This week's British Medical Journal sports a series of articles that promise "a greater impact on the prevention of disease in the Western world than any other known intervention". The authors predict that by taking a 'polypill' containing six ingredients - each of which has been shown to reduce the instances of heart attack (aspirin, a statin, folic acid, a diuretic, a beta blocker and an ACE inhibitor) - an 80% reduction in risk of cardiovascular events, including heart attack, stroke and death could be achieved. Put another way, people aged 55-64 would on average gain 20 years of life without heart attack or stroke. Exciting stuff.
But hang on a minute: where does this lead us? Both our parents both died suddenly: father aged 52 from a heart attack and mother aged 64 from a stroke. Devastating for us at the time, but not for them, and we can now remember them as lively, happy individuals with much to have been proud of in their lives. They, and we, were spared the slow decline, loss of faculties and reducing independence that characterises so much of old age nowadays. Both parents (one a doctor) had a horror of ending up in this way and I doubt very much that they would have popped these pills, had they been around in their time.
That would have been their choice, and we can choose too, though it may be medico-politically incorrect to defy 'evidence' as powerful as this. Although the articles draw a comparison with vaccination in terms of population impact on preventing disease, there is fortunately little chance that any government would make ingestion of these compounds compulsory, as is MMR immunization, and fluoridization of water supplies in some areas. The impact on pension funding and provision of elderly care would simply be too prohibitive.
