Further to my thoughts on the idea of mass medication of the healthy over at Orphans, I see that my feelings are echoed by Cristina Odone writing in the Telegraph.
Worryingly, the idea of a daily dose of a drug – even for the healthy – is gaining ground. Recently, taking a small daily dose of aspirin was suggested as a precautionary measure against common forms of cancer for anyone over 45. Now, the proposal is for Britain to become a “statin nation”.
Responding to my post, MacHeath relates a story about statins that makes the blood run cold. One of the balances we consider when taking prescribed drugs is that of the benefits of reducing the symptoms on the one hand and the possible side effects on the other. When the side effects outweigh those symptoms, then perhaps not taking the drug and seeking another route is the right way forward.
I find the idea of mass medication of healthy people unbelievably abhorrent. I’ll take an aspirin if I have a headache, I will not take one just in case I might have a stroke. I won’t take statins just in case, either – especially given the side effects.
So far as I am aware – not visiting the doctor very frequently – I am reasonably healthy and am suffering nothing more than niggling little problems that are manageable. I don’t know what my cholesterol level is and don’t plan to worry about it. If it causes problems, I’ll worry. Until then, I won’t. If I am diagnosed with a problem that requires a particular drug, then that’s different. Until that time, there is no need.
In the meantime, the magic age of 55 looms a couple of years hence. This is the age at which the report writers want me to be medicated just in case I might have a problem with my heart. They believe that this is more cost effective than actually checking.
Cristina notes a worrying possible knock-on effect of this should it take hold:
Mass prescription of statins also carries another risk. It will create a social convention where those who decline the drugs are seen as selfish – neglectful of their families’ welfare and eager to gobble up the NHS’s resources. The pressure to conform may even take on unpleasant new twists, such as a hospital refusing to treat a heart attack victim who has not taken his daily statins.
Worryingly, she may be right. We have already seen such future memory with people demanding that smokers and drinkers be denied treatment because of their lifestyle choices. Will those of us who refuse to be mass-medicated be treated likewise? It’s not such a stretch of the imagination these days to realise that it is eminently possible.
So, I guess, that will make me a subversive…
Don’t forget about the use of sodium fluoride in the water supply which is thankfully rare in England, but was implemented in Southampton in recent times, despite overwhelming opposition. Sodium fluoride is incredibly toxic and was used in the gulags and concentration camps because it makes people passive and dumb. The spurious argument in its favour is to protect poor people’s teeth, but they haven’t a shred of evidence that it works.
Of course, resistance to this form of mass medication means people mention the guy in ‘Dr Strangelove’ and snigger, because only crazy people would object to medicating the water supply, right?
I recall a big hoohah back in the seventies about fluoridation for the sake of our teeth, but haven’t heard much about it since. If they did, time to buy bottled water or a filter for drinking.
It has not gone away at all LR. There was a big arguement raging about its merits in our local rag last year.
Sadly, no-one mentioned the matter of choice.
I got the “you are selfish and don’t care about your family” line from some plonker on a Philippine Bikers forum a while back when discussing the recently introduced helmet law over there. The odd thing being that the law only applies to the driver of the vehicle and not wife, kids, baby and granny clinging on to various bits of the bike.
The sound of jsackboots cruching on the tarmag gets louder all the time.
I’m waiting for the plan to put anti – depressants in the drinking water supply to be revived. That one has not been mentioned for a few years.
The state as father, the state as mother etc etc.
Why do so many apparently intelligent people seem to want thier moment in the spotlight by commanding yet another universal diktat for the whole population?
It’s like the phd equivalent of going on the X-Factor.
Just. Leave. Me. Alone.
Just to be awkward, for a comparison … what about mass-vaccination programmes?
However, speaking as someone who is 65, I’m agin it, but then I’m thin and fit, and have low blood-pressure.
Flouridation – NO.
My late father was a professional Organic Chemist, and the subject of NaF in the domestic water used to really get him going – he wouldn’t have it at any price.
Mind you, you also have to remember that Odone has her own vile programme.
She is a completely raving RC.
She wants eveyone at the church’s mercy – delightful!
Greg :
You’re right about Odone, can’t stand the woman. Her dishonest attempt to suggest that heart attack patients will be denied treatment if they haven’t taken their pills is typical of the way she argues, no evidence just an implication that this is where we’re headed, a lazy slippery slope argument. It’s reminiscent of her calling Dr. Evan Harris ‘Dr. Death’ because he supports the right of terminally ill people to end their own lives.
I used to take statins but stopped because i didn’t think they were having any effect, I’ve suffered no ill effects from that and far from being berated by the health service or denied treatment no one even seems to have noticed !
I was at a village meeting the other month and in conversation in the margins, one guy mentioned that he’d been prescribed statins. This sparked off a ‘me too’ discussion, with the result that out of 10 men there, 9 were being prescribed statins. This was not a gathering solely of the elderly either.
For my part, I’m 37 and in my case, the consultant treating me for my renal problems, prescribed the pills on ‘your other tablets can cause cholestrol problems so you might as well be on these’. As it is, like you I’ll wait til there’s a problem thanks – my cholestrol is checked every month as part of my routine blood tests. It’s low without the statins, and has remained so. I’ll know soon enough if it picks up, so the tablets can wait til/if that happens!
However, going by the small sample in the village, it does look like we’re moving to mass precription already!
The use of sodium fluoride in the water supply is very dangerous, someone said for teeth, but not just for that! Is VERY dangerous for your eyes! Fortunately we don’t have a too big concentration of this poison.
Thanks for the link – and good luck with your planned resistance.
I agree that Cristina Odone has a valid point; she may, as I do, know women who have been told that if they refuse HRT then they are likely to burden their families – and their GPs – with the consequences of broken bones.
I avoid medication like the plague. Only if it is past the pain barrier will I take them. I don’t trust what’s in them.
jameshigham:
I don’t know if you have or have ever had any serious medical condition but speaking for myself I am very happy to take the medication that modern science has provided, without which my health would be very much worse than it is. Modern medication is both overwhelmingly safe and effective.
Thornavis, so the detailed lists of contra-indications included in drugs packaging mean something is completely safe? I beg to differ.
Your faith in medication is touching, but long term pill popping always throws up side effects at some point in the game. Regardless of original condition. Even over the counter medicines have some fine print to the effect that it may not be a good idea to do the ‘one a day’ thing for absolutely longer than necessary.
Statins are a case in point; the major side effect being muscle wasting with the possibility of Kidney disease. Look up Rhabdomyolysis. Drugs may be fine in the short term, but they should not be considered as beneficial as food. As for mass medicating people without health complaints, well, that’s a sure fire way of ensuring they develop some. ❗
I have been very entertained by hearing “preventative medication” (a money spinner for the pharmaceutical industry) being compared to vaccination (a life saving procedure against the threat of communicable disease).
As I pointed out to the idiot making the comparison:
You are vaccinated once, not three times a day, every day for the rest of your natural life.
Of course there are side effects to medication, no one pretends otherwise but plenty of people have a vested interest in exaggerating the risks. As for “long term pill popping” what about those of us with no other choice ? If I wasn’t a long term pill popper I’d likely be unable to walk properly and possibly blind, I haven’t suffered any drastic side effects from the medication I take ( that’s why hospitals and doctors monitor people like me ). I don’t have an unthinking faith in medication, that’s why I stopped taking statins, I take a keen interest in the drugs I’m prescribed and have made the effort to learn how my condition works ( as far as it’s understood ). Of course the possibility that people might be making informed choices and weighing risks doesn’t seem to occur to the modern medicine deniers any more than it does to the sort of people who wish to mass medicate everyone, I’m dead against that btw.
Thornavis, I agree – I also take long-term medication, having weighed up the consequences of not taking it against the potential side-effects (fortunately minimal in the case of the drugs I take).
The difficulty in making such a decision comes when both the risk and the side-effects are hypothetical; this is effectively the case of mass medication, where the well-being of the individual is of secondary importance to the global effectiveness of the treatment.
And another point no-one has yet raised; there are many people out there taking a wide variety of medication on a permanent basis – to say nothing of hormonal treatments like HRT; it is surely impossible for extensive research to have been done into all the possible drugs with which statins, for instance, might react and the results of this interaction.
Could the NHS adequately monitor every patient on additional medication if everyone over 55 was on statins, say?
Yes, but mass medicating people without an illness is a pretty good way of making sure they develop some. There are always side effects. Not to mention the over prescribing of antibiotics for everything led to conditions like Methicyllin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Oh well, you’ll learn. ❗