Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Monday, December 20, 2004

A radical proposal

Those of you outside the medical profession may not already know about the analysis by Wald and Law, published in the British Medical Journal last year, which proposed that the entire population be fed a "polypill" consisting of six chemicals, which they concluded would reduce cardiovascular disease rates by 80%. (Here's the link if you're interested: polypill

Now along come some wild-eyed radicals with a truly bizarre and disturbing proposal. If people would just drink a glass of red wine every day, eat fish four times a week and eat fruits and vegetables, dark chocolate, garlic and almonds every day, we could achieve a 76% percent reduction in cardiovascular risk. That is obviously preposterous, who would eat good food and drink wine when a pill was available? But if you want to see what these nutjobs have to say -- Franco, et al

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