"Anything over an NNT of 50 is worse than a lottery ticket; there may be no winners"

Mass medication

Lipitor:

"What if you put 250 people in a room and told them they would each pay $1,000 a year for a drug they would have to take every day, that many would get diarrhea and muscle pain, and that 249 would have no benefit? And that they could do just as well by exercising? How many would take that?"

Avandia:

"Avandia is almost the poster child for everything wrong with our system. Its NNT is close to infinite."

"The way our health-care system runs, it is not based on data, it is based on what makes money."

BusinessWeek