Back in December, I wrote a post which focused on the apparent ability of pharmaceutical companies to divert our attention away from what is really important (health) to what are often referred to as ‘surrogate’ outcomes such as blood pressure or cholesterol levels. The problem here is that while it is often assumed that, say, [...]

For something that hardly anyone had heard of 20 years ago, cholesterol has become something of a phenomenon. We are encouraged to keep a lid on our cholesterol levels – the recommended amount of which in the blood seems to be in perpetual decline. And this is there is quite a lot of political pressure [...]