Voices of caution are responding to recent breathless headlines about the supposed heart-health benefits of statin drugs. Publications including Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times claimed "that millions more people could benefit from taking the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins." As health reporter Andre Picard points out, the net health benefits from statins are actually "modest."

The headlines were based on a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. However, the study failed to impress Merrill Goozner of the Integrity in Science Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Goozner reviewed the study closely and found it interesting mostly for "what it reveals about profit-driven medical research and how it contributes to making the U.S. health care system the most bloated and wasteful in the world."