Replies to post #83061 on Biotech Values

[iwfal]

Professor Elwood, 79, argued that it was a question of choice and that preservation of health was the responsibility of the individual: “If someone is at risk of a heart attack — and they may not be aware they are — then heart attacks carry a 40 per cent mortality rate. A stomach bleed carried a 4 per cent mortality rate.

When I researched this several years ago the official recommendation by the medical field did in fact weigh bleed risk vs heart attack risk. But absolutely no mention was made of how the risk was measured. You had to go through a chain of papers to get to the fact that the original source data was a comparison of risk of hospitalization (or cost? Memory isn't perfect - but I am pretty sure it was hospitalization). The same paper noted that the risk of death was MUCH less balanced than the risk of hospitalization. And yet this NEVER made it into the formal guidelines for the medical community. Just one of many pieces of data that go towards proving that ones medical care is much better if one asks the right questions.