Here is an analogy from the Savannah Morning News sent by a reader of my columns.

“Photos taken inside clogged city sewer pipes look nearly identical to medical photos of the blood vessels of patients who have spent a lifetime gorging on fried chicken, sausage, and bacon. "It’s like your arteries," said John Parker, environmental compliance inspector with the city’s Water and Sewer Department. "Grease builds up in there. It’s gory." And just like in the body, clogs can form little by little, the accumulation of lots of neighbors each sending a little grease down the drain.”

Last fall, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel gave its overwhelming endorsement to a diabetes drug made by Bristol-Myers Squibb. The FDA sent a letter calling muraglitazar “approvable” after some additional safety tests. A few weeks later, three prominent Cleveland Clinic cardiologists writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association used the same data to show the drug increased patients’ risk of heart attacks and strokes. The company soon withdrew its new drug application.

Once again, I get to tell you, “I told you so.” This time about the Women’s Health Initiative’s heart intervention study. Many will probably be familiar with this study by now. For those who are not, I have summarized it below.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, people skipped merrily through the fields on sunny days. In this time, there were people with normal blood pressure, and people with high blood pressure. These were simple times, for simple people.

Then, a blood pressure of about 160 (millimetres of mercury) over 110 (millimetres of mercury) was considered to be high. Which meant that about five percent of the adult population was considered hypertensive and was treated with drugs. (Five percent too many, if you ask me, but there you go.)

Forget Vioxx. What is now gradually emerging is a disaster several levels of magnitude more destructive. However, for a number of interconnected reasons, this disaster is unlikely to feature as even the tiniest blip on the radar screens of the mass media. Indeed, so far, it hasn’t registered at all.