A Review of Statin Drugs Side Effects and the Misguided War on Cholesterol

This was the answer Dr. Duane Graveline, MD, former NASA astronaut, heard repeatedly from doctors and pharmacists as he began to question whether Lipitor — a drug he now titles "Thief of Memory" — was the underlying cause of the transient global amnesia he experienced while taking the drug.

Although Dr. Graveline, now the author of Statin Drugs Side Effects and the Misguided War on Cholesterol, had been a flight surgeon for the U.S. Air Force, conducted space medicine research, been a NASA astronaut, practiced as a family physician for 20 years, and had written eight books during his retirement, he remembered none of these experiences during his second bout with Lipitor-induced amnesia.

Dr. Graveline's consciousness regressed to his teens, having precise recall of his high school classmates. Yet he remembered neither his wife nor his four children.

But statin drugs don't do that, he was told.

This was not the first time Dr. Graveline experienced transient global amnesia (TGA), a disease that involves a lapse in the ability to form memory for a period of minutes or hours, sometimes but not always involving the forgetting of past memories, from Lipitor. Nor was Dr. Graveline the only person to experience TGA as a side effect of the newest class of cholesterol-lowering drugs called "statins."

Lipitor — Thief of Memory
Statin Drugs Side Effects and the Misguided War on Cholesterol tells the story about how Dr. Duane Graveline discovered that his experience with TGA was attributable to the statin drug Lipitor — the only drug he was taking at the time — and how he brought this side effect of statin drugs into the public consciousness with the publication of a letter, which generated hundreds more letters from patients who had similar experiences with statin drugs.

In Dr. Graveline's first experience with amnesia, he had been taking Lipitor for six weeks, prescribed by the physician overseeing his astronaut physical at the Johnson Space Center.

He'd gone for his usual morning walk in the woods, but when he returned, he circled about aimlessly through his driveway and yard. Although he failed to recognize his wife, he reluctantly accepted the milk and cookies she offered. Yet he refused to enter their home, and only consented — hesitantly — to be driven to the hospital after much coaxing by an old physician friend that his wife called on ...