Last week, the nation’s leading heart organizations released a sweeping new set of guidelines for lowering cholesterol, along with an online calculator meant to help doctors assess risks and treatment options. But, in a major embarrassment to the health groups, the calculator appears to greatly overestimate risk, so much so that it could mistakenly suggest that millions more people are candidates for statin drugs.

But it sounds like the real problem is with the "sweeping NEW set of guidelines" and not with the old guidelines. So if you were prescribed under the OLD guidelines, which targeted a smaller group, you probably got a more accurate prescription.

IOW, the "embarrassing" problem seems to be in "over-estimating" the risk and making millions "more" people candidates for the drug than were candidates originally. These drugs have been out for a very long time now.

(That said, though I have a history of heart disease in my family, I resisted taking statins for a long time. I remember one doctor telling me YEARS ago, even decades ago now, that all people should take statins just as a prophylactic. I myself have never suffered serious side effects that I know of--though I know some do.)

OTOH, maybe what they're saying is that if they could make such a big mistake with the new guidelines then even the old guidelines are suspect.

I believe statins are one of those drugs whose properties were discovered accidentally. They were working with the compound to treat some other condition and discovered it lowered cholesterol. The other big benefit is protection from stroke or the worst consequences of stroke.

As you said, somewhere, they don't know why statins work. But to be fair that is true of any number of drugs. They know that a drug works, but not why. As I understand it, they don't really know why aspirin works.

I was doing some work a while back with a nursing organization, and they were talking about "evidence-based medicine" as a "new advance." This raised my eyebrows and I asked somewhat hesitatingly: "But I thought medicine was based on scientific evidence."

Apparently not in many cases. Doctors and other medical professionals do many things that haven't been rigorously tested in a scientific way. They find something that works, and they sort of pass it down from guild member to guild member. The results are reasonably good (even if something else might be much better and even if they don't know why it works), so they keep doing it.