I'm trying to work out the cost/benefit of statins for me.
According to Qrisk2, for me (and I know it's just a bit of fun, but I'm looking at their assessment of my risk), I am at a 10% risk of a cardiovascular event in the next 10 years. ie out of 100 'me's' 10 will have something nasty.
If I take statins, the risk only drops to 7%, ie we only save 3 'me's'.
During the first 5 years though, the risk of really unpleasant side effects, including acute renal failure (0.3%) is 2.1%, ie we have only saved 0.9 'me's' overall for every 100 dosed (and this is assuming that the risk of side effects drops to zero for the next five years. If it doesn't then the case against is even greater).
Note that the side effect figure excludes the really nasty memory loss one, which now has to be included on the statin data sheet.
To summarise, 3 people don't have a cardiovascular event, but at least 2 do have a really crap time of it, from 100 people, taking 365,200 tablets overall.
Not the most convincing odds.