Readers’ letters
oping cardiovascular disease over the following ten years should be offered a statin. This would include about 25 per cent of the adult population of the UK and almost all men over the age of fifty – thereby medicalising a quarter of the population. Is this justified and would the general public comply? I doubt it. Does the risk reduction it offers in this low-risk group justify the routine prescription of a statin? Again I doubt it: 74 people would need to take the statin for five years to prevent one new case of cardiovascular disease.
Nearly all trials of statins have been funded by pharmaceutical firms that control what does and does not get published, including the incidence of side-effects. It is also likely that industry funding results in exaggerated claims of the benefits of statins.
One further point: Dr Stuttaford claims that effective prevention reduces costs to the NHS. This is very rarely the case. If a drug prevents a disease, the would-be sufferer survives longer and ultimately costs the NHS more – not a reason to avoid prevention but also not an argument in its favour.
Hugh J N Bethell, Alton, Hants. SIR: Stephen Glover in his column (Media Matters, December issue) remarks that the BBC website has more than 40 million unique users per month, compared with Mail Online at 27 million, and the Guardian at 22 million. This might have something to do with the fact that the BBC is its own advertising medium. I have just been watching the BBC news, which recommends viewers to look at the BBC website. It does this all the time. The BBC should divest itself of the website and stop advertising its own subsidiary. Then we will see who gets what.
Michael Gailer, Pirbright, Surrey.