Sorry to say, statins will remain BIG business for a long time to come. The money surrounding them creates this reality distortion field.

1. Statins give doctors an easy fix. All the tired old advice about 'eat right and exercise' or 'eat low fat' rarely lowered cholesterol by much. If at all. Now they have a magic bullet. They will not give it up, unless they see themselves getting sued for using statins. Now, they fear getting sued for NOT using them.

2. There is HUGE money to be made through the fear of cholesterol. No one will let that go away, least of all the pharma. Notice the Lipitor ads. "Hey, look at this beautiful person. All is wonderful, right? Nope, her cholesterol is 274. She is DOOMED." Of course, notice that the ads say "NOT SHOWN TO PREVENT HEART DISEASE."

3. The money surrounding cholesterol will distort and pervert basic science for years to come. Right now, you can get ALL the funding you want to run studies showing how statins cure something or other. Or showing microeffects on LDL or other molecules components. Try to get funding that looks at some other possible cause, other possible avenues, and you'll be turned away. Scientists know this. Even the researchers who are exploring the CRP approach have to involve statins, or they don't get funded. Malcolm Kendrick wrote an interesting piece about this recently. If there's no pill hingeing on the outcome, no one will pursue it.

Same thing is happening in Alzheimer's research. Any research that doesn't involve amyloid (their version of the 'cholesterol' hypothesis) just won't get funded. Period.

There's big money and big careers in cholesterol and its fear. There's no money or prestige in any other approach. Guess which will win?