At GreenMedInfo, Sayer Ji discusses statins and whether or not their benefits are overstated. He writes:

To understand how statin benefits have been grossly inflated, we need to examine how pharmaceutical outcomes are framed.

Let’s say a study reports that statins reduce the risk of heart attack by 36%. That sounds powerful, doesn’t it? But this figure represents relative risk reduction–a proportional comparison between two groups. It tells you nothing about how many people were actually helped.

Now let’s look at absolute risk reduction, which tells you the actual difference in outcomes between the statin and placebo group. For example:

• In the Heart Protection Study, 2% of people in the statin group had a non-fatal heart attack versus 3% in the placebo group⁴.
• The relative risk reduction was 33%–but the absolute risk reduction was only 1%.

This means that 99 out of 100 people who took statins got no measurable benefit in terms of heart attack prevention. Yet the drug was marketed as reducing heart attacks by “a third.”

This framing is not just misleading–it borders on fraudulent health communication, especially when used to justify mass prescribing, medical coercion, and long-term exposure to a drug class with over 30 documented toxic effects⁵.

The Number Needed to Treat (NNT): The Inconvenient Metric

Another way to cut through the hype is to look at the Number Needed to Treat (NNT)–how many people must take a drug for one person to benefit:

• For statins used in primary prevention (people with no prior history of heart disease), the NNT ranges from 104 to 250 over five years⁶.
• For every 100+ people on statins, one may benefit while many if not everyone receiving them may suffer adverse effects.

Compare that to the Number Needed to Harm (NNH):

• Muscle damage: 10-20
• Diabetes onset: 100-250
• Cognitive impairment: poorly quantified, but increasing with age⁷

This paints a grim picture: you’re often more likely to be harmed than helped by statins–especially if you’re taking them without a previous cardiovascular event.

Read more here.

Readers of Richardcyoung.com are already well aware of the NNT problems with statins.