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Health Canada and the Public Citizen Health Research Group have issued warnings indicating Crestor has a significant potential to cause kidney damage and failure, as well as muscle destruction. The muscle destruction, known as rhabdomyolysis, is not a new side effect to the family of cholesterol drugs, known as statins.

Baycol, another statin, was removed from the market in August 2001, after 31 reports of fatal rhabdomyolysis. In the three years before it was banned, Public Citizen warned patients not to use Baycol.

Crestor is the newest and one of the most powerful cholesterol-lowering drug on the market. The Public Citizen argues that Baycol did not show life-threatening rhabdomyolysis in pre-approval clinical trials. Yet Crestor did, and it continues to show adverse effects. By March 2004, seven cases of a muscle-destroying condition and nine cases of kidney failure were reported in patients taking Crestor.

According to its manufacturer Astra Zeneca, Crestor is less expensive and more effective than similar drugs like Pfizer's Lipitor, which is currently the statin market leader, taking in about $8 billion of the $13 billion total statin sales in 2002.

The United States' approval in August 2003 followed Crestor's approval in the U.K. and Canada. Yet by March 2004, a relatively short period of time after its approval, Crestor was linked to at least nine cases of kidney failure. The FDA argues that the pattern of risk is much different than with that of Baycol, but they continue to receive complaints from the Public Citizen and other consumer health groups.