We've already seen crazy -- now get ready for insane.

What's the difference? Glad you asked: Crazy is pumping hundreds of millions of people full of dangerous drugs they don't need for conditions that can be controlled safely and naturally.

Insane is forcing those same risky meds on even more people -- including millions who don't even have the conditions those drugs are supposed to treat.

And the world is going insane -- because researchers are now pushing cholesterol-lowering statins and blood pressure meds onto absolutely everyone past the age of 55.

Including you.

It doesn't matter if you have no actual signs of hypertension or high cholesterol. It doesn't matter if you have none of the other usual risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

You could be in perfect health with no family history of heart disease -- not even a great, great, great, great grandfather who once had a heart attack -- and still get sentenced to these drugs and their side effects.

And that's because researchers claim the only risk factor that really counts is your birthday -- and if you've blown out 55 candles, you get to unwrap some new prescription drugs.

These researchers claim to have analyzed heart risk in 500,000 people using two methods: the usual cholesterol-and-blood-pressure routine... and age alone.

As it turned out, both methods detected 84 percent of people at risk for heart disease.

Now, if you're like me, you might think that's a fail for the age-only method, since it medicates millions of extra people for no reason at all.

But these researchers aren't like you or me. (After all, we're not insane.)

To them, this is a win for their age-only method -- because it's "simpler" and "avoids the need for blood tests and medical examinations."

Yes, those are actual quotes from a researcher who not only has a medical degree, but also a knighthood.

Here's something else he has that might help explain his point of view a little better: a patent.

Sir Nicholas Wald, one of the authors of this new study, is also one of the patent holders of the polypill -- a drug that combines three blood pressure medications, a statin and a baby aspirin all in one handy pill.

I'm sure he'd be pleased as punch if everyone over the age of 55 had to take it.

I haven't seen that little conflict reported in a single mainstream news outlet's coverage of this proposal -- and that's an outrageous lapse of journalism.

Here's something else that's not being widely reported: His study of 500,000 people was a computer simulation -- not an actual study involving actual people.

And that's just insane.

Printer-friendly version