"What if you put 250 people in a room and told them they would each pay $1,000 a year for a drug they would have to take every day, that many would get diarrhea and muscle pain, and that 249 would have no benefit? And that they could do just as well by exercising? How many would take that?" asks drug industry critic Dr. Jerome R. Hoffman, professor of clinical medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles.

But what about the millions of people with elevated cholesterol who are taking statins but have no heart disease or other risk factors? Here's where the controversy heats up.

"We have no evidence that taking a cholesterol-lowering medication like a statin will prevent them from getting heart disease," said Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.