Not sure on invitation

The return address raised my eyebrows.
Harvard Medical School? What the heck was this all about?
My medical knowledge is pretty much limited to what I learned pushing a mop in surgery when I was right out of college. So I figured it was a joke.
It wasn’t.
“We are writing to you — and to many other men and women across the United States — to invite you to participate in a large-scale medical research study,” the letter said.
Now there’s something that doesn’t pop up in the mailbox every day.
Still, I wondered if it might be a joke, or maybe some sort of sales pitch.
But the more I read, the more I realized it was legitimate.
Apparently, “growing evidence suggests that vitamin D and fish oil may lower the risk for cancer, heart disease, and stroke.” And this study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is going to get to the bottom of that question.
Reading the letter, I remembered the first time I answered a phone call from a pollster. I had been surprised, intrigued, and a little uneasy about the whole process. And that was just when I was being asked my opinion on a couple of political candidates or a couple of brands of toothpaste.
This was something entirely different. This was an invitation to take part in a clinical medical test.
I kept reading.
“If you are a woman aged 55 or older,” no luck there, buddy, “or a man aged 50 or older, guilty as charged, “and have not previously had a heart attack, stroke or cancer (other than skin cancer), you may be eligible to join the VITAL study.”
The name VITAL comes from VIT from vitamin D, the A from Omega-3 fish oil, and the L from trial. As acronyms go, that one’s not going to win any awards; but award-winning acronyms aren’t the goal in this particular exercise. Better health and longer lives are the goal, so I kept on reading.
And that’s when I began to wonder if this would be something I wanted to get involved with.
Participation, it seems, would require taking two “study pills” each day. One pill would either be vitamin D or a placebo. The other pill would contain fish oil, omega-3.
Could I remember to take two pills a day? I wasn’t sure. If this had been a study of memory-enhancing drugs, it would have helped.
I take an occasional aspirin or Bufferin for aches and pains and kid myself that I’m also reducing the risk of stroke by keeping my blood a little thinner. But I’ve never been disciplined enough to get on a regimen of baby aspirin, which would be much healthier.
More often than not, I forget to take anything, finding it easier to grumble through the discomfort.
I kept reading.
There would be no compensation for taking part in the study (other than a general feeling of well-being that I had somehow helped advance the health of humankind), but there would be no cost either.
All I needed to agree to do was to take the “study pills” every day for five years.
Five years? Remember to do something — anything — every day for five years?
That seemed to be beyond my abilities. I have difficulty these days thinking five months down the road. On a bad day, five weeks can be stretching it.
But just the same, I’d like to help. Humankind has always been one of my favorite causes, seeing how I’m a member and all that. So I’ve set it aside for further consideration, rather than ruling it out.
If only it had been a study of random memory loss in Midwestern men in their 60s.[[In-content Ad]]