But I will never know if this daily ritual does me any good in the long run; it depends on which of my many possible future lives actually occurs. If I never have a heart attack or a stroke, I will have no idea whether I would have never had one even if I had not taken the tablets, and all this pill-popping for years was a waste of time. If I do have a heart attack or a stroke, I will not know if this event was delayed by taking the statin. All I can ever know is that, on average, it benefits a large group of people like me, and this knowledge is based on large clinical trials.
