I was really shocked to read about how young kids are being put on cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, based on new guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The scary thing to me is how these drugs have barely been tested in kids. So far, five different statin drugs have been approved for use in children, and yet these kinds of drugs have only been tested for a period of two years in a small group of children who had a genetic defect that caused high cholesterol. There's absolutely no long-term data.
Plus, what seems really scary to me is the fact that the American Academy of Pediatrics has received major funding, like hundreds of thousands of dollars, from several of the statin drug manufacturers.
So what do you think? Obviously, we have an obesity problem among our youth, and apparently a cholesterol issue as well. Should these cholesterol-lowering drugs that are given so commonly to adults be given as commonly to kids??