Some lesser lights, including those at Yahoo! News, are running a story about a NEJM published study today, and drawing deeply suspect corallaries to Zetia and IMPROVE-IT.
Higher thinking news outlets -- like the Boston Globe and Bloomberg -- are running the gene mutation study story for what it is: a gene mutation study. Not a proxy for IMPROVE-IT. See below:
. . . .“Lifelong inhibition is different than giving the drug to someone in their 60s and trying to prevent a second heart attack, which is what the study is doing,” Kathiresan said. “The natural experiment is quite different from the drug experiment,” and doesn’t carry the risk of side effects, he said. . . .
Look -- I'm not a serious scientist, but I can see that giving a pill to someone at midlife (when they already are showing the precursors for heart disease) cannot be equated to having healthier genes, one's whole life long. I get it. Billions are riding on this. But this grasping at a predictor/proxy for IMPROVE-IT's outcome has veered into the realm of the truly preposterous.
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