When it comes to the state of our health, America is the land of the free and the home of the “worried well.” We take great care to follow the advice of the experts. We buckle up in our crash-resistant SUVs and minivans. We try to eat right and drink plenty of water. We join fitness clubs and exercise regularly. Even though some of us enjoy this healthful behavior, for many these activities are a dutiful obligation carried out with little relish. The objective, presumably, is to reduce the chance of disease or premature death. And who can blame us? Doesn’t the latest research show that a healthful diet – high-carb yesterday, low-carb today, no-carb tomorrow – will protect us from obesity, diabetes, and a host of cardiovascular syndromes, and that a daily walk, bike ride, or run will ensure we’re still in the pink when our grandchildren come to call? Where our health is concerned, “no risk” seems to be the only risk acceptable to Americans.
Our aversion to risk is particularly intense when it comes to prescription drugs. The extravagant language used in newspaper headlines, examples of which will be discussed shortly, causes anxious patients to toss their pills away, so-called consumer advocates and government whistle-blowers to blast the drug manufacturers and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for malfeasance, and politicians to call for Congressional hearings. This scenario has been played out with increasing frequency in recent years, exacerbating consumers’ fears that the medicines they take may be unsafe. This sense of anxiety stems from a number of erroneous beliefs and misperceptions about the nature of risks and benefits in pharmaceutical science.
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