Ben Goldacre and Liam Smeeth argue that when doctors prescribe statins to “healthy” people they are practising “a new kind of medicine.” This seems a view that is wrong because it is narrow in time and geography.
Many kinds of traditional medicine—Chinese traditional medicine and Ayurvedic medicine—have concentrated on keeping people well rather than treating sick people. Indeed, it may be Western medicine that is unusual in concentrating on treating sick people and particularly in fending off death.
And is prescribing statins qualitatively different from vaccinating healthy people or giving advice on diet? The advice on diet is based on much flimsier evidence than that available for statins. Indeed, as John Ioannidis has shown, most nutrition research is of extremely low quality and plain wrong. (1)
It is concentrating on treating sick people that is new, and I think I’d prefer to see my taxes used more for health creation than patching up sick people, many of whom would be better off dead, a blessed, zero carbon state.
1 Ioannidis J. Implausible results in nutrition research. BMJ 2013;347:f6698
Competing interests:
I have taken the polypill, which includes a statin for six years.
Rapid Response:
Ben Goldacre and Liam Smeeth argue that when doctors prescribe statins to “healthy” people they are practising “a new kind of medicine.” This seems a view that is wrong because it is narrow in time and geography.
Many kinds of traditional medicine—Chinese traditional medicine and Ayurvedic medicine—have concentrated on keeping people well rather than treating sick people. Indeed, it may be Western medicine that is unusual in concentrating on treating sick people and particularly in fending off death.
And is prescribing statins qualitatively different from vaccinating healthy people or giving advice on diet? The advice on diet is based on much flimsier evidence than that available for statins. Indeed, as John Ioannidis has shown, most nutrition research is of extremely low quality and plain wrong. (1)
It is concentrating on treating sick people that is new, and I think I’d prefer to see my taxes used more for health creation than patching up sick people, many of whom would be better off dead, a blessed, zero carbon state.
1 Ioannidis J. Implausible results in nutrition research. BMJ 2013;347:f6698
Competing interests: I have taken the polypill, which includes a statin for six years.