HDL out, LDL in?
A recent large study demonstrates that the conventional wisdom of increasing HDL and lowering triglycerides do not help arrest the progression of heart disease. This is consistent with the general observations from the applications of many classes of synthetic chemicals – robust conclusions drawn from controlled and smaller populations simply do not hold when measured in large and uncontrolled populations. It also shows that killing one organ (say, the liver) to protect another (say, the heart) is not necessarily a good strategy. This may have been obvious to many ancient populations – but it appears to be the modus operandi for modern medicine.
There are two major problems in the way medicines are discovered and applied today. First, health has to be considered at a systemic level and not at a component and disease level. This is the legacy that every contemporary technical profession – from medicine to engineering- has left for the future generations. Everybody has been trained to "break down," the problem into its components and solve them – element by element, issue by issue and symptom by symptom. This "scientific method," that we are so proud of is wrong and has led us to bad solutions in every field from high energy Physics to economic policy, in addition to medicine.
Second, statistical analysis and hypothesis testing – the "tools of discovery," in the modern world are fraught with problems. These are tools of convenience – immense help for those wanting to "discover something," as fast and as efficiently as possible and push scientific papers out as quickly as the publishers can accept them. Since these tools have become mainstream, human creativity and the rate of discovery have just taken off. Suddenly the generation with "statistical tools" are so much more adept at "discovering," things. This is not so – we are not any more adept at discovering things – we are just so much better at proving that we have discovered something. In medicine, modern therapies have substantially failed to increase health and utility for humans.
Unless scientists are willing to learn from the "past," and humbly recalibrate – throwing out the fake tools handed out to them and challenging the wisdom of their own coveted process," true rate of discovery will continue to decline, shuttling us back to the dark ages, if we are not there already.
