The group, Public Citizen, sent a letter to the FDA Friday asking the agency to ban Crestor -- one of the most popular statin drugs on the market -- amid reports 29 people have developed kidney damage.

In their letter, Public Citizen reported the rate of kidney problems as a result of taking Crestor was a whopping 75 TIMES HIGHER than all the other drugs in the same class combined! Also, for 1 million prescriptions of Crestor filled, Public Citizen says, there were an average 6 reports of kidney damage or acute kidney failure.

No surprise, the FDA agrees with AstraZeneca that Crestor, also known as its generic name rosuvastatin, is as safe as other statins. Another disturbing factoid: The FDA has received 65 reports of rhabdomyolysis in Crestor patients, similar to the rate associated with Baycol, Public Citizen said. You may recall Baycol was pulled from the market three years ago after it was linked to more than 100 deaths, many of them from a severe muscle-damaging condition called rhabdomyolysis.

Simply put, virtually NO ONE needs to take statin drugs. When you treat the symptoms of high cholesterol with a drug you are, in no way, shape or form, treating the cause. It should come as no surprise that the artificial drugs cause serious side effects.

Treating high cholesterol is one of the absolute easiest things to do in natural medicine. Avoiding grains and sugars, exercising and eating a metabolically-appropriate diet are the keys to normalizing cholesterol in all but one or two people out of 1,000 who have a genetic problem with LDL receptors.

Yahoo News October 30, 2004