Some Would Rather Live a Shorter Life than Take a Daily Pill

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If there was a daily pill you could take to prevent cardiovascular disease, at no charge, and with no side effects, would you? Agata Blaszczak-Boxe from LiveScience writes that, according to a recent study, researchers found that one in three people would rather live a shorter life than take a daily pill.

The study, published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcome, surveyed 1,000 people who had a mean age of 50. The participants were asked how much time they would be willing to deduct from their natural lifespan in order to avoid taking a daily pill to prevent cardiovascular disease. The bottom line is some people really don’t like taking pills. More than 8 percent were willing to sacrifice two years of their lives and 21 percent would take a week to a year off their lifespan to avoid it. Thankfully, 70 percent responded by saying they wouldn’t trade any amount of time.

What’s also interesting is that 21 percent of people would be willing to pay $1,000 or more in order to not take a pill, but still enjoy its benefits. However, 43 percent were unwilling to pay any amount of money. The lead author of the study, Dr. Robert Hutchins, a physician at the University of California, was baffled as to why some people were willing to pay or even sacrifice a portion of their life to not take a preventative pill.

“I would have really liked to have gotten to talk to those people, the ‘outliers’ so to speak, and find out what it was that they thought was so bad about taking a pill daily.”

This study leaves some questions, like what if the hypothetical pill had side effects. Most do, and even fewer people would likely be willing to sacrifice quality of life for a longer stay on this Earth. Perhaps, for some, just having to take a pill affects quality of life.