“As long as men are liable to die and are desirous to live, a physician will be made fun of, but he will be well paid.”
La Bruyere (1645-1696)
Noticed all the newspaper billboards across this part of Scotland today were trumpeting the headline “Doctors discover drug to reverse heart disease”, so thought I’d better check in with the BBC when I got home and find out more.
An international study of 349 patients over two years found high doses of a powerful new statin, rosuvastatin, could reverse atherosclerosis, the build-up of fatty deposits in arteries, which is one of the recognised prime risk factors in heart disease. (The study, which was funded by AstraZeneca, the makers of rosuvastatin, will be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April.)
The usefulness of statins in heart disease is not news (though their capacity to reverse the build-up of atherosclerotic deposits is). Alongside today’s BBC article is a link to a news item from August 2004 reporting on a debate held by doctors at the annual meeting of Heart UK, which calls itself “the cholesterol charity” (interesting phrasing). The chairman of Heart UK, a consultant endocrinologist at Bath University, even put forward a case for adding statins to the drinking water supply.
But Professor Tom Sanders, a nutritionist at King’s College, London, and nutrition director for Heart UK, disagreed saying “There are serious side effects with statins. One is myositis, in particular rhabdomyolysis – a muscle-wasting disease. It’s a very nasty side effect. It can kill you.” He also pointed out that the drugs cause limb defects in unborn children. (Hmmm … haven’t we been here before?)
However, this didn’t seem to overly dampen the enthusiasm of his chairman who simply suggested that babies and others wishing to avoid treatment took statin-free drinking water (no doubt at a cost).
Oh, didn’t I mention his name? How very remiss of me. It’s Dr John Reckless.
You’d never get away with that in a piece of fiction, would you? Just as well Professor Sanders’ first name isn’t Harland. ‘Nuff said … except perhaps to mention the announcement of another “miracle” drug of a possibly very similar nature (coming soon to a water supply near you).
“Doctors prescribe medicine of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of which they know nothing.”
Voltaire
