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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >Statins do lower death rates from all causes, however, and it's not
> clear why. 

I don't have the counter statistics under thumb this morning, but when I 
looked into this to some depth a few years ago, many sources commented on how 
such 
statistics are cooked.  If you take statins and you don't die of a heart 
attack or stroke when you are 50 and yet you die of liver complications when 
you 
are 70, you are one of those people whose death rate was lowered because your 
statistical death at 50 was thwarted.

Also there is that many of us hardscrabble types are not in the study 
populations.  I will refer to the book "Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living 
Like 50 
Until You're 80 and Beyond"  (Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge).  The authors 
outline the pheonomenon that at about age 50, deterioration sets in except in 
those people who have some hard physical stress on their bodies daily.  For 
those 
people, the deterioration that advances from about age 50 is delayed for at 
least 30 years and sometimes far beyond.  

Only a few of us backwoods luddites value that daily physical stress.  When 
pharmalogical studies are done, it is invariably on a population who (in 
terms 
of human history) are artificially unchallenged physically during those 
years. 
 We are not part of the target population.


James