Changing U.S. Life Style and Declining Vascular Mortality — A Retrospective

Henry Blackburn advanced the idea that physicians tend to take either an academic or a pragmatic view of atherosclerosis.1 The academic view asserts that attempts to change individual living habits are hopeless — that research should be directed toward seeking a scientific answer. The pragmatic view contends that atherosclerosis is predominantly the result of life style in most affluent societies and that modification of this environment is the rational way to prevent coronary heart disease — a socioeconomic and cultural evolution. In a previous editorial I indicated that the first decline in age-specific coronary mortality in the United States started . . .