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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (18872)	8/18/2010 5:08:48 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

And some of your conservative friends on this thread are in favor of limiting the use of statins and anti-depression drugs... If that's me you had in mind--I've posted recently about the "inappropriate use of drugs like statins and depression drugs"--I'm neither a conservative nor am I in favor of limiting the use of these or any other drugs. So if your reference is to me, then you are once again not reading critically. BTW, I ran across this well written piece on a point I have tried to make several times. It's about what risk factor actually means. FYI. What Is a Risk Factor? Submitted by Dana on Tue, 2010-08-17 17:29 You hear it over and over again: Cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease. Low HDL is a risk factor. High triglycerides are a risk factor. Obesity is a risk factor for heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer. Being over 50 is a risk factor for all sorts of things. But what does "risk factor" mean? It sure sounds as if a risk factor increases your risk of something happening, doesn't it? It doesn't. What it means, instead, is that the health condition cited happens more often in people who have that risk factor. A risk factor correlates with the associated health condition, to one degree or another. Does that mean that the risk factor causes the health problem? No, it does not. If there is one rule that should be tattooed backward on every scientist's and every doctor's forehead, it is "Correlation is not causation." In other words, just because two things happen together does not mean one is causing the other. Let me clarify: In just about every elementary school in the world, you will find that overall the kids with the biggest feet are the best spellers. Bigger feet correlate with better spelling skills. Will wearing tight shoes make your child a bad speller? How about if you and your spouse both have freakishly small feet, and passed 'em on. Is your child doomed to consistently write "I haet skool?" Of course not. The reason bigger feet correlate with better spelling skills among elementary school children is that the older the child, the larger his or her feet are likely to be. The kids in the highest grades have, as a group, the biggest feet. They also have the most practice with spelling. Nothing causative about it. Another example: I've learned that daffodils blooming correlates with idiots speeding past my house. If I snip the pretty blooms off all the flowers in my yard, will it restrain the yahoos to a more sedate pace? Not likely. They're speeding because the roads are finally ice free, the sun is shining, they've got the windows down and the tunes cranked up, and it all inspires them to a bad case of lead foot. Correlation but not causation. Remember this when you hear that high total cholesterol is a "risk factor" for heart disease, so you ought to take statins: What this means is not that high cholesterol causes heart disease, but simply that the two tend to occur together. Moreover, that's only true in some population groups; high total cholesterol is not a risk factor for heart disease among women. Moreover-moreover, a good half of people who have heart attacks never had high cholesterol in the first place, so there's no question that high total cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease. It may very well be the case that a third factor is causing both elevated total cholesterol and arterial plaque -- like, say, hyperinsulinemia, aka Metabolic Syndrome, aka carb intolerance. High blood insulin levels can cause increased total cholesterol, and a skewed LDL/HDL ratio. The problem may well not be total cholesterol, though, but rather the underlying hormonal derangement, the inflammation it causes, and the destructive effects of high levels of sugar in blood. You should also know that low total cholesterol -- under 170 or so -- is associated with increased all-causes mortality. Again, we're talking correlation; we can't say that low cholesterol kills people. We can say it's associated with an increased risk of death, including from hemorrhagic stroke, cancer, and -- alarmingly -- suicide and violence. Does low cholesterol cause any of these things? Who the heck knows? For instance, some researchers think that cancer can interfere with the body's cholesterol production, so cancer lowers cholesterol, rather than low cholesterol causing cancer. Total cholesterol often drops with age; maybe it's just old people who get more hemorrhagic strokes. All we know for certain is that two things happen together. Low cholesterol may cause some or all of these things, it may not. Correlation is not causation, it's just a good pointer to something that needs to be looked at more closely. Remember this should your doctor try to convince you to take medication to lower your cholesterol, especially if you're female. It's likely that lower total cholesterol will have about as much effect on preventing heart disease as buying your kid bigger shoes will on scholastic ability. And there's at least as much chance that it will have an undesirable result. holdthetoast.com