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Jeremiah Stamler, MD

Arch Intern Med. 2007;167(6):537-539.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Medical myths/dogmas die hard. Researchers creating a new body of knowledge for prevention and control of the coronary heart disease–cardiovascular disease (CHD-CVD) epidemic had to disprove and displace the following successive myths/dogmas (among others):

• In the early 1950s: severe atherosclerosis is part of normal aging, hence inevitable, and nothing can be done about it.¹
  
• Then: serum cholesterol level and blood pressure (BP) normally rise with age during adulthood.
  
• Normal systolic BP is 100 mm Hg plus your age; normal serum cholesterol level is as much as 300 mg/dL (7.8 mmol/L). (Spare us normalcy!)
  
• Most high BP is essential hypertension of unknown cause.
  
• Treatment to lower high BP only gets at a symptom (not at the underlying disease) and can do harm by lowering the blood flow to the heart and brain, so therapeutic nihilism and judicious neglect are right.
  
• Later: systolic BP of 140 to 159 and . . . [Full Text of this Article]