The Media Buries the Message: Tobacco Prevention vs. High-Cost Drugs

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Cholesterol-reducing drugs called statins have been in the news lately following the release of a major medical study [6] that found that statins can prevent heart disease and stroke in people with no previous history of heart disease.

Statins are among the biggest-selling family of drugs of all time. Many articles about the study mentioned above, including one on the credible web site WebMD [7], also mention the specific drug used in the study: Crestor.

The study has generated hundreds of articles, most of which repeat the same basic framing of the issue: if heart disease is the problem, a drug is the answer.

This is the typical framing the public gets from hundreds of news reports about heart disease.

Smoking prevention, known to be tremendously cost-effective in preventing heart disease, is never compared to the cost of a new drug touted as doing the same thing. News stories inevitably fail to compare the merits of tobacco prevention when a new and costly drug is promoted as preventing heart disease.

An Associated Press article [8] titled "Wider cholesterol drug use may save lives," about the big statin study estimated that "treating [all at-risk people] with Crestor would cost $9 billion a year and prevent approximately 30,000 heart attacks, strokes or deaths ... That's pretty costly."

Indeed.

Every dollar spent on tobacco prevention saves [9] $2-3 on health care costs down the line, so $9 billion invested in tobacco prevention could save $18-27 billion in eventual medical costs -- many times more than the cost of preventing heart-related ailments using statins.

The media literacy lesson here is that lifestyle strategies for health get downplayed -- even eliminated entirely -- when drugs are promoted, even if lifestyle changes are still the most cost-effective and least-risky answer.