If you aren’t confused about whether taking omega-3 will keep your brain sharp or is simply a waste of money, you haven’t been paying attention. Last week the media carried reports of a new study that found that taking a gram of fish oil a day didn’t protect elderly people from failing memory and poorer thinking skills.

Do you believe there is a new drug for Alzheimer’s just over the horizon? That there is no truth in the popular idea that B vitamins might cut your risk of getting this dreadful disease?
Well you are wrong on both counts but it’s not your fault, you’ve quite reasonably fallen for some very sophisticated marketing. Let me explain.

Professor Sir Rory Collins, the austere director of the institute in Oxford that produce much of the evidence supporting the increasing use of cholesterol –lowering statins, is in hot water once more. Last week he declared that he intended to investigate himself.

It’s no secret that there are serious problems with the practice of scientific evidence based medicine (EBM). It’s obviously a good idea to have a system for ensuring treatments are safe and effective. But as a defence against dangerous or poor drugs, the working of our current one makes the pre-crash banking regulation look rigorous.

As anyone who is involved with cancer knows, you have two options. Follow the standard, scientifically validated route – variations on surgery, drugs and radiotherapy – supported by proper clinical trials or venture into the unapproved, unlicensed territory of complementary medicine frequently described as quackery.

Here’s a radical idea. Why not use drugs for cases where they are appropriate, safe and effective. And don’t use them when they aren’t. Wild eh! It’s an idea that could save the NHS billions. Three clinicians I know are thinking along exactly these lines.

Yet another round of media stories this week picking up on an “expert’s” claim that vitamins are ineffective and dangerous. They are the medical equivalent of blaming immigrants or single mothers for various social ills; scare stories that spin the data and draw totally unjustified conclusions.

There is a powerful myth, widely believed by cancer patients and their doctors, that soon a greater understanding of genetics will provide the tools to defeat cancer. Unfortunately this optimistic scenario is in serious trouble, yet few are aware of what has been happening.
The data coming out of the latest American genetic screening program, a 500 million dollar project called The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) launched in 2006 – has revealed that the gene changes within the cells of individual tumours are far more complicated and chaotic than anyone had anticipated.

If this blog included cartoons, the one illustrating this post would show a small mouse-like dietitian held in the fearsome claws of a vast and grinning fat cat wearing a suit covered in brand names such as Coca-Cola, Mars, Nestlé, Unilever Foods and WK Kellogg Institute.
The dietician’s speech bubble would read: ‘It’s OK I’ve got it under control.’ It would be captioned: ‘The delusion of the dietitians’.

The statin saga – do they help or harm? – took a fascinating new turn on Sunday when statin supremo Professor Sir Rory Collins confessed to the Express that he hadn’t actually done the analysis needed to uncover the true side-effect rate.

If you’ve been following this pharmacological soap, your response when you heard this was probably first amazed laughter, followed by outrage at the breath-taking hypocrisy and then, after a brief reflection, alarm at the implications.