Star comment: Staying at forefront of science

Pharmacology has enabled us to live longer and enjoy a better quality of life by providing chemical cures for illnesses that might otherwise be debilitating or cut lives short.

Statins are seldom out of the headlines, constant research into the heart drug has shown how positive an effect they have had on millions of lives.

Not that everybody sings from the same hymn sheet. There are many who believe the value of statins has been overstated and that the health benefits they provide are at best dubious and at worst damaging. Such naysayers, however, find themselves in a small minority and the overwhelming evidence points to a drug that has had life-changing benefits for a great many users.

Of course, such drugs are the product of years upon years of scientific research, where professors and lab technicians combine to develop test tube solutions to problems that once seemed insurmountable.

Britain remains at the cutting edge of international science and it is imperative that we continue to invest in years to come. One of the lesser-mentioned effects of Brexit is that it will become more difficult for scientists to operate across national borders. Science is a collaborative enterprise where new discoveries are frequently painstaking and arise through marginal gains.

It is essential for both the health of the nation the success of our scientific community that barriers are not raised in 2019 when we say farewell to the European Union.

As a nation, we must continue to invest in science. And we must also be participants in a global industry that seeks to develop new drugs.

We must also continue to play the long game and accept the inevitable questions that will come with relatively new drugs as the side effects become well known.

There is an inevitable conflict between the benefits of new drugs and the side effects as they become known – a journey that is needed as treatments improve.

In the final analysis, we must accept that no drug is completely safe but that the best have a far more positive effect than they do negative.

Statins falls into that category and we must continually look for further improvements and to the good that it does. There are many people who would no longer be here without it.