Hastings Center Report

Stewart Justman
A Slippery Preventive Slope
Hastings Center Report - Volume 39, Number 2, March-April 2009, pp. c3-c3

The Hastings Center

Project MUSE - Hastings Center Report - A Slippery Preventive Slope Project MUSE Journals Hastings Center Report Volume 39, Number 2, March-April 2009 A Slippery Preventive Slope Hastings Center Report Volume 39, Number 2, March-April 2009 E-ISSN: 1552-146X Print ISSN: 0093-0334 DOI: 10.1353/hcr.0.0124 A Slippery Preventive Slope Stewart Justman Intended as they are for large populations, preventive health measures must meet particularly high safety standards. The best such measures pose no risk at all. A few years ago it was estimated that so modest a measure as a reduction of salt intake could prevent a quarter of the strokes and perhaps a fifth of the heart attacks in the United Kingdom -- doing no harm in the process. The drug proposed for the prevention of prostate cancer runs afoul of this standard. The problem traces back to the landmark Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial, designed to determine whether finasteride, originally used to treat benign prostatic...