment and cure for the adverse effects associated with statins. For many of us, this is our only hope.
Our second purpose is to illustrate, with our photos and our stories, the bad things that happened to us while on statins: some of us will have to endure these adverse effects for the rest of our lives. Some have even died.
Doctors aren’t required to report adverse effects; consequently, the bad effects of drugs are hugely under-reported.
We seek photographs and stories from people who have suffered adverse effects associated with statins. The stories can be as personal as you’re willing to tell, and there is no word limit. Because disease and pain affect others as well, we also welcome postings from friends and family members.
So please, if you’re a victim of a statin drug, go to the Share Your Story page and post your photo and story. The photo is important: it shows that you’re a real human being whose life has been damaged subsequent to taking a statin. The more of us post, the more likely we are to get help. This is a way of fighting back.
P.S. During the times I feel better, I’ll add to this page. If you have questions or comments, please email me at statinstories@gmail.com.
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I don’t exist. You don’t exist.
We are among the thousands who have suffered debilitating consequences from statin drugs. In many of us, statins have triggered progressive neuromuscular or mitochondrial diseases or autoimmune diseases, which apparently have no treatment or cure. Stopping the statin does not stop the disease. We are, and some of us have for years been, in constant and ever-increasing pain and weakness. We have diseases that have no name.
Others of us have experienced muscle pain or other adverse effects that have caused us to stop our statin in time to recover from, at least to some degree, the consequences: these are the luckier ones. One-fourth of people taking statins complain of muscle pain. Although stopping the statin brings diminishment of discomfort, it’s not proven that stopping the statin produces 100% recovery of nerves and muscles.
A certain number of others have died from taking a statin. Rhabdomyolysis is a known adverse effect of statins and it can be lethal.
Until our existence is recognized, several bad things will remain true:
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There will be little or no research into the diseases statins have triggered in us.
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Other people will be prescribed statins and will get the diseases we have.
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We won’t receive rational medical treatment for our present diseases, even to the limited degree that this is possible.
Thus, our goals are to promote research into statin-caused diseases, to warn others about the dangers of statins, and to obtain sensible medical treatment for ourselves.
In order to accomplish these goals, we must as a group speak out to others, rather than just among ourselves. And most of all, we must make our numbers known. There are a lot of us statin victims: thousands for sure, perhaps tens of thousands.
Only 1% of adverse effects of medications (euphemistically called “side effects”) are reported. Our doctors are not legally required, nor are they paid to report adverse effects to the F.D.A. (Food and Drug Administration). There is no system in place to count how many statin victims there are.
Therefore, we ourselves need to show that we are actual human beings whose lives have been vastly diminished by statins– and that there are, tragically, a lot of us. To this end, we are submitting photos of ourselves or of our friends and loved ones who’ve been damaged by a statin drug. Added to the photos, we are telling our stories.
Rather than discourse about what we may have learned about the science, our stories focus on the harm and heartbreak statins have brought into our lives. Our argument is in our numbers.
How many of you have been told either that your problems were not caused by statins, or that what happened to you is extremely rare? “Correlation is not causation,” we’re told, as though this meant anything more than that no one has even counted, let alone studied why there are millions of instances of correlation. There are thousands of websites about statin damage. We don’t want to compete with them: if you list your site, we’ll post it. StatinVictims.com is not a site for more discussion or dialogue.
Instead, we are an ever-growing monument, like a war memorial. The ever-increasing numbers of our photos and our stories will at worst provide a memorial to what happened to us: at best it will fulfil our fervent hope and bring change and hope within our lifetimes.