Ever since I first encountered the medical field, something struck me as off about their relentless focus on blood pressure. Before long, I began to notice that the blood pressures the same acquaintances (e.g., relatives or friends) shared with me varied immensely. As I was pondering this, a long-time Eastern spiritual teacher shared with me their belief that the West's relentless focus on blood pressure was due to it being much easier to measure than blood perfusion (healthy blood flow).
Then, as I became more acquainted with the medical field, I began to notice a consistent pattern —
whenever a drug existed that could treat a number or statistic, as the years went by, the acceptable number kept on being narrowed, making more and more people eligible to take the drugs that treated the number.For example, as I
discussed recently, once the statins drugs entered the market (which unlike their predecessors, could effectively lower cholesterol), the acceptable blood cholesterol levels kept on being lowered, and before long almost everyone was told they would die from a heart attack unless they started a statin — despite statins have an almost non-existing mortality benefit (e.g., taking them for 5 years at best makes you live
3-4 days longer) and causing (often severe) side effects for roughly 20% of users. Broadly recommending these drugs hence appears unconscionable, but as I showed in
that article,
these unjustifiable guidelines were a product of clever pharmaceutical marketing and targeted bribery of public officials.
Comment: This is criminal!