I read them to her. (Continued from here.)

Apparently, two men with these symptoms blamed Pfizer for not informing them that these risks were associated with Lipitor. It was hard to take this report seriously when I learned that some of these side effects had indeed been publicized by Pfizer, and that 18 million people had taken Lipitor and only two were suing in this action. On the other hand the Internet was full of claims that Lipitor was to blame for ALS-type symptoms, and just about every other type of symptom imagineable. (I started doing a back-of-the-envelope analysis in my head: given the number of people that had been prescribed Lipitor over the years it seemed reasonable to assume that some of them would go on to develop ALS, not necessarily suggesting any causal relationship between the two facts. And there were all those ALS patients who had never taken Lipitor...)

I hestitated to offer any opinion. I didn't want to raise my mother's hopes or dash them, and I guessed she wanted to believe that Lipitor might somehow be to blame for her condition, rather than ALS. My mother, who can barely make herself understood on the phone, said to me with resignation, "what's the difference, I still end up in the same place." From the intonation, I could tell that she really did believe there might be a difference.

I kept Googling after I hung up. I was shocked to see that the very next set of stories contained Lipitor and ALS in the same headline. Immediately my heart raced. Could it be true? Could ALS-type symptoms be traced back to Lipitor? I opened the first article and I was stunned to find out that a neurological institute in Houston had started a clinical trial to test the possibility that Lipitor might have beneficial effects for ALS patients. I re-read that several times. Lipitor? Yes. The article said that 50 individuals suffering from ALS were enrolled in a double blind study of Lipitor. The theory was that the drug's effect on the autoimmune system might help retard the progress of ALS.

I called my mother back. "Do you mean to tell me..." Yes, I said. Truly, it was confusing. We concluded that there was just no way to know what to think of any of this. It was just one of those many days when we took a ride on the emotional rollercoaster together. (Return to blog.)