LONGEVITY

Speaking of The Times, the paper carries a provocative story today that raises questions about the notion, widely accepted in medicine, that lowering certain kinds of cholesterol helps guard against heart attacks.  As the story puts it, this belief is so widespread among physicians that it affects the approval process for new drugs.  Alex Berenson writes:

Because the link between excessive LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular disease has been so widely accepted, the Food and Drug Administration generally has not required drug companies to prove that cholesterol medicines actually reduce heart attacks before approval.

They have not had to conduct so-called outcome or events trials beforehand, which are expensive studies that involve thousands of patients and track whether episodes like heart attacks are reduced.

So far, proof that a drug lowers LDL cholesterol has generally been enough to lead to approval. Only then does the drug’s maker begin an events trial. And until the results of that trial are available, a process that can take several years, doctors and patients must accept the medicine’s benefits largely on faith.

Now the doubters are being heard.

Kind of makes us wonder, doesn't it, about the "certainties" of science.  Al Gore, highest prophet of the new church of global warming, might even read the piece and start thinking, a difficult process that often results in frightening things, and even career changes.

When I was a first-year student at the University of Chicago, we had to take a course called National Science I, or PhySci I.  Most students hated it.  We spent a good chunk of the year studying scientific theories, accepted in their time, that turned out to be wrong.  I once had the gall to ask the instructor, Robert Long, why we studied incorrect theories.  His answer has stayed with me.  We do it, he said, to understand the way science progresses.  It makes mistakes.  It has fads and trends.  Not every scientist fully understands what he or she is doing. 

Next time you buy a half gallon of ice cream ("vanilla swirl to cool the world") to help fight global warming, think about Long's answer.

Posted on January 17, 2008.