We recently solicited your questions for David Agus, the oncologist author of The End of Illness. Now he’s back with answers, including: the numbers on taking aspirin, how to get the most from a doctor visit, and the top 10 actions to reduce your cancer risk. I can guarantee you that his answers will enlighten and thrill some people and enrage and confound others. Thanks to everyone for their participation, and especially to Agus for the thorough answers.
Q. I’m a 4th year medical student, and I watched your interview on The Daily Show when it first aired and really took issue with the way you presented many of these things. It seemed that you simplified your “solutions” to the point that it may actually be dangerous for people to listen to what you suggested. For example, you implied that everyone should be taking aspirin.
Here’s an obvious but sobering thought: every one of us will someday get sick and die. And here’s a happier thought: with ever-advancing medical technology and research, we can now avoid many kinds of illnesses and add more years to our lifespan.
The End of Illness is Agus’s take on how the body works and why it fails. Along the way, he challenges a lot of conventional wisdom about health with academic studies and his own medical experience. Arguments in the book include: that taking vitamins may increase the risk of cancer; that sitting at a desk all day may be as damaging as smoking; and that you can tell something about a patient’s health based on whether she wears high-heel shoes. One review of the book reads: “A ‘rock star’ doctor says throw away the vitamins, load up on baby aspirin, and keep moving.”
A friend mentioned an interesting way that the Internet can reduce cost, raise output, and that uses incentives cleverly. Her company created an educational ad campaign to encourage young women to engage in healthy activities. On several occasions various unrelated blogs mentioned that free vitamins were being given through the campaign’s website linked to the ads. Using Google Analytics she discovered that the website’s hits went up over tenfold after each mention on the blogs; but the data also showed that most of the new hits were by people who got onto the website just long enough to get the freebies.
In the next round the offers will be restructured so the freebies are available only after the person has watched an online educational video—and thus imbibed the health-promoting knowledge that was the purpose of the campaign.
[HT: CS]
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