[Margaret Pilkington]

I cannot take penicillin, and the allergy to it could have cost me my life.
Susie, I do take on board what you are saying.......but there are many people within government who influence the decisions about our healthcare without true regard for the needs of individuals.

And the drug companies do make vast amounts of money regardless of the fact that there have been numerous disastrous marketings of what were thought to be 'safe' medicines(think thalidomide, think the hormones that were originally given in pregnancy to prevent miscarriage......and the subsequent vaginal cancers in those young women)......and while I accept that they are in business to make money.....I don't think that the way forward is to bamboozle the ageing population into thinking that life cannot be acceptable without the intervention of the medical profession and the introduction of mass medication.

Another thought occured to me. If you do take the polypill(which won't be marketed for maybe another 5 or10 years....they are still doing tests on it.....on the Indian population apparently) and you have a reaction/side effect.......how will you know which component of this 'magic pill' is responsible for it?

We could be doing so much more to make the lives of the older/elderly population more comfortable/more pleasant, and perhaps even more productive by other means that just making sure they live longer.......you should add life to years, not years to life.(The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine)