
Also had really annoying phone conversation with my doctor who decided to take that opportunity to reopen the question of why I was not taking statins. "Why is it," I asked her in return, "that in all the times you've told me I should be taking statins, you've never mentioned any possible side-effects? You've never talked about the pros and cons, only the pros."
"Oh," she said, "well the only likely side-effects are some people get aches, and sometimes they just can't tolerate them." And then she went into her rant about American diet and American cholesterol levels and she used to see two heart attacks a year but now she sees two a week and so on. And I just sat there and listened to it. I got distracted by the rant, and forgot about my question, which she didn't even pretend to answer, which was not "what are the side-effects of statins?"
My question was, why didn't her recommendation to take statins come with information about the pros and cons in the first place? Does she really think it's okay to only give me the information that supports her decision?