Physicians can hardly pick up a medical journal or a newspaper today
without reading about some new medication, and how it promises to completely
change the course of a disease or relieve some troublesome symptom. Indeed,
the wonders of pharmacology are numerous. It is clear, for example, that after
a myocardial infarction patients will live longer if they take β-blockers 1 and that patients with congestive heart failure live
longer and feel better when they take angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors.2 However, medications are a double-edged sword.