BMJ  2003;326 (28 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7404.0-f

Editor's choice

The most important BMJ for 50 years?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

I suggest, gentle (or even angry) reader, that you keep this issue of the BMJ. It may well become a collector's item. It's perhaps more than 50 years since we published something as important as the cluster of papers from Nick Wald, Malcolm Law, and others (p 1419, p 1423, and p 1427).

They argue convincingly that a pill with six ingredients could prevent 80% of heart attacks (or other events caused by ischaemic heart disease) and strokes. Anybody with cardiovascular disease would take the pill, and so would everybody from 55—without any investigation. As heart attack, stroke, and other cardiovascular events kill or disable half the population of Britain—and a similar proportion in other developed countries—widespread use of the pill would, write the authors modestly, "have a greater impact on the prevention of disease in the Western world than any other single intervention."

There . . . [Full text of this article]

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Rapid Responses:

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Beta blockers?

Joseph H. Bolotin, et al.
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John P Petrie
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