Daily Aspirin Doesn't Prevent Heart Attacks and Does More Harm Than Good

by Heidi Stevenson

4 November 2009

Eventually, Big Med figures out the obvious. A case in point is a recent study in the Drugs and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB) documenting that taking aspirin to prevent heart attacks does more harm than good. Aspirin is a drug. Drugs aren't preventive medicine. Ergo, aspirin is not a preventive medicine.

The study shows something that's been known for decades—aspirin causes internal bleeding. Also documented is the fact that daily aspirin does absolutely nothing to prevent heart disease. Along with this finding, take note of the fact that another recent study, Daily Aspirin Does More Harm Than Good, has shown no benefit in aspirin therapy for people with existing heart disease.

Aspirin causes gastrointestinal bleeding. As was shown in the AAA study⁽¹⁾, 2% of those taking it for existing significant heart disease were hospitalized for severe bleeding, while 1.2% of those taking placebo required hospitalization. When the number of people taking daily aspirin reaches millions, the .8% difference can add up to tens of thousands more hospitalizations.

Nonetheless, it took a second study to get some action out of a health authority. The UK's Royal College of GPs is supporting the DTB's new recommendation: Don't take aspirin in an attempt to prevent cardiovascular disease. This reverses years of the opposite advice.

DTB's editor, Dr. Ike Ikeanacho, stated:

Current evidence for primary prevention suggests the benefits and harms of aspirin in this setting may be more finely balanced than previously thought, even in individuals estimated to be at high risk of experiencing cardiovascular events, including those with diabetes or elevated blood pressure.

"More finely balanced?" Where's the balance? The risks outweigh the benefits. Even more offensive is the assumption that it's okay to push a drug on people for a questionable effect when it's already known to have a dangerous effect. Wouldn't a medical system that has people's welfare at heart refuse to push a drug until its benefits have clearly been shown to outweigh the known risks? Yet, the DTB editor presumes that the opposite approach is appropriate.

Current evidence is finally getting around to documenting what has always been obvious to alternative medical practitioners: that it makes absolutely no sense to take a harmful drug on an ongoing basis in an attempt to prevent disease—especially when it has been based only on a presumption of what causes that disease, not on documented cause-and-effect of it. The fact is that "thick blood" and high cholesterol have never been shown to cause heart disease. These have never been anything but presumptions—ones that have been promulgated by Big Pharma and Big Med for the purpose of bringing more people into the clutches of pharmaceutical treatment.⁽²⁾

Change comes slowly to the entrenched, though. In response to this study, the senior cardiac nurse of the British Heart Foundation stated:

We advise people not to take aspirin daily, unless they check with their doctor.

What sort of thinking goes behind such advice? It's obvious from the aspirin fiasco that people have been receiving the worst possible advice from their doctors about aspirin and heart disease. Isn't it time for people to take their health into their own hands?

Health is a precious commodity. Once gone, it's difficult to recoup. The fact is that medical practitioners have been giving people terrible advice for years. Isn't it time to start questioning the doctors, rather than telling people that they shouldn't think for themselves?