September 9th, 2010

Protective Effect of Education Only Occurs in High-Income Countries

The well-known cardiovascular protective effect of education only occurs in high-income countries (HICs), according to a new report from the REACH registry appearing in Circulation. A striking finding was that highly educated women were more likely than their less educated counterparts to smoke in both affluent countries and less affluent countries. The authors point out that “studies linking socioeconomic status to cardiovascular outcomes in HICs cannot be extrapolated to LMICs (low- or middle-income countries), particularly for women.” Overall, educational attainment was protective in HICs, but not in LMICs, against obesity, smoking, and hypertension.

One Response to “Protective Effect of Education Only Occurs in High-Income Countries”

  1. I do agree with the conclusion. Physicians Who are practicing in the developing countries can easily realized this difficulty. High education is not a panacea of every ill of the all society,even the freedom of women, in the world.Actually it is a basic mistake done by researchers of western & eastern countries alike that result of scientific research has got some transcendental validity!Question should be raised about very core philosophy of science.What type truth science reveals? Is it absolute truth or relative one? Question sound to be Metaphysical! But it is not. If science changes with new research finding then it is definitely relative truth,because their is no guaranty that one research finding can be replicated in the next experimentation! Thomas Kuhn beautifully described in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. He coined the term “Paradigm Shift” to describe how whole structure of scientific thinking change & replaced by completely different mode of thinking apparently falsifying & contradicting the previous one!
    Yes,Science will change for ever,a quest worth to peruse,even if it reveals some sort of relative truth & even if having the risk that it will soon be replaced by newer research finding! “Absolute Truth” fall in the domain of Theology not in the Science. Science has nothing to do with “Absolute Transcendental Eternally Unchanging Truth”! And I strongly feel it is worth to peruse scientific enterprise!

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