Lipitor:  The best selling drug in history…that almost wasn’t When it was in development, the cholesterol-lowering medicine was viewed as such an also-ran it almost didn’t make it into patient testing. By the time Lipitor went on sale in early 1997, it was the fifth drug in a class called statins that lower LDL or bad cholesterol. The class already included three blockbusters, drugs with sales of $1 billion a year or more. Normally, that would make it very tough for a latecomer to sway many doctors and patients to switch. But a 1996 study showed Lipitor reduced bad cholesterol dramatically more than the other statins, from the very start of treatment and even more so over time. A striking graph of those results helped Lipitor sales representatives turn it into the world’s best-selling drug ever, with more than $125 billion in sales over 14 1/2 years. From - apnews.com I’ve been taking it for several years.  A friend of mine said he was talking to his doctor one day and the MD half joked, “They’ll be putting it in the water supplies soon along with the fluoride”.  While some people have had problems with it, for the vast majority of people, it works well for its intended purpose, reducing the incidence of stroke and coronary disease. Works for me, and I’m glad.  Hoping the generic version now available will work as well. - Waterman12053
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Lipitor:  The best selling drug in history…that almost wasn’t

When it was in development, the cholesterol-lowering medicine was viewed as such an also-ran it almost didn’t make it into patient testing.

By the time Lipitor went on sale in early 1997, it was the fifth drug in a class called statins that lower LDL or bad cholesterol. The class already included three blockbusters, drugs with sales of $1 billion a year or more. Normally, that would make it very tough for a latecomer to sway many doctors and patients to switch.

But a 1996 study showed Lipitor reduced bad cholesterol dramatically more than the other statins, from the very start of treatment and even more so over time. A striking graph of those results helped Lipitor sales representatives turn it into the world’s best-selling drug ever, with more than $125 billion in sales over 14 1/2 years.

From - apnews.com

I’ve been taking it for several years.  A friend of mine said he was talking to his doctor one day and the MD half joked, “They’ll be putting it in the water supplies soon along with the fluoride”.  While some people have had problems with it, for the vast majority of people, it works well for its intended purpose, reducing the incidence of stroke and coronary disease. Works for me, and I’m glad.  Hoping the generic version now available will work as well. - Waterman12053

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